The future of the mozilla ebuilds. [Updated]

Anior · Last edited by Anior on Sat Mar 27, 2004 1:39 pm; edited 1 time in total

If you've read slashdot today you will have noticed that there has been some commotion on the debian mailinglist about the mozilla license.

It seems that while the software certainly is open source. The trademarks (as the firefox name and icon) are not. This brings the future of mozilla products in gentoo into question. If we want to be able patch the code at all we can no longer call it firefox or use the art (as the excellent gentoo icon set).

Hopefully this matter can be resolved.

[Update] See the bottom of the page :-)

Voltago · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 11:29 am Post subject:

Oh blast.

Athas · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 12:46 pm Post subject:

The question is - DO we patch the code?

While I personally sympathizes with the Free Software Ideals and are against this restrictive license, I know that the Gentoo distribution is not as adamant in it's principles of Free Software as Debian is. Gentoo is more focused on technology, less on ideology (that's my view at least, I may be wrong).
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d3c3it · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 12:54 pm Post subject:

well debian doesnt even have mplayer does it *correct me if im wrong ive never spent a great deal of time with debain*
i guess mozilla only really make any money from merch thou so i can see there point, to an extent
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MighMoS · Guru Joined: 24 Apr 2003 Posts: 416 Location: @ ~

Please don't let this turn into another XFree...
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RJG · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 4:28 pm Post subject:

This is already effecting Gentoo. Try emerging mozilla-firefox (not the -bin) and when it finishes building you'll see that certain things aren't the same as the prebuilt binary. The most obvious is Help -> About has an old firebird graphic instead of the new fox/globe thing.

As far as I've read this is mainly a branding issue. Mozilla has no issue with people making custom builds of mozilla/firefox, but they do have issues with those people calling it Mozilla/Firefox/whatever.

All this means with Gentoo's ebuilds is you won't have the proper graphics without a little hacking after the emerge (there is a thread somewhere on these forums showing how to update the graphics/icon to the new firefox ones).

piquadrat · Guru Joined: 18 Feb 2003 Posts: 301 Location: Switzerland

shm · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 4:47 pm Post subject:

I'm fine with it--- let's just call it gentoofox instead of firefox.

If not, the gentoo ebuild maintainers would have to ask the mozilla foundation for permission.. seems they are willing to give permission depending on what patches are applied. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200403/msg00010.html
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gurke · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Posts: 260

my firefox about screen still shows an firebird, so i dont see any reason to exclude this software because oh the logo.

EdSchouten · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 07 Oct 2003 Posts: 79

Mozilla Firetux

adammc · Apprentice Joined: 07 Oct 2003 Posts: 230 Location: Europe

gurke · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Posts: 260

i smell gimp.

F16PilotJumper · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 5:44 pm Post subject:

That's fine, if the Mozilla Foundation wants to play that way, I'm sure the logos will be replaced with something truly open, at least in terms of Gentoo ebuilds.

I can see how they have a reputation to uphold, and having their logos used on a buggy custom build would be a bad thing, but this is just stupid. No matter what you put in Help -> About, it is still based on the Firefox codeline - and, Firefox is admittedly a development piece of software, so changes will be made.

It never ceases to amaze me how much trusted organizations can stab us in the back with their licensing issues. 'You can look at the code... oh but if you change one line, you can't use any of our logos or graphics.' Yeah, thanks guys. Thanks for being the top OSS browser for years, working with the community, but then getting all defensive and messing it all up.

They seem to be concerned about "poor user experience", but what distribution has anything to gain by shipping a modified version of Firefox with such major issues? No one expects that from a web browser theseays, and I just don't see it happening. It's just not in the interest of any distro, and I don't see it as such a huge concern.

G-Style · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 5:51 pm Post subject:

So if I do an emerge world and it updates mozila firefox it will give me the old icons that firebird uses?
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d3c3it · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 6:50 pm Post subject:

yup, but it can be fixed easily *use search theres a fix somewhere*
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shm · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2004 1:45 am Post subject:

"Mozilla Foundation Open Letter Orders Unofficial Mozilla Merchandise Sellers to Stop, Legal Action Hinted"

http://www.mozillazine.org/articles/article4484.html

I understand that they want to enforce trademarks, but that kind of wrangling seems very much like certain commercial vendors rather than the foundation of a open source project.
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sapphirecat · Guru Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 376

Why do we get to use "Mozilla Firefox" in text but not the artwork? If it says "Mozilla Firefox" and the people know they use firefox, aren't they going to attribute their User Experience(TM) to Firefox anyway?

As soon as it was clear that the official art wouldn't be allowed in unofficial builds, the unofficial builders threw a fit, and IIRC Ben Goodger promised to look into getting some free art for the unofficial builders into CVS. If it's not there at this point (and I wouldn't know if it was) then that was just posturing and NameOfTheRelease will get even less respect from me.
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Promit · Guru Joined: 15 Nov 2003 Posts: 344

What good is Free Beer without Freedom?

Actually I find it interesting that they are being so aggressive about their name; after going through 2 name changes already, they clearly have an axe to grind.
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shm · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2004 5:54 am Post subject:

deadaim · Guru Joined: 27 Oct 2003 Posts: 467 Location: Florida

d3c3it · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2004 7:08 am Post subject:

piquadrat · Guru Joined: 18 Feb 2003 Posts: 301 Location: Switzerland

sorry, I forgot to say that it works only with the cvs ebuild from breakmygentoo.net, this "feature" has been introduced only recently in the tree AFAIK.

d3c3it · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2004 1:09 pm Post subject:

piquadrat · Guru Joined: 18 Feb 2003 Posts: 301 Location: Switzerland

OK, I was wrong again. Even with the CVS-ebuilds, --enable-official-branding doesn't work. Apparently, the Firefox brandings haven't been checked in the CVS tree. So noone but the official Firefox builders can make builds with the official branding. There are free alternatives, but they look inferior, IMHO...quite annoying move by the Firefox folks...

Anior · Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2004 1:31 pm Post subject:

Okay, more updates to this whole mess:
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/03/27/0250250.shtml?tid=126&tid=154&tid=95

Firefox has some kind of extension called firesomething which lets people rename it to anything they want.

I propose "Flaming GentooFoxBird in Phoenix"