Posted on December 17, 2006 - by Justin Hartman
Firefox not free?
I’ve been running Debian on my Apple iBook for about a week now and a recent upgrade to the unstable version of Debian made me realise that Firefox has been renamed Iceweasel. This was particularly strange to me and I couldn’t understand where this funny name came from suddenly so I decided to do some research.
It turns out that when most people think about the Firefox browser, they think of it as being open source and free but I have found that this is actually not true. While Mozilla Firefox is open source it is not entirely free and it may not even be legally compatible with Debian.
The Firefox logo is trademarked, so Debian doesn’t consider it to be Free and will not include it as part of its distribution. Mozilla claims that using the Firefox name without the official branding is a trademark violation.
Furthermore, Mozilla claims that if Debian runs any patches to the version of Firefox included with Debian distros, it has to run them by Mozilla first for approval.
What all this ultimately means is that the Firefox name has been wiped from the face of Debian and is now known as IceWeasel. While using the Firefox name without the Firefox logo is not permissible, changing the name and calling Firefox something else is permissible.
4 Comments
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January 9, 2007
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Well this makes absolute sense if you think about it for 2 seconds. If Mozilla did not trademark the name Firefox it would mean that I could create any other browser and also call it Firefox. Imagine all the Firefox competitors releasing browser named Firefox. It would be the same as Create releasing a iRiver but call them iPod’s?
It is Debian’s strict rules that are to blame here and not Mozilla.
“Furthermore, Mozilla claims that if Debian runs any patches to the version of Firefox included with Debian distros, it has to run them by Mozilla first for approval.”
That is because they have quality ensuring procedures, anyone can change Firefox but if they allowed you to change and release under the Firefox name and at your own free will, then Microsoft could grab a copy, cripple it and then release it on the Internet. Can you see where that would lead?
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January 9, 2007
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Well this makes absolute sense if you think about it for 2 seconds. If Mozilla did not trademark the name Firefox it would mean that I could create any other browser and also call it Firefox. Imagine all the Firefox competitors releasing browser named Firefox. It would be the same as Create releasing a iRiver but call them iPod's?
It is Debian's strict rules that are to blame here and not Mozilla.
“Furthermore, Mozilla claims that if Debian runs any patches to the version of Firefox included with Debian distros, it has to run them by Mozilla first for approval.”
That is because they have quality ensuring procedures, anyone can change Firefox but if they allowed you to change and release under the Firefox name and at your own free will, then Microsoft could grab a copy, cripple it and then release it on the Internet. Can you see where that would lead?
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January 28, 2007
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There is a huge flame-war going on at the moment on the Debian mailing lists about this topic. However what is interesting is the reasoning behind the move away from Firefox which I post verbatim below.
On the Mozilla side:
- using the Firefox name and logo requires the distributor to use the binaries provided by Mozilla
- “security” support is provided by shipping new upstream releases, with zero help to distributors for backporting
- Debian’s permission to use the Firefox name (which was given previously) was revoked
- the Firefox artwork is non-free
On the Debian side:
- Debian policy requires that all packages be built on Debian autobuilders (there are rare exceptions, but they are extremely few)
- Debian policy requires not shipping new upstream versions in stable releases (that means backporting security fixes)
- Debian requires that security updates come from the Debian security team (this creates a problem even if Debian acquiesced and released the binaries from mozilla, since the first security patch would create an unresolvable conflict)
- Debian requires that everything shipped in main be DFSG compliant (the Mozilla Firefox artwork is not)
Visit My Website
January 28, 2007
Permalink
There is a huge flame-war going on at the moment on the Debian mailing lists about this topic. However what is interesting is the reasoning behind the move away from Firefox which I post verbatim below.
On the Mozilla side:
- using the Firefox name and logo requires the distributor to use the binaries provided by Mozilla
- “security” support is provided by shipping new upstream releases, with zero help to distributors for backporting
- Debian's permission to use the Firefox name (which was given previously) was revoked
- the Firefox artwork is non-free
On the Debian side:
- Debian policy requires that all packages be built on Debian autobuilders (there are rare exceptions, but they are extremely few)
- Debian policy requires not shipping new upstream versions in stable releases (that means backporting security fixes)
- Debian requires that security updates come from the Debian security team (this creates a problem even if Debian acquiesced and released the binaries from mozilla, since the first security patch would create an unresolvable conflict)
- Debian requires that everything shipped in main be DFSG compliant (the Mozilla Firefox artwork is not)