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This may come as a surprise, but Debian is being FORCED to drop the name "Firefox" because Mozilla insist that Debian is not allowed to modify the source and still use the Firefox name or logos. The effect of Mozilla aggressively pursuing the trademark is that FireFox becomes non-free under the Debian Free Software Guidelines - if it is called FireFox. Mozilla are using the trademark as if it was a patent! The logos are already non-free (you are not allowed to modify them) but have so far been excluded from Debian. Now, Mozilla are insisting that if the logos are not used, neither can the name "FireFox". The version in experimental is already called "Bon Echo". Mozilla have made a complete U-turn and are using the trademark to prevent modification of the source - completely against the DFSG. Just goes to show what happens when the GPL is not used. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?archive=no&bug=354622 Mozilla's motivation is: "changes get vetted, branding usage is consistent, and we minimize the difference between distributions." Still means that FireFox is non-free. The whole point of free software is that changes can be made by anyone and the modified version can be distributed by anyone without permission. "Branding" is just a smoke screen, this is about control and restriction of freedom. Changes get passed upstream in the normal course anyway - those that are good enough get included upstream, those that are not get replaced with better code. That's the way free software works. Mozilla have got it backwards - for the sake of a trademark (which they think gives them an air of "quality"). It may even mean that Firefox packages in Sarge are updated to call it something else. Quite what isn't decided. Bonkers! Absolute madness. All that happens now is that the name "Firefox" disappears and dozens of browsers become known as "The browser formerly known as Firefox". Has someone from Sony joined Mozilla or something? Oh, and Ubuntu is also guilty according to Mozilla - as is anyone else who uses Debian packages. Just who is going to pay for those Ubuntu CD's to be remastered and redistributed is going to be something for Canonical to resolve with Mozilla Corp. I'm switching to Galeon - at least that's free software. Just wait, Thunderbird is next.... -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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