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Re: [LUG] Pondering upon Debian

 

On Thursday 20 March 2008 12:20, Andy Smith wrote:
> Hi Tom,
>
> On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 11:06:10AM +0000, Tom Potts wrote:
> > Its about 'ownership'. Mozilla 'owns' the Firefox brand and wishes it to
> > be a certain way so anyone using Firefox knows what they're getting.
>
> Note the disparity between the behaviour you're describing and the
> goals of free software -- under the philosophy of free software you
> can't prevent changes to software by owning it in such a way.  It
> will either reuslt in abandonment or fork.
No - the software IS free! The name is NOT free! As far as I can tell I can 
take FF source and do almost anything with it.
But someone has to control the name it otherwise I (or another evil org) could 
produce a version of Firefox that was pretty useless.  It would  be wrong to 
call it Firefox but your saying that would be OK. 
People expect something of a brand name whether its legally owned or not. 
Perhaps I could take the Debian source tree and replace it all will rubbish - 
theoretically derivative but not functional - and still call it Debian? If 
Debian complained I wouldnt say they were breaching the 'philosophy of free 
software'. I'd say damn right! And so too to Mozilla for trying to keep FF 
recognisable.

Tom te tom te tom


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