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The return of Iceweasel
Back in January, 2005, LWN ran an
article about Debian and Mozilla's trademarks. In particular, the Mozilla
trademark policy places strict requirements on where names like
"Firefox" can be used, some of these requirements do not mix well with the
Debian Free Software Guidelines. Recent events now warrant a new look at
the issue.
Any distribution of Mozilla software which diverges from the official tarballs must use a different name unless specific approval has been obtained from Mozilla. Debian's version does indeed differ in a number of ways. The project could seek approval from Mozilla to call its version of the browser "Firefox," but that approval does not help others who may wish to redistribute the software after receiving it from Debian. Also, the Debian Firefox build omits the official logos, since they carry a non-free license; that is another change which runs afoul of the trademark rules. In the 2005 discussion, the Debian Project had seemingly come to a resolution with the Mozilla Foundation, as represented by Gervase Markham, where Debian would be trusted to make reasonable changes and the omission of the logos was condoned. All seemed well, and Debian has been shipping Firefox under this understanding for over a year. In February of this year, however, Mike Connor from Mozilla Corporation posted a bug report with the Debian project. This bug, marked "serious," stated that shipping a browser called "Firefox" was a trademark violation:
Firefox (the name) is equally protected and controlled by the same
trademark policy and legal requirements as the Firefox logo.
You're free to use any other name for the browser bits, but calling
the browser Firefox requires the same approvals as are required for
using the logo and other artwork.
Under the previous understanding, the Mozilla Foundation had seemingly concluded that it could trust Debian to be judicious in its patches to Firefox. The Mozilla Corporation, instead, is taking a harder line:
To my knowledge, each patchset that deviates from what we ship
should be run by whoever is doing licensing approvals (this is in
progress with various distributions already). Its hard, if not
impossible, to define a set of guidelines that is crystal clear and
doesn't need human oversight. Novell and Red Hat already do this.
The conversation then lapsed until September 18, when Mr. Connor restarted it. His position has not softened:
In that light, you should consider this, as I previously said,
notice that your usage of the trademark is not permitted in this
way, and we are expecting a resolution. If your choice is to cease
usage of the trademark rather than bend the DFSG a little, that is
your decision to make.
Anybody familiar with the Debian Project will know that asking it to "bend the DFSG a little" tends not to go over very well. Mozilla's immediate complaint is about the omission of the official logo, a change which had seemingly been approved back in 2005. But Mr. Connor is also taking issue with a number of the other patches shipped by Debian, and has repeatedly said that every patch that the distribution applies must be approved by the Mozilla Corporation ahead of time. So what happened to the previous understanding? It appears that the shift to the Mozilla Corporation has brought a new approach to trademark policies - and new people into the trademark enforcement role. Meanwhile, the understanding that the Debian Project thought it had was never really codified onto a piece of paper with the requisite signatures - and, as a result, it is easy for the Mozilla Corporation to change. A cardinal rule for dealing with corporations is to always assume that the people you are dealing with will soon be replaced by others with a much more hostile attitude; that would appear to be what has happened here. With regard to the logo:
Fair enough, [Gervase Markham] did make that statement. At the
time, we obviously weren't taking that part seriously. We are now,
and we're saying its not ok.
The Debian developers have no intention of going against Mozilla's wishes. Eric Dorland, one of the Debian Firefox maintainers, did ask for some time, however:
If this isn't possible, could we at least get a stay of execution?
Etch is going into deep freeze in less than a month. Would it be
possible to resolve this after the release?
The response was not particularly sympathetic:
I would think it makes much more sense to resolve this before you
put another long-lived release into the wild, unless your aim is to
delay compliance. Ignoring the logo issue entirely, I have grave
concerns around the nature and quality of some of the changes the
patchset contains, and I would like to see the changes as a set of
specific patches before I could make any recommendation as to
whether we should continue to allow use of the trademark. If we
were forced to revoke your permission to use the trademark, freeze
state would not matter, you would be required to change all
affected packages as soon as possible. Its not a nice thing to do,
but we would do it if necessary, and we have done so before.
Eric also asked for clarification on the patch review policy, wondering if it applied even to security updates. The answer was clear:
Yes, if you are shipping a browser called Firefox, we should be
signing off on every deviation from what we ship. Yes, its time
consuming, and yes, I can find more entertaining ways to spend my
time, but its a necessary evil.
As for your straw man about security bugs, what security bugs would you be fixing with your own patches? If there are security bugs, they should be fixed upstream, not in your own tree. Many people do not consider security to be a "straw man," however. Debian stable currently includes Firefox 1.0.4, which is no longer supported by the Mozilla developers. So Debian must backport its own security fixes, and may not want to wait for the Mozilla bureaucracy to review those fixes before putting them out. The Mozilla response here is that users should simply be force-upgraded to a supported version; that is, indeed, what a number of distributors do, but people are not always happy about it. There are not many other projects which force upgrades in this manner. The end result of all this, as expressed by Steve Langasek:
Given your subsequent comments indicating that the Mozilla
Foundation reserves the right to revoke trademark grants for
released versions of Debian, I don't see that we have any choice
but to discontinue our use of the marks.
Eric Dorland has stated that he will be changing the name of the browser soon. Previously, this scenario has been described as the "Iceweasel" approach - but Eric has not said what name he will be using. He has asked if Debian sarge can continue to ship "firefox," or whether the name will have to be changed in the stable distribution; that question has not yet been answered. Debian is not the only project to express some frustration with Mozilla; consider this message sent to the Fedora advisory board in August on why Firefox security updates tend to be slow in coming:
Also you have to take into account that firefox.org doesn't care
about Linux. They produce "updates" that are first Windows
precompiled binaries. Their Linux stuff is still in CVS, not even
tarball released yet, so we have to try and take a CVS snapshot or
troll through CVS logs to find the right patch. They also don't
seem to care about vendorsec, or if they do its a token notice and
nonsensical embargo dates. The last one I noticed was set to be
released in the middle of a global holiday (Easter).
See also this message from last June on problems the Ubuntu developers have had in keeping Firefox secure in their distribution. The Mozilla project has, mainly via the Firefox browser, changed the way people work with the web. It has brought millions of people into the community of free software users and ended the destructive domination of a single, proprietary browser. Firefox is good stuff, and we are far richer for its existence. One cannot help wondering, however, if the Mozilla Corporation, now one year old, isn't losing touch with the free software community it is ostensibly part of. Releasing software under a free license means losing control over what happens to it, but Mozilla appears to be having a hard time letting go. The result makes life harder for Linux distributors, and for Linux users as well. Nobody really wants to fork Firefox. The Mozilla Corporation, however, would appear to be requiring distributors to do exactly that, whether they want to or not. No distributor has any interest in shipping Iceweasel, but it appears that a number of us will be using it anyway - or, perhaps, looking harder at some of the other free browsers out there. (Log in to post comments)
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 25, 2006 17:44 UTC (Mon) by cartman (subscriber, #11404) [Link] Use Konqueror and be happy and more secure.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 25, 2006 17:49 UTC (Mon) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link] Unfortunately, Konqueror does not like as many sites as Firefox, and Google Mail is the reason why I still need Firefox... I do use Konqueror for everything else as much as I can though.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 25, 2006 17:53 UTC (Mon) by cartman (subscriber, #11404) [Link] Thats hopefully will change with Unity[1] project.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 25, 2006 18:02 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Maybe. It's kinda odd that people ended up with a webkit fork of khtml instead of actually contributing back to khtml or something like that.
And firefox is pretty secure browser. I wouldn't trust konquerer anymore then I'd trust firefox.
Personally I use Epiphany browser, which is the 'Gnome' official browser. A lot simplier and cleaner interface then firefox and it uses the same rendering engine. Galeon browser was nice and it is being slowly integrated into Epiphany.
Also they have extensions for Epiphany for some of the more popular firefox extensions. (greasemonkey, mouse gestures, etc)
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 25, 2006 18:21 UTC (Mon) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] I shall start out with full disclosure: I am an ardent, long-timesupporter of Konqueror.
> Maybe. It's kinda odd that people ended up with a webkit fork of khtml
I think this had a lot to do with differing goals of KDE and Apple. The
Of course, things weren't always totally out of sync; for example,
The Unity project has mixed reactions from the KDE community. Some people
What I love about Konqueror is that the memory footprint is tiny,
In years of heavy browsing with Konqueror, it is rare for me to have to
> And firefox is pretty secure browser. I wouldn't trust konquerer
It is my personal observation and opinion that Konqueror is a trillion
I used to be a huge fan of the 'fox when I used Windows, but after
Knowing now what I have just learned about the Mozilla Foundation, I'm
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 25, 2006 20:04 UTC (Mon) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] Be very careful of judging security by hearsay. That is, do not judgethe security of a program based on the number of reported holes, unless you have good reason to believe that a comparable program is receiving the same level of scrutiny.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 25, 2006 22:41 UTC (Mon) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] True, but you have to wonder about things like this:
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 26, 2006 16:14 UTC (Tue) by vmole (guest, #111) [Link] The memory footprint of Konqerour is only "tiny" if you are running KDE, and have already payed the price of the KDE libs. As a standalone under GNOME or whatever, it might still be smaller than Firefox; I don't know. But "tiny"?
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 26, 2006 18:20 UTC (Tue) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] Typically, I find that the footprint of konqueror (and all its daemons)is around half that of firefox. I don't run KDE.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 28, 2006 8:17 UTC (Thu) by Jel (guest, #22988) [Link] No, it really is tiny. However, re-using libraries is a benefit not a disadvantage. The whole point ofcommon library code is to share it between applications, thereby reducing memory use, increasing integration, and improving testing and refinement.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 28, 2006 16:36 UTC (Thu) by vmole (guest, #111) [Link] Splitting the footprint doesn't change it. If you don't otherwise use those shared libraries, then it doesn't matter how small the konqueror binary is; the total footprint must include those libraries, since they are loaded solely to support konqueror. The fact that they can support other KDE binaries is irrelevent. The other comment claims the total is still around half the total for Firefox, so I guess I'll give it another try. If only KDE weren't so ugly... :-) (NOTE SMILEY! I'M EXPRESSING PERSONAL OPINION ON A MATTER OF TASTE. THAT'S ALL. NO NEED TO FIGHT ABOUT IT.)
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 26, 2006 16:30 UTC (Tue) by job (guest, #670) [Link] While I agree with you that Firefox is the better "tool" for gettingstuff done over the web (because it works with a larger part of the web), saying that it's a "pretty secure browser" is just crap.
Pretty secure compared to what? It has had more than it's fair share of
Yes, Internet Explorer may be even worse in regard to security
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 28, 2006 8:15 UTC (Thu) by Jel (guest, #22988) [Link] I certainly trust konqueror more than firefox. Its anti-popup feature is designed in a more user-friendly way which allows it to be on all the time (user friendly, just-works security is a great achievement), and it actually works. Secondly, it seems to be designed based on solid understanding and best principles, rather than trying to take market share from IE. Extensions are installed in the normal, distro way, rather than being allowed directly from a url on the web. It's only recently that firefox has enforced pre-authorisation for downloads. Before that, the bad security vs. competitiveness issues in firefox were pretty obvious for all to see. I'm not sure that has changed, despite some fixing of gaping holes as afterthoughts.
Google Mail Posted Sep 25, 2006 18:32 UTC (Mon) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] Does Google Mail really not work for you? What version of Konqueror areyou using?
I don't know if they are still doing this, but Google was repeatedly
Google Mail Posted Sep 26, 2006 7:27 UTC (Tue) by edomaur (subscriber, #14520) [Link] I aggree, this has worked for me. The only thing that sometimes bug me is the Flash and others plugins. They do not seems to run at all.
I do not use FireFox on my Linux box anymore, only on this win32 one.
Google Mail Posted Sep 28, 2006 8:19 UTC (Thu) by Jel (guest, #22988) [Link] Flash works fine for me (using the debian/ubuntu flash installer package)
Google Mail Posted Sep 26, 2006 18:15 UTC (Tue) by mdhirsch (guest, #5924) [Link] Google mail works great in Konqueror for me. If I don't change the user agent it ends up in pure HTML mode, but if I etll konqueror to present itself as Firefox to the google.com domain gmail works well in AJAX mode.
I have konqueror 3.5.4, I think.
Which version? Posted Sep 26, 2006 11:59 UTC (Tue) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] Google mail works just fine for me (every single item of it) under 3.5.4.
Which version? Posted Sep 26, 2006 12:29 UTC (Tue) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link] Indeed, I just switched the agent to FireFox 1.5.0.4 and am reading my mails in Konqueror. Sweet! Thanks loads!
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 13, 2007 11:16 UTC (Thu) by fmasotti (guest, #47367) [Link] use opera instead is free and is for linux too
The return of Iceweasel Posted Oct 5, 2006 15:58 UTC (Thu) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link] Where can I download a stand-alone version of Konqueror? Or must it pulled in together with kde-base?
Or more generally: Why are all browsers tied to the IDE they're supposed to be used with?
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 25, 2006 18:09 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link] you say that firefox ships version 1.0.4, however remember that debian decided it was too hard to really backport changes and instead ships the new version under the old version number (in order to comply with their 'now version changes' policy, something that never made sense to me)
I can't see this policy causing anything other then confusion with bug reports, so I really understand the mozilla attitude.
David Lang
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 25, 2006 18:28 UTC (Mon) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] > you say that firefox ships version 1.0.4, however remember that debian> decided it was too hard to really backport changes and instead ships > the new version under the old version number (in order to comply with > their 'now version changes' policy, something that never made sense to > me)
Really? That's pretty shocking!
> I can't see this policy causing anything other then confusion with bug
Well, I can see where such a move by Debian would (if it is true) be a
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 25, 2006 20:06 UTC (Mon) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] Ships in etch or in stable? Etch currently has firefox1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.6-4, which is 1.5.0.6.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 25, 2006 22:05 UTC (Mon) by joey (subscriber, #328) [Link] Alexander Sack is doing a lot of work to backport firefox security fixes the the version 1.0.4 in Debian stable. Here's the changelog for it so you can verify it yourself:
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/m/mozilla...
Or you could look at the actual patches, which probably do include code from newer versions, and judge for yourself how well it's being done. Which I've not done, but I'll trust the references to "backporting" in the changelog over your rumor.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 25, 2006 23:11 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Did you mean 'No version changes' policy?
Makes perfect sense to me. With Free software and probably any other software stuff authors don't realy have a very good track record of not breaking something. Changing dependancies, changing configuration files. Introducing new bugs.
With Debian Stable it's stable as in 'unchanging'.
I mean with people's experiances in other distros it would seem obvious...
So he updates.. and now firefox is broken. Ok.. fixed that for him.
It's a never ending cycle.
Same thing with Fedora. They do huge updates of X right mid-life of the distro. How the hell does that make sense? What is the point of doing releases at all if your going to do that? It would be easier on the users just to track changes to 'Fedora Core Forever' and get breakage in small bite sized portions.
Same thing with every other distro that I've ever used. If they do version changes mid-life of the distro then stuff gets broken. There is a reason why authors do have versions. Because different versions are pretty much different programs. Sometimes in small ways, sometimes in large ways.
I don't realy mind that a whole lot most of the time.
On a personal desktop, who cares? I like having new versions. But if it's a machine that I just want to keep running why would I want to fix stuff when I shouldn't have to? So I like it when distros backport security fixes.
Of course I know it's not a automatic fix for breakage coming from updates.. Bad things still happen. But it's a good start.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 25, 2006 23:53 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link] that's the policy I'm referring to.
in and of itself it can be a good thing.
however prior articles here on LWN about firefox upgrades on Debian have stated that debian developers decided that backporting mozilla patches was too hard and so they re-branded the new version as the old version number as the 'patch'
If this is no longer being done then good for them.
however, given the number of changes that are takeing place in firefox (many in response to holes discovered in it) updateing the old version to fix all the bugs found in the new version sounds like a nearly impossible task (similar to backporting all bugfixes in the kernel to a prior version, once the versions diverge more then a little bit the patches no longer apply to both cleanly)
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 27, 2006 17:05 UTC (Wed) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link] Do we really have to listen to this Fedora X update FUD again, it was proposed and considered like any update request followed by a rejection. Fedora don't do massive updates aside the kernel but that's a rather special case and DaveJ does an amazing job keeping the bugcount down (backporting fixes of any kind in the kernel is timeconsuming compared to rebasing and less error prone).
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 26, 2006 6:23 UTC (Tue) by hooty (subscriber, #7374) [Link] That is not at all the case, we have backported the fixes in almost all cases. I think one release we did just use the of it to the previous release because all it contained was security fixes. But in general that's not what's been happening and now we are on our own.
Mozilla firefox is no more free software. Posted Sep 25, 2006 18:44 UTC (Mon) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] The sad consequence of this is that the browser known as "Mozilla firefox" is no more free software, though it's code-base is, and should not be advertised as such.
Mozilla firefox is no more free software. Posted Sep 25, 2006 19:12 UTC (Mon) by alonso (subscriber, #2828) [Link] Why? Because you not agree with their policies in copyright? Do you think the same for RedHat? CentOS was born for the same reason!
Mozilla firefox is no more free software. Posted Sep 25, 2006 20:43 UTC (Mon) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] The primary difference is that Firefox is a program wheras Red HatEnterprise Linux is a collection of programs. The Firefox name naturally would apply to all uses of that program in any combination with other programs, operating systems, and contexts, but it is not permitted to do so. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux name naturally refers to the particular set of programs and packages put together by Red Hat for enterprise use.
Yes they are both restrictions, but one is a restriction of a name which
Mozilla firefox is no more free software. Posted Sep 28, 2006 8:20 UTC (Thu) by Jel (guest, #22988) [Link] No, because "free software" has a specific meaning, and these restrictions no longer fit it.
Mozilla firefox is no more free software. Posted Sep 29, 2006 17:51 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] What part of the definition of free software doesn't allow this restriction? The restriction on the software we're talking about is this: You can't distribute any derivative of this software under the name "Firefox" without Mozilla's permission. For all the value I see in free software, I don't see any in free naming.
Debian isn't free software then either Posted Sep 25, 2006 23:49 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link] Debian doesn't allow other projects to use it's name or logo when they modify the code and redistribute it either.
why is this acceptable for Debian, and Evil for Mozilla?
Debian isn't free software then either Posted Sep 26, 2006 6:19 UTC (Tue) by DYN_DaTa (guest, #34072) [Link] Simple ... Hypocrisy :)
Debian isn't free software then either Posted Sep 26, 2006 8:46 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] For that reason, the non-free Debian logo is not included in the Debian distribution (and two wrong do not make a right).
Debian isn't free software then either Posted Sep 27, 2006 17:54 UTC (Wed) by hooty (subscriber, #7374) [Link] That has long been considered a bug and I'm seeing movement to correct it wothin the project recently.
Debian isn't free software then either Posted Sep 28, 2006 7:10 UTC (Thu) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link] At Anthony Towns's request, I've picked up this issue and am working onit. I've already sent him a long draft with an extensive background and rationale for the change (much of this information will be familiar to those who have had a skeptical eye on Debian's licenses on its logos for years -- but not everyone has troubled themselves to care). I was hoping to get something done this past weekend, but I suffered a hard drive failure that has affected my $HOME so I've been trying to piece that back together. (I had backups, but they, um, were a little over 2 years old.) I am learning my painful lesson and have a pair of new drives I'll be configuring into RAID 1. At any rate, expect some motion on this soon.
Debian isn't free software then either Posted Sep 26, 2006 10:06 UTC (Tue) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] Debian has decided that the restrictions on their own logo is notacceptable for Debian. Thus, the inconsistency you perceive is historical.
Seamonkey Posted Sep 25, 2006 19:01 UTC (Mon) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link] It is time for Free systems to simply forget about Firefox and help out with Seamonkey. The entire focus of Firefox is Windows centric and always will be. Renaming it IceWeasel doesn't change the other difficulties dealing with the Mozilla Corp.
People are still talking in terms of avoiding a fork... news flash: Seamonkey IS the fork, only nobody is willing to come on out and say it. Forget worrying about bruised egos at a for profit (regardless how they spin it) corporation and worry about what is best for Free Software. Anything wothwhile in Firefox's codebase will end up in Seamonkey so what is the problem with cutting out FF? Most distros ship Mozilla and/or Seamonkey already so why duplicate the effort, especially if the only value in Firefox (the name recognition) is going away?
Seamonkey Posted Sep 25, 2006 19:39 UTC (Mon) by dirtyepic (subscriber, #30178) [Link] Because if Firefox sucks, then Seamonkey blows.
Seamonkey Posted Sep 26, 2006 11:54 UTC (Tue) by mgh (guest, #5696) [Link] try a test:-
install clean ff and tb
open ff, load 2-3 large sites
measure memory useage
open sm, load 2-3 large sites (exactly the same ones)
measure memory usage...
typically was 20-30% less the ff+tb last time I tried.
What made me change in the end was the level of plugin support
Seamonkey Posted Sep 26, 2006 18:19 UTC (Tue) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] What about if you don't use thunderbird (like most of us).
Seamonkey Posted Sep 25, 2006 20:44 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link] Back to "huge box of junk"-style Mozilla? No way
Seamonkey Posted Sep 26, 2006 0:01 UTC (Tue) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link] Although Fx+Tb have a lot to say for them, I prefer the old mozilla suite in a lot of ways. In particular, it uses a faster filepicker, and the integration (performance of opening web-links from mail) is much much faster.
Deleting /usr/lib/gam_server has improved Fx hugely though. No longer do I need a 4GB swap file to cope with 2 day's worth of memory leaks.
Seamonkey Posted Sep 26, 2006 2:13 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Personally I never liked Mozilla.
I always tried to use something like Galeon, which seemed to be the direction that they decided go with with firefox.
To each their own.
Seamonkey Posted Sep 26, 2006 12:19 UTC (Tue) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link] SeaMonkey (the "M" is capital in the to-be-registered trademark name) is no fork, it's a different approach. It's the suite idea as we knew it from Netscape Communicator and the Mozilla project, just with the current code.
Surely some people don't like the all-in-one approach of it, and others just love it, like us, who are working on getting that project into the future.
If someone wants to make SeaMonkey a "Firefox fork", most of our SeaMonkey developer community would object. We have, as said, a different, integrated approach and would not be happy with forcing Firefox style upon us.
SeaMonkey is cool, and is a good product, that's true. It even includes a browser as a main application part. It's not Firefox though, and never will be.
Seamonkey Posted Sep 26, 2006 18:43 UTC (Tue) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link] > SeaMonkey is no fork...
A fork is when a new group of developers (B) take a codebase written by group A in a different direction. Mozilla Corp would be group A, they forked their codebase into the original Mozilla (integrated product) and Firefox + Thunderbird and then abandoned the Mozilla fork. Group B (the Seamonkey devels) have now taken over that fork. So while it didn't happen like most forks, the current situation IS a fork, with two seperate groups maintaining two development branches. Currently SeaMonkey is bringing most of the improvements from Firefox/Thunderbird into their tree and almost all FF extensions work on SeaMonkey.
This situation is not likely to last forever. See BSD. Code will continue to cross polinate between the branches but over time there will be divergence. Eventually patches from one tree will no longer cleanly apply to the other.
It is worth a moment to explain why this is almost certain to occur. Consider. Moz Corp explicitly abandoned Moz as an unneeded development burden. Thus they are highly unlikely to accept any patches from SeaMonkey devels into their tree that makes the lives of the SeaMonkey people any easier unless it also adds some major new feature desirable to FF users. Meanwhile SeaMonkey will be trying to play catchup with FF and at the same time will probably undertake innovation of their own. Creative and skilled devels aren't likely to remain passive forever and any feature they add which doesn't end up being accepted into FF isn't likely to be deleted from their own tree just because of FF's rejection. Thus a full two way fork will eventually appear, and while that first example will likely trigger some flaming and debate each successive one will involve less of it.
The Free Software camp, more importantly the major distribution maintainers, need to be considering which fork is likely to be easier to integrate in the long term. I'd contend that FF just isn't interested in the needs of the distributions that produce longterm stable "enterprise" products. It is not yet known whether the SeaMonkey camp will, but are new enough the major distros might be in a better position to able to influence their development. (The same arguments regarding longterm product deployment would also apply to many corporate rollouts of FF on Windows but are not something I care about.)
Questions helpful to that debate are:
1. What does FF+TB bring to the table that SeaMonkey doesn't? And forget name recognition because by this time next year RHEL and SUSE are probably going to be the only distros calling the software by that recognizable name. However, whatever the name FF is the #2 browser behind IE, thus most likely to be compatible with the most sites on the Internet.
2. What does SeaMonkey bring to the table that FF+TB doesn't? As currently packaged (from both RH and rpms available from the SeaMonkey project) it allows the extra bits (mail, chat, etc) to be discarded if unneeded. Most FF extensions install on SeaMonkey. But those aren't arguments FOR SeaMonkey.
3. Which project is more likely to backport security fixes or will be easier for a distro maintainer to do so? We already know Moz Corp. is unhelpful almost to the point of being actively hostile to the needs of enterprise computing and the stable longlived distributions needed for it.
Seamonkey Posted Sep 28, 2006 0:32 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] But regardless if you want to call it a fork or not, the question remains: For the Mozilla Corporation, Linux is a nuisance, their target system is Windows. (wiz: their release policy and community involvement concerning security patches.) Here on LWN, we are interested in a good supported browser for Linux. (Remember the L in LWN. :-)
Many of us, me included, have the impression that the SeaMonkey developers are not as hostile against Linux, and thus we have another reason to prefer SeaMonkey, beyond the technical arguments.
Joachim
epiphany Posted Sep 25, 2006 22:21 UTC (Mon) by joey (subscriber, #328) [Link] This had me taking another look at epiphany. After all, it's essentially firefox with the logo and name changed, which is what mozilla seems to want.
And I'm impressed, it's actually customisable enough that I can make it set up the same as I have firefox set up, and it has several nice features not in firefox. And seems faster too.
epiphany Posted Sep 27, 2006 17:09 UTC (Wed) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link] You might want to check out the epiphany extensions package as well, it contains things like greasemonkey and adblocker plugins.
Also Ross Burton wrote a Deli.cio.us plugin.
epiphany Posted Sep 28, 2006 5:06 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] I thank you for this comment. I have investigated epiphany and it is most pleasant. Well, aside from the stupidity about dbus not having a sane launch policy, and the lack of a few sanity-saving plugins from firefox (flashblock primarily). Mostly it is a big win: more responsive, smaller footprint, no crazy focus problems.
epiphany Posted Sep 29, 2006 11:19 UTC (Fri) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] FYI, I block Flash in Epiphany by putting this into my custom stylesheet (accessible from the preferences window):
/* from <http://www.floppymoose.com/> */
object[classid$=":D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"],
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 26, 2006 6:18 UTC (Tue) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link] The one positive development from this is that at least we'll know the answer if there is a crossword puzzle where the clue is:
Mike Conner is a _ _ _ _.
Thanks for delaying Etch Mozilla Corp.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 26, 2006 16:07 UTC (Tue) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] While I agree with the crossword answer, it's kinda hard to blame them for delaying Etch. While they may be contributing to a delay, the Debian developers are, as per usual, doing their best to throw obstacles in their own way, in the form of resolutions and general bickering.
Although I'm aware of their "goal" to release Etch by December, I'm betting on at least another year before the current issues, and the ones which will almost certainly spring up between now and the actual release, all get resolved.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 26, 2006 16:36 UTC (Tue) by job (guest, #670) [Link] It's hypocrisy to call this free software. Yes, the license is free, butDebian can not distribute it and give others the freedom to modify and redistribute.
In a way it is very similar to the license behind QMail, which is widely
The very idea that Debian should change the DFSG to suit Mozilla is
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 29, 2006 13:49 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] You are, to the best of my knowledge, free to modify and redistribute. You just have to change the name. That doesn't sound at all unreasonable, to me.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 29, 2006 17:59 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] It's hypocrisy to call this free software. Yes, the license is free, but Debian can not distribute it and give others the freedom to modify and redistribute.You are, to the best of my knowledge, free to modify and redistribute. You just have to change the name. Even more to the point, if Debian uses a different name, then "you" don't even have to worry about changing the name when you modify and redistribute Debian (or part thereof).
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 26, 2006 17:49 UTC (Tue) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] """One cannot help wondering, however, if the Mozilla Corporation, now one year old, isn't losing touch with the free software community it is ostensibly part of."""
Sometimes, people criticize the duplication of effort in the OSS community. They moan that Gnome and KDE should merge, that Koffice is just a waste since we have OpenOffice, etc. To be honest, there was a time that I kinda thought along those lines.
This is a great example of why a reasonable degree of choice is a good thing.
Any organization, no matter how friendly and well thought of today, can turn evil, or begin to ignore parts of the community which contributed to their success, which amounts to about the same thing.
The fact that the code is open-source does not completely side step this problem when it occurs. It's *hard* to "just fork" complex software like FF, Thunderbird, and OO.o. Just look at how long X suffered under the tender mercies of XFree86 before the community forked it. This would never have gone on so long but for the fact that X, like FF, Thunderbird, and OO.o is a hard thing to fork.
To make matters worse, the *more* successful the project becomes, the *more likely* it is to start seeing various parts of the community as ants which can be safely stepped on to focus on the really important users.
I've been looking at Epiphany for my Gnome users. It's a nice browser with a much nicer memory footprint if one is already running a Gnome desktop.
Ditto Konqueror and KDE.
So all that "duplication of effort" was actually, among other things, an insurance policy.
We in the Linux community had a lot to do with FF's popularity. I suspect that an inordinate number of the people who campaigned for FF, recommended it to others, and generally put it on the map, were us Linux people.
I fear that now the only thing that the Mozilla Corporation will notice is dollars. Remember that they are making millions of dollars off of our Google searches when we, and the people we have recommended it to, search the web with Firefox.
If those FF percentages in the browser use reports started to drop a bit at the expense of "other", the Google dollars began dipping a little, and a few news stories came out about FF "losing steam" with a few of us former users agreeing about it instead of criticizing the report, I'll bet a few people at Mozilla Corporation might just take notice. (The problem being what, then, to recommend to Windows users who have fewer OSS options.)
Though by that time, their notice may not matter. They might have to *win* their Linux market share back. I'm already seeing that epiphany is an excellent browser, better integrated into Gnome than FF. And on my servers that run many users' desktops, I can see some pretty impressive memory savings from using Epiphany and Evolution, as opposed to FF and Thunderbird. (Yes, I was surprised at how much more efficient Evo is than Thunderbird, but it's true.)
The return of Iceweasel Posted Oct 5, 2006 8:49 UTC (Thu) by jdobbs (guest, #40930) [Link] It's said that the Mozilla Corporation is making millions from Google, for something that Firefox does.
If Debian end up maintaining a fork of Firefox (i.e. a fork that removes trademarks, and applies security-fixes to unsupported browser versions) why doesn't Debian apply for some of those millions from Google? If Google doesn't want to pay Debian, then the Debian fork could disable the 'thing that Firefox does that is worth millions to Google'.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 27, 2006 10:26 UTC (Wed) by chuliomartinez (guest, #37450) [Link] It is sad to see that there are people in charge of one of the flag ships of free/open source, that have such a disrespect for free/open source. I mean common, tomorrow we are not allowed to call our system linux, because it contains patches from distros... And as far as I know Linux is a trademark.
Other free browsers Posted Sep 27, 2006 19:29 UTC (Wed) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] Although I occasionally start Konqueor (and Opera) I mostly use Firefox, but I have to say that sometimes it can really suck. Perhaps these events are the chance for better technology to catch up a little in terms of user share.
It is simply not acceptable for one browser window to lock up or slow down all other browser windows. It happens all the time with Firefox - when opening PDFs, Java plugins, AJAX apps, etc. When a Java applet locks up (it happens, for example, when opening synchronous sockets in the applet) it is impossible to close the browser window without killing the browser and thus closing _all_ windows.
A more subtle manifestation of the same problem is that opening a second tab in the background makes the current tab visibly sluggish while the other one is loading.
When I have GoogleMail and Writely open in the background, all my browsing slows down noticeably.
As far as I know this is a fundamental design problem in Firefox - everything, even separate browser windows, runs in the same thread using cooperative multitasking. This may have been acceptable initially, but not any more. Unfortunately I think the effort needed to redesign it would be enormous, so it isn't likely to happen.
Does anybody has some insights about the design of Konqueror ? How does it deal with the same issues ?
Other free browsers Posted Oct 5, 2006 10:41 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] > [In Firefox] everything, even separate browser windows,> runs in the same thread using cooperative multitasking.
> Does anybody has some insights about the design of
Konqueror can be configured (preferences, performance) to share memory
Another configure option available (same place) for Konqueror is
Duncan
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 28, 2006 8:28 UTC (Thu) by Jel (guest, #22988) [Link] No problem. It seems that Firefox, by this action, is no longer Free Software (was it ever?).The "firefox" name was hijacked from real free software, and it wasn't the first name change. I'm not even sure they're legally entitled to the name. Maybe they own "mozilla firefox", but "firefox"? Doubt it, with prior art and all. So, Debian/Ubuntu should simply go back to calling it the last reasonable name that was used, or indeed, use IceWeasel, to reflect and warn people about the non-free status of the project. A simple FAQ entry or dummy package explaining the issue could be used to let people install it under the name firefox anyway. Phoenix is probably already in used for other projects too.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 29, 2006 9:10 UTC (Fri) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474) [Link] Well with the minimum of effort you could have actually checked whether or not they own the word "Firefox", and in fact they do:
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entr...
Rich.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 29, 2006 9:29 UTC (Fri) by Jel (guest, #22988) [Link] Well, honestly, I wasn't that interested, and I'm not familiar with theUSPTO's website, being a citizen of a different country.
It's interesting. I didn't realise that trademarks apply to such a small
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 29, 2006 13:45 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] Trademarks may apply to a company, a particular product, a particular service, etc. I suspect there are more product trademarks than company name trademarks.
The Firefox trademark Posted Sep 29, 2006 18:15 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] There are two kinds of "apply to." The trademark registration tells what Mozilla is using the trademark for. But the trademark gives Mozilla the right to exclude others from using the trademark for lots of similar things too.I don't know where the line gets drawn, but based on how broadly the rights have been granted in a few famous trademark cases, I would think someone with trademark rights on a Firefox database manager could stop someone from distributing a Firefox web browser.
Where's the proof? Posted Oct 2, 2006 16:14 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] The "firefox" name was hijacked from real free softwareI believe it's a false accusation. Where's the proof? Where's the other "firefox"? If it's free software, as you stated, can I get the source?
Where's the proof? Posted Oct 2, 2006 16:34 UTC (Mon) by Jel (guest, #22988) [Link] Never mind; I was thinking of the firebird database. They DID try tohijack that name, but I forgot that they'd eventually given up and so firefox is the newer name.
Where's the proof? Posted Oct 17, 2006 4:01 UTC (Tue) by jwalden (guest, #41159) [Link]
Actually, if you recall Firebird was the followup to Phoenix, and as names go it was a fairly logical choice with logical consistency with the old name. Their mistake was in thinking that the separate software fields were separate enough to be safe. If you'll also recall they changed the name from Firebird to Firefox when it became clear that doing so was The Right Thing To Do. (Also keep in mind that this was over two years ago; naysayers should get a grip here.) I know that all the "cool" kids in this thread and elsewhere seem to think it's okay to bash Firefox for everything they've ever done now, but reasonable people have never ascribed every Firefox decision to malicious intent and will not start doing so now.
Sad... Posted Sep 28, 2006 11:47 UTC (Thu) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link] It is sad to see that Mozilla is starting to forget its roots :(
I have been worried about Firefox for quite a while though. It seems
These days I'm mostly using Konqueror, it works great for more or less all
Sad... Posted Oct 5, 2006 11:15 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] >There are a few [sites where Konqueror doesn't work> (my bank is one) so I use Firefox in those cases.
FWIW tho it may not help you, that's one reason I've been impressed with
The minor niggles are mostly as I mentioned due to my choice of light text
A bonus is that BofA was one of the companies (along with AutoZone, which
Duncan
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 28, 2006 13:00 UTC (Thu) by aigarius (subscriber, #7329) [Link] FreeFox!
(work around "There appears to be no text here!" bug with short LWN comments)
The return of Iceweasel Posted Sep 29, 2006 14:09 UTC (Fri) by ortalo (subscriber, #4654) [Link] Nice thing. (Yes, I mean it.)Now that many Windows users are also adopting Firefox, it was getting annoying to use the same software as them... Linux (or *BSD) users should get ahead of their time: so let's use something newer (and better): let's change the name at least!
Rodophe
The death of the community edition? Posted Oct 2, 2006 0:23 UTC (Mon) by anonymous21 (guest, #30106) [Link] Mozilla had drafted a policy whereby you could rename "Mozilla Firefox" to things like "Firefox Community Edition, Debian." Community editions were barred from using the copywritten artwork (as Debian has chosen to do). Dozens of community editions are in different Linux and BSD distros. Many "optimized" or customized builds for Windows and other operating systems were built under this same policy. Is Mozilla now going to go to each of these individually, as they've done with Debian, and tell them that this is no longer an aspect of their trademark policy? Why don't they come out and say exactly what their current policy is & which policies are no longer active? Then, perhaps, all of those other distributions which aren't allowed to call their slightly modified browser "Mozilla Firefox" could get behind a common new name for it.
The death of the community edition? Posted Oct 11, 2006 7:41 UTC (Wed) by slef (subscriber, #14720) [Link] I used to think that Debian's packaging could conform to the Community Edition policy, but there was some reason why it can't. IIRC Debian is not regarded by MoFo/MozCorp as a "different operating system" so no patches are allowed. (I think the reason is given in the 2005 debian-legal discussion with gerv.)
Trademarks and active enforcement Posted Oct 4, 2006 0:42 UTC (Wed) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246) [Link] Trademarks need to be actively enforced to retain their protection under US Trademark law. If they're not actively enforced, they become generic terms.
Firefox is a well-defined product with a rather specific scope and a company you can point at (The Mozilla Foundation) that actively tries to brand products and promote them. They consider this trademark highly valuable. If they do not go out to bat, they risk dilution of the trademark. IIRC, the NPL and MPL permit commercial forks of the Mozilla Firefox codebase. As a result, the Mozilla Foundation has an economic interest in protecting their trademarks from dilution.
Linus, in contrast, was never big on Linux as a trademark until someone else tried to trademark it in an effort to hijack the buzz around the name. After a bit of wrangling, Linux became a registered trademark assigned to Linus Torvalds. No one associated with Linux is too concerned about dilution, though. They're mainly concerned with being hijacked.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Oct 11, 2006 5:57 UTC (Wed) by lacostej (guest, #2760) [Link] There was a very interesting analysis on the subject by Matthew Garret.
http://mjg59.livejournal.com/68112.html
"We shouldn't be prizing cross-platform consistency over integration and innovation, and we certainly shouldn't be doing our utmost to make it difficult for people to experiment with code."
Almost worth an LWN article in itself.
Erosion of free licenses through trademarks Posted Oct 29, 2006 3:08 UTC (Sun) by Triona (guest, #41372) [Link] Unfortunately, this is just the start of a very disturbing trend, and it sets a bad example for how the freedoms afforded by free software and open source licensing can be undermined by trademark issues.
Forking is always undesirable, however, the integrity of the free software model, and the assurance of continuity provided by free software licenses are dependent on the ability to fork should it become necessary.
The use of trademarks in the manner being used, essentially as a means of controlling how software is used, significantly weakens the viability of forking as an option to maintain freedom.
While I think FSF was premature in creating a fork, it may ultimately be necessary, and unfortunately, for it to be successful is going to be a very messy process.
Debian's stance may sound idealogical, but as far as I am aware they are legally bound by the charter of their organization to uphold the DFSG - it would be just as illegal to disregard these guidelines as it would to disregard Mozilla's trademark rights.
That leaves the ball in the Mozilla Foundation's court. To stop this from turning into a battle in which everyone loses, they must stop using their trademarks as a means of undermining the licensing of their applications, and provide the guarantee that they will not do so again in the future.
The return of Iceweasel Posted Aug 31, 2007 2:52 UTC (Fri) by angrykeyboarder (guest, #47090) [Link] "...Also you have to take into account that firefox.org doesn't care about Linux." Firefox.org?
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