Iceweasel == madness and fundamentalism? [LWN.net]

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is a mainstream technology reporter who has often shown a reasonably high level of clue regarding the free software community. A recent article, titled Open Source Madness!, shows where that clue ends, however. More to the point, it shows an area where the free software community is having a hard time making itself understood.

The article in question takes issue with the Debian project's plan to drop Firefox from etch (see this LWN article from September for more information), and with the existence of Gnuzilla and Iceweasel, which are versions of the Mozilla suite and Firefox browser which are intended to be truly freely redistributable. Mr. Vaughan-Nichols presents the issue as being only about logos, calls the Debian developers "fundamentalists," and states:

By winning this "battle," the pedantic Debian developers have helped the proprietary forces of Microsoft and friends far more then the cause of Open Source.

So why is it that the Debian developers have done this terrible thing? Maybe it is time to look at the reasoning behind this move.

The logo issue is real. It is provided under terms which are not compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and, as a result, cannot be shipped with the core Debian release. For some time, Debian was able to ship a version of Firefox without the logo, but Mozilla Corporation has called an end to that. As a result, Debian is in the position of being asked to ship something it sees as non-free.

The logo issue might be enough to push Firefox out of a distribution like Debian, but there are more serious issues as well. The Mozilla trademark policy only allows a distributor to ship "Firefox" if it is an unmodified copy of what the Mozilla people have released. Some relatively trivial changes are allowed if the distributor calls the result the "Firefox Community Edition"; anything beyond that cannot use the name "Firefox" at all. The only exception is if explicit permission has been obtained from the Mozilla Corporation prior to distribution.

Distributors often do want to make changes to Firefox - just like they change many other programs they ship. At a minimum, they often want to apply their own security fixes, since Mozilla's approach to security patches tends to be rather distributor-hostile. Having Mozilla review every patch as required will slow the process down, even if there are no disagreements about specific changes. This policy makes it hard to provide quick security updates to Firefox; this matters, especially, when a distributor is trying to maintain a version of the browser that Mozilla Corp. has long since abandoned.

Perhaps most important, however, is this: even if a distributor gets permission to ship a specific modified version of Firefox, there is nothing which automatically gives anybody else that permission. Using one distribution as a base for another is a time-honored practice in the Linux community; there are, in fact, very few distributions out there which were truly started from scratch. But what is a distribution based on (say) Debian to do with a modified version of Firefox? The creator of the derived distribution has no permission from Mozilla Corporation to distribute that modified version - even if no further changes are made. The presence of this modified package creates a trap which any second-stage distributor must find and defuse; it makes the distribution less redistributable, less free.

In the end, however, Mozilla's code is free software; all that is needed to avoid all of this trouble is to change its name. That is just what Debian is doing - and other distributors may yet follow suit.

Mr. Vaughan-Nichols fears that this change will confuse users and send them screaming back to the comfort and stability of Windows. It would seem that the "Firefox" trademark has become so important that we must use it, or the dream of World Domination on the desktop will come to an untimely and ignominious end. "Freedom," says the article, "trumps common sense."

The problems is...freedom is what this is all about. There would appear to be an increasing number of people who are calling for the community to "bend a little" on freedom in the name of winning the desktop battle. It may (or may not) be true that Linux could advance more quickly on the desktop if it were to become more like Windows. But what would be the point? If the choice is forced upon us, it would seem better to dispense with an overly-controlled name and keep our desktop free, supportable, and redistributable.

(Log in to post comments)

apt-cache search iceweasel

Posted Oct 12, 2006 6:07 UTC (Thu) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link]

Absolutely. What irritates me about this "compromise, just compromise"
idea that comes up time and time again is that the person proposing it
always seems to consider only a very short term and immediate benefit, and
perhaps a very minimal amount of short term harm.

This is why in the process of wavering for a couple of years between
considering myself more aligned with "open source" or "free software" I've
finally steered strongly to the latter. I think these ethical questions
are very important and that rejecting them in the short term will lead to
long term pain.

apt-cache search iceweasel

Posted Oct 12, 2006 7:20 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

here here.

Seriously look at this. The internet in combination with computer represents a turning point in human history. This stuff is seriously the most important thing to ever happen to humanity since the gutenburg press was invented.

Give me a book and a printing press I can probably spend a week or two copying it and bang out a hundred books in a relatively short period. After that I'd probably run out of money or time and have to go do something else.

Give me a large text file, or a directory of PDF files that contain more information then most metropolitian libraries and I can send that to _all_parts_of_the_world_ at nearly the speed of light and and a cost of pennies. From that one copy we can take it and create a near infinate number of perfect copies and give one to every man, woman, and child on the planet earth who has access to a computer terminal.

Not only information, but tools to proccess that information. Items for entertainment. Any sort of information that can be recorded, transcribed, or dictated can be instantly any were in the world at any time for mear pennies worth of bandwidth.

And items for creation of new ideas and creating new information from old. The same power that is in the biggest super computer is in your home PC (litterially with Linux) the only difference is a mater of scale.

I've talked online in irc to people simultaniously from all parts of the world from all continents of the world (except maybe Antartica) in real time.

Just a few decades ago it would of taken months just to get one small amount of information to these people by letter. Just a few years ago it would taken many dollars to do it and the quality would be shabby and the likelihood of success would of been poor and we would of never know to meat or communicate for any reason what-so-ever. Now it's just a way to pass the time!

And in addition to providing instant and near infinate possiblities for completely democratic style of communication between all peoples of the world it brings in the unpresented ability to manipulate and change information and distribute misinformation.

Literally it's now possible for a government to invent whole parts of history in a convincing way at very low cost and present this to people as reality. You can't even trust photographs or videos at face value. All information is open for manipulation.

Now compared to this something like having open drivers or trademark disputes are very petty, but it's just a difference of scale. The ethics are very similar.

It's all boils down to who are you going to give control of your access, your gateway to all this information on the internet. Some government? Some large corporation? Personally I feel safer trusting a large community of distributed near-anonymous hackers.

Stuff like this firefox stuff is just accidental bump. A mistake, a loss of judgement based around a fairly spooky and unfirm legal system. A technicality that will be mostly forgotten a few months from now. It's no big thing realy.

The worst thing that is going to happen is a momentary confusion for a new Linux user when they ask:
"What is this IceWeasel thing?"
and some body replies:
"Oh, that's just the Linux version of Firefox".

:-p

The browser indentification string raises its ugly head

Posted Oct 12, 2006 8:39 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

The worst thing that is going to happen is a momentary confusion for a new Linux user when they ask: "What is this IceWeasel thing?" and some body replies: "Oh, that's just the Linux version of Firefox".

Depends on what it has on its browser identification string. The sad fact is that the emergence of "alternative" browser (Firefox) has not had any enlightening effect on the mind-set of web designers. With SeaMonkey I have come across some (fortunately rare) sites that say the browser is unsupported and recommend I use Internet Explorer or Firefox, even though Seamonkey has exactly all the same capabilities as Firefox, as far as web sites are concerned. But these idiots keep checking what the browser string says.

The browser indentification string raises its ugly head

Posted Oct 12, 2006 9:42 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

*shrug*

I use Epiphany so I run into that time to time also. (I like how it integrates better into Gnome. Firefox always seems so 'foreign' when I use it and it doesn't work as well with other programs)

Most new users coming from Windows will probably head out to Firefox's website and install that anyways. I try to help people in forums time to time and that's a not uncommon question on how to install firefox when they already have it by default. Like they figure they want a newer version off the website directly or something like that. Haven't figured how the whole package management stuff.

It's not a uncommon problem.

Now with 'Iceweasel' new users can happily go and install the official firefox version without any namespace or directory conflicts or whatnot. It'll make a decent number of people feel comfortable. Then when they fubar it all up with a dozen extensions and whatnot then Iceweasel will be there waiting for them.

So it goes both ways.

Ironicly I ran into just such a site a few minutes ago. They were nice about it, though. They presented a page with links to 'upgrades' for Netscape, IE, Firefox, and actually a couple other browsers. But they still let me click through into the site.

The browser indentification string raises its ugly head

Posted Oct 12, 2006 13:57 UTC (Thu) by samj (subscriber, #7135) [Link]

I'd have thought it more sensible to refer to the rendering engine itself (ie Gecko), which would jack the 'Firefox vs IE' stats up to be a more realistic reflection of reality.

The browser indentification string raises its ugly head

Posted Oct 12, 2006 22:56 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Yes, the growth of Firefox was never something that would get people to stop building web sites for a certain browser. It just makes them build web sites for two certain browsers.

But I don't think the browser identification string is the problem. Opera lets the user choose the browser identification string dynamically, with a default of IE 6. Years ago, that got me into lots of web sites that didn't want to work with me. But web sites today always know -- they tell me to "upgrade" to IE or Firefox. I suspect they're doing the smart thing and testing for the existence of a feature instead of the ID string. The web site usually lets me in anyway, but true to its word, the web site is often unusable one way or another, and I have to go to a Windows/IE system to get the job done.

So I don't think "iceweasel" in a browser identification string is going to be an issue.