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An interview with a Mozilla evangelistAn interview with a Mozilla evangelistPosted Nov 25, 2007 16:22 UTC (Sun) by gerv (subscriber, #3376)In reply to: An interview with a Mozilla evangelist by k8to Parent article: An interview with a Mozilla evangelist
What makes this different from all the other open source projects which don't have control freakery around their branding? I don't see all these demons manifesting around apache, Linux, etc that the Mozilla foundation appears to be worried about. Note the Apache also has a strict trademark policy - in some ways, stricter than ours: "'Apache', 'Apache Software Foundation', the multicoloured feather, and the various Apache project names and logos are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation, and are usable by others only with express permission from the ASF." But to answer your question, there are three main things which make Firefox different:
These three things combine to make a trojaned Firefox distribution a tempting target for fraudsters. If your mate tells you "Download this Firefox thing, it r0xors!", you'll put "Firefox" into Google and click on the first link you see, accepting any popups you get. So misuse of the trademark would be a very bad thing indeed. But hey, this position is not a new one. We've outlined why we think trademark control is important several times. If you want to convince us otherwise, you need to explain why either a) these things are actually not a problem (good luck with that) or b) what other mechanisms we could use prevent them.
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An interview with a Mozilla evangelist Posted Nov 25, 2007 16:45 UTC (Sun) by slef (subscriber, #14720) [Link] Yes, this is what I meant in my earlier comment (I hadn't read this first - my mistake) - many Firefox users aren't geeks and many are on Windows, therefore they're stupid and wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Mozilla's Firefox and E Vil Attacker's Firefox... come on! If you care about being No.1 on Google, try asking for it as part of the payment for making Google the default search. Do you really think that people who want to trojan Firefox are going to give a toss about breaking trademark laws in addition to computer misuse ones? Of course attackers don't care about that already. The Firefox trademark has little to do with fraud prevention and lots to do with trying to control friendly distributors for the greater benefit of the Mozilla Corporation. Unfortunately, this means that Firefox itself is a trojan: trojan free software. Articles often describe it as free software, when most downloads aren't...
An interview with a Mozilla evangelist Posted Nov 25, 2007 17:20 UTC (Sun) by gerv (subscriber, #3376) [Link] therefore they're stupid and wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Mozilla's Firefox and E Vil Attacker's Firefox... come on! E Vil Attacker's Firefox is not normally so clearly labelled :-) Without trademark control, it could look and appear to work exactly like the real thing, the web page could look exactly like our download page, they could buy Google ads to promote it and people would be fooled. If you care about being No.1 on Google, try asking for it as part of the payment for making Google the default search. And that wouldn't cause a different section of the online community to throw fits? Anyway, Google doesn't do pay-for-placement in the standard results, as far as I know. We do have an agreement with them regarding ads which use our trademarks without permission - but we can only have that because they are our trademarks. If they weren't trademarked, Google would have no legal grounds to refuse the ad. The Firefox trademark has little to do with fraud prevention and lots to do with trying to control friendly distributors for the greater benefit of the Mozilla Corporation. Yeah, that's right. The Mozilla Corporation squeezes those friendly distributors for millions of dollars a year based on the force exerted by those trademarks. No, wait, hang on...
An interview with a Mozilla evangelist Posted Nov 26, 2007 10:30 UTC (Mon) by slef (subscriber, #14720) [Link]
And with trademark control, it could do exactly the same things, because E Vil Attacker doesn't give two hoots about any law: trademarks, fraud, computer misuse, it's all vanilla to E. The people who are hindered by Mozilla's trademark are those who respect the law and Mozilla's requests. E Vil Attacker is not one of those and the time Moz Corp wastes on harrassing friendly distributors is time it should be spending stopping E.
It's not a big leap for Google to do a type of pay-for-place. Look at the top of most results pages: "Sponsored Links". Also, I'm sure you could still use your trademark to block Google ads. I didn't suggest dropping the trademark: I suggested open-sourcing the brand, or at least providing 100% free software builds by default. "Yeah, that's right. The Mozilla Corporation squeezes those friendly distributors for millions of dollars a year based on the force exerted by those trademarks. No, wait, hang on..." No, it doesn't seem to be doing it for millions of dollars a year, unless someone is paying that for including their product in the approved set of build options. That might be more understandable. I've no idea what Mozilla Corporation gains from harassing friendly distributors with its current trademark+copyright double-whammy, except domination of some distributors, at least two forks so far, a bad reputation and ridicule at some hacker events.
An interview with a Mozilla evangelist Posted Nov 26, 2007 15:18 UTC (Mon) by gerv (subscriber, #3376) [Link] I didn't suggest dropping the trademark: I suggested open-sourcing the brand An unfortunate fact of trademark law is that you must actively maintain control of the use of your trademark and the quality of goods issued under it, otherwise you lose the trademark. Thus, there is no such thing as "open-sourcing the brand" while not "dropping the trademark". I've no idea what Mozilla Corporation gains from harassing friendly distributors with its current trademark+copyright double-whammy So we've told you why we're doing it; you refuse to accept our reasons, but don't have any other ones (even sinister ones) to suggest?
An interview with a Mozilla evangelist Posted Nov 26, 2007 15:51 UTC (Mon) by slef (subscriber, #14720) [Link] Damn straight I refuse to accept your reasons stated here: how does requiring GNU/Linux distributors to ship a less stable, less tested, platform-buggy version until someone at MozCorp OKs backported/up-ported fixes protect Windows users against fraud-trojans? Also, as noted, E Vil Attacker is still free to operate - if anything, more so, as MozCorp wastes its time on controlling friendly distributors instead of policing Attacker's abuse.
Control of the name is fine (integrity of author's source and all that), but MozCorp requirements seemed to go far beyond that, with unhelpful comments such as "Other vendors (i.e. even Red Hat Enterprise Linux) have chosen to upgrade" when asked whether debian's stable release policy of backporting fixes would be allowed under the trademark (debian bug 354622). Two current brand open-sourcings are underway: Java and debian. I guess we'll soon see whether you can have both trademark and open-source brand. Another aspect is that you could have your trademark without restrictive copyright terms over the graphics files.
An interview with a Mozilla evangelist Posted Nov 26, 2007 19:06 UTC (Mon) by gerv (subscriber, #3376) [Link] Two current brand open-sourcings are underway: Java and debian. I guess we'll soon see whether you can have both trademark and open-source brand. Actually, I think you'll find that the Java trademark and brand are very much _not_ being open-sourced. Hence why IcedTea is so called, for example. "The requirements for the use of the "Java" trademark and name have not changed with the open sourcing of the JDK and Java ME source code." says Sun's FAQ. Another aspect is that you could have your trademark without restrictive copyright terms over the graphics files. I do agree with that. And I think that if this problem is ever solved, that's one of the steps needed.
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