Firefox 3 EULA raises a ruckus

By Jake Edge
September 17, 2008

End User License Agreements—or EULAs—are a mainstay of the proprietary software world that tend to rub free software advocates the wrong way. When a EULA is presented in a click-through window as part of the initial execution of a program, it can really raise some ire as Mozilla is finding out. Its plan to present a click-through license for Firefox 3 on Linux has not met with widespread approval; quite the reverse in fact.

The issue has been kicking around since at least last May, when Fedora folks noticed that Firefox 3 builds moved the EULA popup window from the installer—which Linux folks rarely see—to the first time Firefox is run. More recently the issue erupted in the Ubuntu community when a user filed a bug that reads, in part:

STARTING UP A CERTAIN 3.0.2 VERSION OF FIREFOX BROWSER MAKES AVAILABLE TO YOU A VERY CAPITAL END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT. THIS AGREEMENT IS OBNOXIOUS and largely irrelevant to Ubuntu users.

The predictable outcry followed, mostly because people who are used to free software have a visceral reaction to seeing a click-through EULA. For that reason alone it is a poor choice by Mozilla, at least on Linux. Windows users, who make up a substantial portion of the Firefox userbase, are generally unfazed by EULAs as they are confronted by them regularly—generally blithely clicking through with little or no hesitation.

There are a number of objections to the Mozilla EULA, starting with the current text of the license. Mozilla Corporation chairperson Mitchell Baker agreed with the critics of the license text, saying "the most important thing here is to acknowledge that yes, the content of the license agreement is wrong." New license text is now available in draft form, but it still doesn't address an underlying issue: do we need to consult a lawyer when we install or run free software?

One of the guiding principles of free software is that it doesn't limit what "end users" can do with the software, it only limits those who wish to distribute it. When a page or two of legalese—undoubtedly toned down from what the lawyers would really like—is presented to a new user, what exactly are they supposed to do with it? Users have rights under free software licenses, and it is important that they can find out about them, but it is fairly rare for a program, or even a distribution, to require a user to click through a copy of the license.

Mozilla's position is that they need to protect their trademarks as well as inform users about the web services used to try to detect phishing and malware sites. In answer to those who think a click-through EULA is unnecessary—often using Linux distributions as a counterexample—Baker points out:

It's hard to tell what's "necessary." It's an unsettled area and may vary across different locales. We've traditionally been more conservative on this point than many Linux distros.

So far, Mozilla does not seem willing to budge from its requirement to show the EULA as a click-through agreement. Fedora was able to get a waiver of sorts for Fedora 9 which allowed shipping Firefox 3 without the EULA while the projects worked out language they both could live with. In Fedora 9, Firefox opens to a page that describes the web services when it is run for the first time. Some kind of compromise along these lines for Linux distributions would seem to satisfy most of the concerns for both sides, but other than for Fedora 9, that solution has not been blessed by Mozilla.

Fedora Engineering Manager Tom "spot" Callaway has an excellent overview of the history as well as a nice analysis of the EULA. He notes that almost of all of the terms in the EULA are either covered by applicable laws or by the Mozilla Public License (MPL). None of that really matters though as distributions really only have two choices as outlined by Ubuntu leader Mark Shuttleworth:

Mozilla Corp asked that this be added in order for us to continue to call the browser Firefox. Since Firefox is their trademark, which we intend to respect, we have the choice of working with Mozilla to meet their requirements, or switching to an unbranded browser.

That is the risk that Mozilla takes; if it is too heavy-handed in what it requires to call a browser "Firefox", distributions will take the code without the trademarks and call it "Iceweasel" as Debian has or "abrowser" which is the Ubuntu equivalent. The Iceweasel "fork" was made because Mozilla objected to Debian backporting security fixes into older browsers without its consent, while abrowser has come about because of the EULA issue. Given that Linux users were some of the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of Firefox, it is truly unfortunate that many may have to run it under other names.

There is an issue that may be getting lost in the shuffle here as well. Fedora board member Jef Spaleta has expressed concerns about how to notify users about web services:

"We" as in everybody doing open source software has absolutely no fraking idea as to how to appropriately notify users about the services agreements associated with on-by-default web services. "We" collectively aren't giving it a lot of thought. "We" have this amorphous concept about the online desktop experience which is going to deeply integrate web services and enhance the day-to-day desktop user experience. But that enhancement comes at a cost..and that cost is the complication associated with "terms of service" for a vast array of different web service vendors.

Web services clearly bring along a number of additional concerns. There are privacy issues to consider. In many places, particularly Europe, there are fairly stringent requirements regarding data collection and retention that are required to be communicated to users. How that will be done for free software that use these services is an open question. As Spaleta points out, Mozilla may be the only free software organization that is even looking at the problem.

The EULA mess is a situation that certainly could have been handled better by Mozilla. One hopes that some kind of compromise can be worked out so that users aren't poked in the eye with legal documents—that aren't even valid in many jurisdictions—and distributions don't feel like they need to fork to preserve their freedoms. Mozilla definitely has some legitimate interests to protect, but it needs to find a saner way to do that.

There is hope that is happening as Baker has described in an update on her blog:

We've come to understand that anything EULA-like is disturbing, even if the content is FLOSS based. So we're eliminating that. We still feel that something about the web services integrated into the browser is needed; these services can be turned off and not interrupt the flow of using the browser. We also want to tell people about the FLOSS license — as a notice, not as as EULA or use restriction. Again, this won't block the flow or provide the unwelcoming feeling that one comment to my previous post described so eloquently.

More details are imminent, but it looks like this could all resolve amicably.

Firefox 3 EULA raises a ruckus

Posted Sep 18, 2008 0:52 UTC (Thu) by lordsutch (guest, #53) [Link]

The Iceweasel "fork" was made because Mozilla objected to Debian backporting security fixes into older browsers without its consent...

Minor correction: there were two Iceweasel forks. The first came about as you described (but was resolved before Debian ever shipped an "Iceweasel"; I'm not sure one was ever even built, although around the same time the FSF created "GNU IceWeasel" which made further changes to upstream to "protect" users from using Mozilla's web services for addons and themes which offer non-free options); the second came about when Mozilla began to use a non-free copyright license for its logos, Debian stripped those logos, and Mozilla insisted on Debian renaming the browser if it did not include the non-free logos (which, of course, Debian couldn't do without altering the DFSG); the "Iceweasel" name proposed in the first fork stuck.

Ubuntu, on the other hand, decided to continue to ship non-free logos to retain the Firefox branding. One wonders when this is resolved (no doubt with Ubuntu caving again) what future compromises Ubuntu will make to keep calling the browser Firefox.

Ignoring the elephant in the room.....

Posted Sep 18, 2008 1:57 UTC (Thu) by jmorris42 (guest, #2203) [Link] (12 responses)

This EULA thing was just a symptom of an older bigger problem: Firefox isn't Free Software.

Firefox is the only package in Fedora that can't be rebuilt and redistributed. It is because Moz Corp insists on requiring pre-approval before any entity can distribute a browser called Firefox that they could force the EULA issue in the first place. Were FF Free most distributers would have instantly excised the EULA as a bug. But they can't apply any patch that Moz Corp hasn't blessed.

Third parties can't so much as issue an rpmbuild --rebuild firefox*.src.rpm command until they have jumped through Moz Corp's legal hoops. (Ok, you can so long as you don't redistribute the result, so much for Free Software though.)

It is time everyone faced the reality, rename to IceWeasel and get on with life, It really isn't a big deal for us and if Moz Corp decides it cares about the couple % of their userbase running Free Software it is their problem to resolve.

Ignoring the elephant in the room.....

Posted Sep 18, 2008 2:19 UTC (Thu) by joedrew (guest, #828) [Link] (1 responses)

Fedora itself isn't Free Software. You can't change it and call it Fedora.

Similar restrictions exist on the Debian Logos and the Debian trademark itself.

Ignoring the elephant in the room.....

Posted Sep 18, 2008 2:35 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Trademark requirements in general do not make a distribution non-free. It is rather silly to claim that. The FSF and OSI guidelines make this very clear and it is explicitly mentioned within many free software licenses such as the GPL that you can mandate a name change when software is modified.

Ignoring the elephant in the room.....

Posted Sep 18, 2008 2:30 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (9 responses)

"Firefox is the only package in Fedora that can't be rebuilt and redistributed"

Firefox can very well be distributed as it is. If you are modifying it by applying unapproved patches, you need to change the branding for it. You would have to change the branding for the distribution on the whole as well. Both Firefox and Fedora provide easy methods to do this rebranding. This is generally considered ok.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-system-distribution-gu...

Firefox isn't the only upstream project that has such trademark requirements however they are a major one pushing the boundaries and Fedora as a project has been working with them to help them understand why a EULA is unnecessary in this instance. There is a general friction between why trademarks exist, trademark guidelines and enforcement of it in U.S and relaxed nature of copyright licensing in free and open source projects. The current Firefox debate is just one example of this overall debate. Fedora is going to publish a new set of guidelines soon for its own trademarks that might be of relevance to this discussion.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User_talk:Pfrields/NewTrad...

Ignoring the elephant in the room.....

Posted Sep 18, 2008 3:50 UTC (Thu) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (3 responses)

It's not just patches. One can't change, for example, "firefox-redhat-default-prefs.js" without running afoul of the license.

And let's say you want to ship without the commercial services installed in the top right search bar -- technically a "patch", but, seriously -- I've got to include the eBay search engine in order to have Firefox in a mini-distro? That's ridiculous.

I think "abrowser" is probably the way to go.

Ignoring the elephant in the room.....

Posted Sep 18, 2008 7:50 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Mozilla has a policy around minor modifications.

http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/community-ed...

Note that, a trademark license is irrelevant to private modifications, not distributed to a third party.

Ignoring the elephant in the room.....

Posted Sep 18, 2008 11:30 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

> It's not just patches. One can't change, for example, "firefox-redhat-default-prefs.js" without running afoul of the license.

So I assume this is a discussion about trademark licensing, right? I am not sure what you mean by that, but if you are saying that you can't use that because it has the 'firefox' or 'redhat' trademark, then your wrong.

I mean Firefox, the code itself, is Free software. The trademarks are 'non-free'. If that is a name of a file then _yes_ you can change it, rename it, edit it without renaming it, and redistribute it. It's covered by copyright law, not trademark law.

Trademarks are not like copyrights. Similar to how copyrights are not like patents.

If the term is used in a functional way, like the name of a expected file, then it's non-trademark-able. Trademark is branding only, anything functional is not covered.

For example Debian can't brand Iceweasel as 'firefox' and it has to remove the icons and other things that could identify 'iceweasel' as 'firefox'. fBut it can still use the same set of commands to run it.

When you type 'firefox' into the command line it still launches 'iceweasel'. Go ahead and try it. :)

Another example is if 'firefox' is used in the variable names in the source code, then that is fine to keep using that variable name. It's not something that covered under trademarks.

Ignoring the elephant in the room.....

Posted Sep 18, 2008 12:11 UTC (Thu) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

No, "mine" not wrong. It has nothing to do with the filename, except that the filename indicates that Red Hat has special permissions. Without those, you can't make any changes to the default configuration without needing to change the graphics in the package and designate it as a "community edition". This is less strict than it used to be, but still silly.

Ignoring the elephant in the room.....

Posted Sep 18, 2008 12:13 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (4 responses)

QMail was also allowed to be redistributed and built as is. Changes required a name change. Only difference is, QMail had this restriction in the software license and not in the trademark license.

Yet QMail was distributed as non-free in most distributions, or not at all. Firefox is distributed in the main free software archive. Is this really right?

I fail to see why Iceweasel is not the solution to this. The Firefox trademark can't possibly so important in the Linux world that we have to put up with this ruckus over and over again.

qmail

Posted Sep 18, 2008 12:41 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (2 responses)

The qmail license did not allow the distribution of modified versions at all; the best you could do was to distribute a patch to be applied by the end user.

qmail

Posted Sep 19, 2008 13:02 UTC (Fri) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (1 responses)

Isn't that situation the same with the official Firefox build? You're not allowed to distribute modified versions of that either.

My example was wrong however, and you are right. I was thinking of netqmail but that was distributed as a patch set.

qmail

Posted Sep 19, 2008 15:24 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

There is still a difference between copyright and trademark requirements. You can clearly distribute modified versions of Firefox as source code is licensed under MPL. If you make major changes and distribute the end result, you cannot call it Firefox and Firefox makes it easy to do the rebranding. The debate is really about how far should they enforce it and whether it is going to help them preserve the brand. Being too strict will result in forks. Being too lenient will make them lose their trademarks. They have to find a good balance.

Ignoring the elephant in the room.....

Posted Sep 18, 2008 15:09 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]

The Qmail restriction was that it had to be redistributed exactly as you got it, whether pristine source or a binary you built from that pristine source. Much of the commonly used functionality cam from patches, leading to ugly "netqmail" tarballs which included a subset of a confusing and conflicting master set of patches and the code to apply them. You were not allowed to distribute a binary built from patched source.

This restriction has since been removed. Qmail was relicensed (?) as public domain software a year or so ago.

I probably have some minor details wrong, but qmail was never free source software in any traditional meaning of the term.

Firefox 3 EULA raises a ruckus

Posted Sep 18, 2008 1:57 UTC (Thu) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link]

>BROWSER MAKES AVAILABLE TO YOU A VERY CAPITAL END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

You forgot the lead-in "In Soviet Russia,". (scnr)

distribution-specific agreements considered harmful

Posted Sep 18, 2008 3:10 UTC (Thu) by joey (guest, #328) [Link] (2 responses)

One of the more distressing things about this is that we're seeing multiple distributions go to Mozilla and negotiate their own legal agreements about how they can use firefox in their distribution. Fedora seems to have temporarily reached a fairly nice compromise with them. I assume, due to all the publicity, that Ubuntu will reach some agreement of their own.

I feel that these agreements are all harmful to the community at large, and distributions that choose to make such an agreement, that is specific to their own distribution, are participating in harming the community. They're harming the community by allowing Mozilla to contine to get away with murder. They're harming the community by making it impossible for other, smaller distributions to offer a similarly usable desktop without access to the same levels of lawyers and clout.

I don't have much hope that all distributions will stop doing this, because the entire history of linux distributions is littered with ones that took any approach they could get away with to get ahead, and the community be damned. But it's sad to see (at least?) two of the top four embracing these agreements for use of an ephemeral brand name.

(Anyone care for a bet that linux's main browser will not be called "firefox" in ten years? Remeber how the silly "firefox" name came to be in the first place.. I'll give good odds, but not as good as I could have gotten pre-Chrome. ;-) )

Debian's DFSG has a very important clause that's often underappreciated: "License Must Not Be Specific to Debian". And there have been a suprising number of times when Debian has been offered an agreement that would have let it distribute a peice of software under terms not available to other distributions -- and every time Debian has turned the opportunity down, or
negotiated an license change that the whole community could benefit from.

Are there other distributions that have a similar policy and a similar integrety in sticking with it? I was suprised to find that Gentoo's social contract, despite being originally based on the DFSG, leaves this point out.

distribution-specific agreements considered harmful

Posted Sep 18, 2008 3:15 UTC (Thu) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]

"Murder"? I think that's a bit extreme.

But I can see what you mean about how this looks like each big distribution carving out its own agreement, without concern for the rest of the community.

Another way to look at it, though, is that these distros can use those agreements as leverage to create a more general solution, communitywide. It seems that's how Fedora is using it.

distribution-specific agreements considered harmful

Posted Sep 18, 2008 21:04 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

"Are there other distributions that have a similar policy and a similar integrety in sticking with it? I was suprised to find that Gentoo's social contract, despite being originally based on the DFSG, leaves this point out."

Hmm, I wasn't personally aware of this particular clause. I'll be ruminating on it. As far as I know, Fedora doesn't have any special Fedora only licensing terms with anybody.. including Mozilla. I'll probably start a discussion about enshrining this clause or something akin to it in Fedora's policies.

-jef

Firefox 3 EULA raises a ruckus

Posted Sep 18, 2008 8:10 UTC (Thu) by alextingle (guest, #20593) [Link] (2 responses)

Why is Ubuntu's alternative called "abrowser" rather than simply "IceWeasel"?

Firefox 3 EULA raises a ruckus

Posted Sep 18, 2008 8:44 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (1 responses)

Maybe because it's not the same as GNU Iceweasel or the Iceweasel shipped in Debian. And if you want to get away from trademark hassle, calling it the most generic name possible sounds like a suitable riposte.

Firefox 3 EULA raises a ruckus

Posted Sep 18, 2008 11:32 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

No.

It's because Shuttleworth says that 'Iceweasel' term is insulting to Firefox folks and so he won't use it.

Firefox 3 EULA raises a ruckus

Posted Sep 18, 2008 12:26 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

This is not solving the problem. Solving the problem makes it go away. We have to deal with this for every distribution every time Mozilla coughs. Even if Ubuntu negotiates some right to distribute the software, it kills the end user's right to fork the distribution.

I was personally hoping for Iceweasel. It's not as if any one would notice the difference if the fox was gone. Just call it "Web Browser" in the Ubuntu desktop instead and be done with it.

The Mozilla Foundation has been arrogant with this issue right from the start, as if Firefox was somehow so important no one could do without it. What if all software started behaving like this? There would be thousands of EULAs in a normal distribution. And the possibilities of Live CD:s or read only embedded systems would be effectively gone.

Firefox 3 EULA raises a ruckus

Posted Sep 18, 2008 14:44 UTC (Thu) by aravindg (guest, #50764) [Link] (3 responses)

Caveat emptor, I work for Mozilla.

There has been a lot of mud slinging and distrust about what Mozilla is doing and how its affecting the community. There are folks at Mozilla that can explain this better than I can, but they already have, many times.. I am a Debian user, and so I have heard both sides of the issue, and thought about it some. This is just my take on it.

First the EULA, we all agree that the format it was presented in was wrong and the content in it was wrong. This is being addressed as the article pointed out.

The need for any sort of notice or terms: Firefox as a browser tries to offer a certain user experience, both to novice and advanced users. This includes things like anti-phishing protection, etc. These require some sort of web services. This mostly requires some sort of data exchange - stuff like that isn't exactly covered by the GPL (or the MPL). Mozilla could just sweep all this under the rug and not notify the users at all. That would be wrong. Users deserve to know, that's exactly what the notice tries to do.

Issue of re-branding: This one has been discussed to death, all I can say is Mozilla is trying to assure that the user experience is consistent when anyone uses a browser called Firefox. You can read all kinds of machiavellian motives into it, but I firmly believe that our hearts are in the right place when we assert those trademarks.

As to how all the distributions deal with it - I am not sure I have an answer. There has been a lot of angst, and mistrust in the community about this stuff and it bothers me that Mozilla is somehow being thought of as the villain here. We are an open source project, we will continue to be so and we are doing our part. Yes, there are some short-comings and we are addressing them, the Linux (and open source) community should realize that. We share a lot of the same goals and ideals, I feel its time for us to acknowledge that and resolve these issues. I urge you to look at the points I made above and give it some thought.

Firefox 3 EULA raises a ruckus

Posted Sep 18, 2008 18:07 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (2 responses)

Here's what I don't get.

Why exactly did Shuttleworth feel that Canonical could not use the same compromise that Mozilla extended to Fedora for Fedora 9. Was Canonical not offered to make use of the same temporary solution that Mozilla allowed Red Hat? If not, then yeah, Mozilla is sort of the villain here for creating disparity among the distributors and putting Canonical in a very difficult position. Mozilla should seriously think about making sure that every distributor has equal and fair access to the same trademark terms..even if they are temporary arrangements.

Why wasn't Canonical, or any other distributor for that matter free to use the same temporary solution granted to Fedora? Or were they? Mozilla could have easily made a statement that the Fedora compromise was available for any distributor to use in like July as a temporary measure while discussions on a final solution continued, if Mozilla cared to extend the offer. That really would have taken the edge off and given those people in private discussions more breathing room to work through whatever it was that was keeping the discussions private.

It's now on record that the mock ups we are seeing coming from Mozilla are fundamentally the same as the Fedora compromise implementation that Red Hat was granted. Why did it take 3+ months to see Mozilla produce these mockups for public feedback? Or even attempt to talk about it publicly at all. Canonical does have a ticking clock with regard to its Ubuntu release schedule. So if Mozilla was engaged in private discussions with Canonical for months over this, but was dragging its feet on a solution...that puts Canonical in a pretty tough spot...and yes makes Mozilla look the villain. What exactly was keeping Mozilla from seeking public feedback up till this point, before Canonical's actions forced the issue?

We have to do better than this. If we are going to encourage entities to have private conversations about sensitive matters, there has to be a better way than to deal with things when those conversations break down or stall. We must stop using community sentiment as a weapon to coerce on going private communications... its simply not appropriate...because the community doesn't have all the information. It's a guaranteed way to create an irrational, emotional response.

I think PJ, of groklaw fame, is onto something when she suggests that the SFLC could be used as a facilitator in these situations.

-jef

Firefox 3 EULA raises a ruckus

Posted Sep 19, 2008 5:51 UTC (Fri) by nealmcb (guest, #20740) [Link] (1 responses)

Mark has addressed this - Mozilla maintained for a long time that they would not give Ubuntu the same deal that they temporarily gave Fedora in the spring, and they didn't intend to let Fedora continue to do it either. Negotiations with Fedora were going on in private all summer.

But the new mockups released by Mozilla on the 17th is a huge step - no EULA, no "agreement", nothing special for different distros, etc: http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/09/17/mock-ups-availa...

Firefox 3 EULA raises a ruckus

Posted Sep 19, 2008 17:08 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

I have not seen a specific quote attributable to Mark that says flatly that Mozilla did offer Canonical to make use of the Fedora implementation. I have seen a statement from Mark which states that the Fedora implementation could not be used by Canonical, but he did not in fact state a reason as to why.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bu...

You can either read that as Mozilla did not allow Canonical to do it. Or Canonical did not like the Fedora implementation and was attempting to negotiate a different solution with Mozilla.

How you choose to read it, really comes down to who you doubt more. Mozilla or Canonical.

If you can find any statement from Mark where he has indicated that the fedora 9 implementation would have been acceptable to Canonical as a temporary fix I would really appreciate it.

All I know for sure is Mark felt sure that the Fedora implementation was unusable. And that Mark felt that the EULA enabled build had to be "immediately" shipped or the conversation would not have happened.

If Mozilla's contention is that the delay on taking the conversation public concerning the re-worked EULA was a simple oversight.. why did Mark feel that a build of the EULA laden binary was necessary to put this in front of the Ubuntu community and make a big stink about it?

I've seen no explanation that gives me a satisfactory answer as to why Canonical had to take the immediate actions that it did to force the issue into the public, with no community discussion on its side before taking that action to fire off the build. Mark should have known this was going to be contentious and he could have attempted to lead a discussion with the Ubuntu community and invited Mozilla to participate before the action was taken to build the EULA affected package and turn this into a reactionary process, raising the temperature on the issue unnecessarily.

-jef

What about the Open Office EULA?

Posted Sep 18, 2008 20:47 UTC (Thu) by kamil (guest, #3802) [Link] (3 responses)

Am I imagining this or does Open Office present me with a click-through EULA every time a new version is installed? I'm pretty sure it does...

Why are we not extending this discussion to OOo, then? It is free software after all, with a separate non-free StarOffice were junk like that belongs?

What about the Open Office EULA?

Posted Sep 19, 2008 13:42 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

They don't force distributions to include EULA. Most users stick to their distributions which voids this problem.

What about the Open Office EULA?

Posted Sep 19, 2008 20:09 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm really lost. What does the user promise in the Firefox or OO end user license agreement? What would be the point of having a EULA if you don't insist that end users agree to it?

Or is it really just a description of the copyright license given the user, and not a EULA?

What about the Open Office EULA?

Posted Sep 20, 2008 1:51 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

For Firefox, what it contains was described from Tom Callaway and linked from the article itself. Reading that would clear up your confusion. Openoffice.org upstream binaries might insist on a EULA. Distribution copies don't.

Firefox 3 EULA raises a ruckus

Posted Sep 23, 2008 20:16 UTC (Tue) by chrisV (guest, #43417) [Link]

The article says:

"The predictable outcry followed, mostly because people who are used to free software have a visceral reaction to seeing a click-through EULA. "

On the other hand, the FSF guidance on the GPL contains this advice:

"If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this
when it starts in an interactive mode:

Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.

The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate
parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may
be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be
mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program."

One of the purposes is presumably to make it clear that users accept that there is a disclaimer of liability in respect of fitness for purpose.