Fedora, Mozilla, and trademarks [LWN.net]

Fedora, Mozilla, and trademarks

Posted Apr 28, 2010 18:01 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
In reply to: Fedora, Mozilla, and trademarks by cry_regarder
Parent article: Fedora, Mozilla, and trademarks

It would be preferable to work with Mozilla to clean up the worst of the problems. I think that the two top issues are:

Bundling of libraries. Try to work with Mozilla to use libraries provided by the distro to the extent possible, and provide separate packaging of some modified libraries (the APNG issue, for example). This might take some time to work out. If Mozilla refuses to go along with this, then a fork might be needed in the long term, but I think that the right way to go is to have a bundled version (so you can download a working Firefox even for an older distro) and also a build structure that lets distros provide an unbundled version, so the system has only one libpng, libz, xulrunner, etc.
Making the patch approval process less burdensome. The right to fork is a key part of software freedom, but every case where a fork becomes necessary is a kind of failure, it means that there were two groups of people who couldn't come to consensus about what the correct fix is. In general, I think that upstream should always be consulted before distros try to do non-emergency bug fixes, assuming that there is an active upstream, even when it isn't required.

The ability to continue to run well-known programs like Firefox makes it easier to convince people that they can switch to Linux-based systems. Going to iceweasel/icedove is a possible backup plan if nothing can be worked out, but I think it's too early for Fedora to resort to that.

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Fedora, Mozilla, and trademarks

Posted Apr 28, 2010 18:40 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

For bundled libraried...

Chris tyler went into some detail about the path forward for supporting system libraries.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.devel/1...

Having mozilla internally running unit test on fedora target systems is most certainly going to help.

The patch approval process definitely fell down here. There needs to be a clearer path for patches that are approved by upstream for inclusion in the next mozilla release to be approved for inclusion in downstream packaging in the time between upstream review/approval and upstream release.

-jef

Fedora, Mozilla, and trademarks

Posted Apr 29, 2010 7:33 UTC (Thu) by glandium (subscriber, #46059) [Link]

> Having mozilla internally running unit test on fedora target systems is most certainly going to help.

It won't, unless mozilla builds with all possible --with-system- and --enable-system- flags.

Fedora, Mozilla, and trademarks

Posted Apr 29, 2010 11:47 UTC (Thu) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]

I think the point is that it will enable them to do that if they want to. AIUI the problem is that in many cases the CentOS system libraries are simply too old for Firefox, leaving Mozilla little option to bundle their own. With a Fedora base there's at least the potential to try using the system versions.