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DisappointingDisappointingPosted Oct 19, 2012 16:49 UTC (Fri) by paravoid (subscriber, #32869)Parent article: Mozilla's web app store debuts in Firefox for Android
There's no copyright license or free (as in speech) indication shown for the apps, nor a "download source" link (if there are any that are free). I guess it shouldn't suprise me, considering Mozilla Addons is in a similar state and Mozilla is distancing itself from the FL/OSS community more and more as time passes, in favor of the "open web" community that they've helped build.
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Disappointing Posted Oct 19, 2012 17:40 UTC (Fri) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]
Please get your facts straight.
Mozilla Add-ons has a license link there for every add-on, you cannot submit an add-ons without declaring what license it is. I know there are options to make the source available there, but I don't know the details there, AFAIK I have links in the descriptions of my own add-ons that point to my repos, as the internal option would just display the source in the form it is in the packages.
Unfortunately, this is not the case right now on the Marketplace, and I'd encourage you to file a bug on that (or two, on both aspects). Still, as the apps in the Marketplace are all HTML5, you should be able to just use your browser's "View Source" function to get to that.
Also, how do you think that "open web" means distancing from FLOSS? Both heavily concentrate on open standards and software under free software licenses. Mozilla is pushing heavily for open standards, processes and software, if you have a different impression I'd like to know why and how Mozilla can improve there.
Disappointing Posted Oct 19, 2012 17:59 UTC (Fri) by paravoid (subscriber, #32869) [Link]
I'm aware that Mozilla Addons require a license and I also do know that the Addons webpage does list the license, although in tiny letters on the side, showing no emphasis on freedom. Do note that this not the case for the in-browser addon search (Tools -> Addons -> Get Addons), which hides this information as far as I can see. Moreover, there's no way to do search only in the subset of addons that are free as in speech, in neither interfaces. Free and non-free software are equivalent in there and users will just pick what looks fancier, without anyone ever educating them about their freedoms.
You are right that I should file bug reports, however I do think that this is not an error in passing but rather a deliberate choice on Mozilla's side. Sticking to your principles has a cost and makes you less popular to average joe who doesn't care about such things (at least that's what he thinks). That's not entirely guesswork: I've pointed out the addons issues above to a Mozilla person before (granted, not *the* person responsible for it) and I was basically told "meh, wontfix". But yes, this probabl belongs on a bug tracker, you're absolutely right.
As for "it's HTML5, just do View Source", please get *your* facts straight. If there's no clear copyright license, or the copyright license is not a free software license, it's a copyright violation to even study the code (modulo rights to reverse engineer that exist in many countries), let alone modify it for your needs and redistribute it. I hope you're not suggesting to take e.g. the Twitter "app" and derive an identi.ca one from it :)
It might be unfair to judge Mozilla for the lack of free software advocacy. However, as Mozilla is moving more from just being a software author and to the software distributor realm, I think we have to adhere it to Linux distros standards and criticize them for not having a clear stance on that.
As for the "open web" vs. FL/OSS, I think moves such as the Marketplace one are problematic to me, a free software zealot. Also see my previous LWN comment on B2G:
Disappointing Posted Oct 20, 2012 15:18 UTC (Sat) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link] As for "it's HTML5, just do View Source", please get *your* facts straight. If there's no clear copyright license, or the copyright license is not a free software license, it's a copyright violation to even study the code (modulo rights to reverse engineer that exist in many countries), let alone modify it for your needs and redistribute itNot to mention that, for performance reason as well as obfuscation, a lot of web apps will likely have passed through an optimizing Javascript compiler and thus the result will not exactly be human-readable code
Disappointing Posted Oct 22, 2012 3:10 UTC (Mon) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]
> If there's no clear copyright license, or the copyright license is not a free software license, it's a copyright violation to even study the code
That is one of the most preposterous things I have ever heard. Perhaps you could tell us which of the exclusive rights enumerated in 17 USC 106 is implicated by merely "studying the code":
"(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
Disappointing Posted Oct 22, 2012 4:17 UTC (Mon) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
> Perhaps you could tell us which of the exclusive rights enumerated in 17 USC 106 is implicated by merely "studying the code":
17 USC 106 is generally not held in especially high regard by courts outside the US. Is it a right guaranteed by Berne?
Disappointing Posted Oct 22, 2012 11:35 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>> Perhaps you could tell us which of the exclusive rights enumerated in 17 USC 106 is implicated by merely "studying the code":
> 17 USC 106 is generally not held in especially high regard by courts outside the US. Is it a right guaranteed by Berne?
I can't believe there's any dispute here. The right to look at a copyrighted work is so obviously not exclusive to the copyright holder that your diversion is completely absurd.
Disappointing Posted Oct 20, 2012 0:25 UTC (Sat) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
> There's no copyright license or free (as in speech) indication shown for the apps
Any app can add in its description what license it has. There doesn't seem to be a special field for it though, that's true, not sure if intentional or a temporary limitation. But the app store is not meant just for open source apps but for all web content that uses open standards.
I wouldn't say that's distancing from the open source community. The fact is, if you want a YouTube app, a Twitter app, a Facebook app, and so forth, none of those are open source, but they are the natural first apps for something like this.
The app store isn't like the addons site or say the mozilla demo studio
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/
which does have a space for a FOSS license to be written. The app store is for web content in general, it just has to be standards-compliant.
Disappointing Posted Oct 21, 2012 18:34 UTC (Sun) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]
I also wouldn't say that it's "distancing from the open source community." What it *is* distancing from is the *free software* community, which takes issues such as the rights of software users seriously. This is a prime example of the corrosive influence that the opportunist Johnny Come Latelys of the OSI have engendered on the older and more principled Free Software movement.
It is quite clear that Mozilla, in not addressing these issues from the start, cares little for them. Software design involves balancing and prioritizing. The key decisions are visible in the earliest products.
Mozilla, dependent on hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks from Google at this moment (and with little in the way of additional revenue streams) is a victim in many ways of past largesse, and is trapped in and fearful of loss of that revenue stream. It has begun to color every decision they make.
Disappointing Posted Oct 21, 2012 18:42 UTC (Sun) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
As someone that works at Mozilla, that description of it sounds very, very inaccurate.
Yes, there are efforts to maintain revenue, even though Mozilla is a nonprofit. Without revenue, we can't pay salaries for people to focus fulltime on Mozilla-related projects. But does it "color every decision" though? Hardly, for example one of the major Mozilla projects these days is B2G, which one might suspect could annoy Google (as a potential competitor for Android) and risk the revenue stream. Pushing hard on B2G is the opposite of playing it safe and maintaining the existing income. But it is still the right thing to do because it has a shot at promoting openness on the web in the mobile space, which is a matter of *principle*.
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