Firefox trademark shenanigans (Re: Any chance of getting Firefox 2.0 into rawhide/FC6?)

[Arthur Pemberton]

On 10/1/06, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> Arthur Pemberton <pemboa <at> gmail.com> writes:
> > Sorry to jump in here. But from what I've read, it seems that MozCo is
> > cool with Fedora as things stand.
>
> But for how long?

That we shall see.

> I think the patch approval process can also be a constraint
> on the Fedora Legacy team. Currently, Legacy is simply upgrading rather than
> backporting,

Not familiar with the details on the differences between upgrading vs.
backporting. Although I would have assumed upgrading was better.

> and even working on packaging Seamonkey to replace the
> discontinued Mozilla Suite for the older distros (that gratuitous name change
> is also due to Mozilla's trademark policies, by the way),

This sentence seemed incomple, nevertheless: Seamonkey is my primary
browser. Firefox is just my secondary browser. So far, save for the
name change, with I didn't really mind, MozCo doesn't "seem" to be
hurting Seamonkey much. I was dissapointed that they gave up on the
suite, as I am not too much a fan of Firefox, but who am I to
complain.

As far as I remember, the problem with dependancy on the old suite can
be, and is to be solved with migration to xulrunner....here's hoping
that works out soon.

> but what if they want
> to work together with the Debian stable people on backporting fixes instead? I
> don't think being shackled by a restrictive trademark agreement is what Free
> Software is about.

I can agree with that. However, it is my understanding that what truly
makes up the software, the code, is still "free".

> Also, do you like how Mozilla is using this as an argument to pressure Debian
> into compliance? "See, Fedora does what we want, why don't you?" I think this
> places Fedora entirely on the wrong side of the fence.

I do not really like that myself. I would prefer Fedora not be part of
the arguement at all. Like it or not, Fedora is disliked for various
reasons by various reasons as it is. We need no more bad press.

> And have you read the thread this one forked from?

No, hence the initial apology for jumping in.

> The trademark arrangement is
> also one of the reasons F*****x doesn't (always) use the "early testing of
> development versions in Rawhide" scheme which is successfully used for several
> other packages (GNOME, kernel, KDE before we got the long-lived 3.5 branch we
> have now etc.). (Yes, I said "one of", I know Chris Aillon also brought up
> others.)

Seems like in the end, this only hurts the Firefox guys. If distros
stop patching, and only use vanilla sources when they come along, then
sucks for them.

> > I personally do not use Firfox as my primary browser,
>
> Neither do I, long live Konqueror! :-)

Long live Seamonkey

>
>         Kevin Kofler


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