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

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On 9/28/06, Stephen John Smoogen <smooge at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Besides, GNOME and gaim are applications designed and written for you
> > the Linux user in mind (GNOME arguably is done with the Fedora user in
> > mind), and we have sway with what goes in to that codebase.  Firefox is
> > written with the Windows user in mind and if you find bugs, I am not
> > guaranteed to be able to fix them because I (on behalf of Fedora or Red
> > Hat) can't make changes to the source code without getting approval from
> > the Mozilla Corporation pursuant to their trademarking guidelines.
> >
>
> IceWeasel!

Honestly, we may consider doing the same thing as Debian guys, to show
our support and to prevent future possibility of a similar situation,
in case/when MozCo decides to change their marketing rules again.

Besides, it is my understanding (from reading the Debian bug
discussion and generally from being roommates with the Debian Firefox
maintainer in question), that MozCo is enforcing the "if you use the
name, you must use the logo" rule. In theory, since the logo is
copyrighted (and not sensibly licensed), Fedora should NOT be able to
use the name with a generic logo, unless Red Hat has an agreement with
MozCo about this specific case. Even in the case when such agreement
exists, it's still not acceptable, because it interferes with any
third-party repackaging of the Fedora tree.  This restriction is
already true for current releases of Fedora.

If Red Hat and Debian both pick a name for a non-restricted version of
Firefox, then that would help lessen the potential confusion. It would
suck if every distro has Firefox under a different name. If someone
wants to cooperate with the Debian Firefox maintainer, he's open to
such dialogue with Red Hat/Fedora (FESCO?). Interested parties may get
in touch with him via eric at debian.org (he's cc'd on this message).

I think "IceWeasel" is very silly and creates unnecessary tension with
upstream, but "Freefox" sounds like a winner, unless it is decided by
IAALs that it's too close to "Firefox" and thus can be found
infringing.

It's definitely late for such change to happen in the FC6 timeframe,
but we have to look further, and if we are to stick to the motto of
providing a distribution that is "free to infinity," then we can't
continue to ship Firefox under the name that limits what we can and
cannot do with the software.

Regards,
-- 
Konstantin Ryabitsev
Montréal, Québec