Downgrading Firefox 3.5 and Thunderbird 3.0

[Christopher Aillon]

On 05/13/2009 05:55 AM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Nathan Grennan wrote:
>>     I understand, but on the other hand does Fedora want a dozen bug
>> reports over Thunderbird being useless, because of a crappy default?
>
> The problem is that Fedora can't change anything in Thunderbird (nor
> Firefox) without upstream buy-in because the maintainer refuses to rename
> the programs and thus we're bound by Mozilla's strict (and IMHO completely
> unreasonable and unacceptable in the Free Software world) trademark policy.

Actually, Fedora policy is to stick with upstream.  I did not create 
that policy, though I do agree with it and abide by it.  Forking is not 
my idea of playing nicely with upstream.  Additionally, Mozilla's policy 
is very similar to Fedora's policy.  If you find such policies 
offensive, you may wish to read Fedora's policy and re-evaluate your 
participation in the project.  Note that I am not recommending that, but 
if you feel strongly about this, then you need to do what you need to do.

> I'm really fed up of all the special treatment Mozilla is getting over this,
> for example the xulrunner/firefox/thunderbird stack is now the ONLY one
> excluded from provenpackager commits, if all projects worked like this
> (i.e. required upstream's approval for every single patch), Fedora would be
> completely unmaintainable.

Please do not confuse me with upstream.  I am the one who is ultimately 
accountable for the package.  Patches require MY approval.

As far as maintainability goes though, I don't see how adding a bunch of 
patches to a package helps that.  Keeping the patch set minimal is 
critical for maintainability across the stack.  Other distributions 
adding patches is the reason why some gecko-using projects have autoconf 
files check for Debian patches, else proceed as normal. 
Maintainability, woo!

> I really don't see why we don't just rename
> Firefox and Thunderbird like Debian is doing.

This sounds like an issue you ought to raise to the Fedora Board.  In 
the interest of full disclosure, I am currently serving on the Fedora Board.

But you're assuming that if I am forced to rename the package, I would 
maintain it differently.  The package's name or trademarks have no 
bearing on whether I think that adding random patches to an intricate 
chunk of code like a web browser will have a net negative effect on the 
web, the maintainability of the package, the maintainability of the 
related stack, and relations with upstream.

> (*) check who the primary maintainer of Firefox and Thunderbird in Fedora is
> and who he's involved with, draw your own conclusions...

Erm?  What do any of my special lady friends have to do with this?