Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

You should really explain what is funny. Is Mozilla's position being misrepresented?

I think its easy to understand, Mozilla wants to make sure if Debian want to use firefox's name, then they need to get it from mozilla, not modify package by themselves in which case mozilla can not take responsibility for the product, which, unfortunately, is their brand.
Its Easy for Debian, since nobody really care the name of the browser, they can just grad a nightly build and pack it themselves, sure, in a different name.

No, it seems more complex than that. See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622;msg=69

It is clear that Mozilla once gave Debian permission to use the name but not the log. It's not clear why Mozilla's position has changed. Also, Dorland's request for a stay of execution seems pretty reasonable, and it is unclear why it is refused.

1) Please, the more sensationalist title an article has, the higher it'll go on digg.

2) TMs for FLOSS suck: http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/09/24/open-office-still-pulling-the-wrong-page-from-the-firefox-playbook/#comment-2782

3) When is MoCo going to start C&D the many unofficial ffx packages? http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622;msg=127;att=0

4) Yes, I realise you're laughing at the article and not the response of Debian, but it doesn't inspire confidence you actually acknowledge the issues Debian has with the current policy.

5) Does MozCo do vendor-sec?

6) Does MozCo actually care about Linux as a platform? Eg is there anyone working on Linux performance issues? Maybe someone's doing work for OLPC, but in the past I've seen statements that since 90% of ffx users are on windows that's where MozCo spends its development time.

Finally!

What pisses me off, and I mean really pisses me off is Debian and Ubutu's version of Firefox. A few of my reasons
1) It's about 20%-30% slower according to my calculations, both in UI response and page loading.

2) Too many things are changed from the 'official' firefox build (middle-clicks, homepage, etc.)

3) Alot of extension (i.e. foxytunes) that use Native Xpcom components don't work right. Seems like they build against some different libs.

I really hope this happens, then Firefox can be moved to the 'non-free' repos, and life will be normal again and Firefox can be added to EasyUbuntu and Automatix.

Seriously though, this will be a huge win for extension authors and mozilla hackers who won't have to try and figure out what debian did to firefox for debugging.

@James.

BS, alot of devs working on Firefox use Linux as their primary system. Hell, TONS of work is being done on Linux for Cairo support (For firfox 3.0).

Stop spreading FUD.

Eric: perhaps the slowness reported by Jed is what makes me think that no-one cares about ffx/linux, since all I use is debian packaged versions. I do use a personally compiled version of SeaMonkey on Ubuntu and it does exhibit the same slowness compared to the win32 version. Firefox 3 you say? Come back next year and tell me about it. Also, a lot of devs using Linux as their primary system doesn't mean they're focusing on the core X and GTK+ performance issues.

Jed: I wholeheartedly agree with your comments on the new firefox theme at http://blog.jedbrown.net/?p=66 particularly the dumping of natively themed tabs. I just showed the other guy at work and his response was "it's horrible".

I completely agree with Jed. After I switched from Windows to Ubuntu, Firefox really changed to the worse. Very important shortcuts like the middle click were changed and the version was very old (1.0.x while 1.5 was out monthes ago). Updating was a painful process, since the old version had to be kept to ensure compatibility with other programs. If they want to things like that, ok. It's their decision. But it will really give Firefox a bad reputation, because on other Linux distros, Firefox runs much better. So it should not be that hard to just change the name and logo to something different. I believe Debian users will be able to still recognize the browser. If they have to change browsers over a namechange, it's their loss.
However: While I believe MoCo is right, they should not take this lightly. At least make some sort of announcement somewhere why they took these steps. If you start getting a bad reputation in the open source community, it will not be good for Firefox development.

Asa, I agree 100% with the title of this entry. It's really a shame for Debian, but at the same time shows what's going wrong in the Linux community. Debian focusses too much on destroying Mozilla, they should do more to get releases out in time (look: Sarge)

@Ralph
Many of these problems are due to the fact that for Linux, there are different Desktop Environments, making integration more difficult. Mozilla would not only have to produce a Linux-build, like they do currently, but also create builds for different Desktop Environments, as KDE behaves differently than Gnome, than Enlightment, etc.
Also, there is a lack of support of Gnome/KDE-people for Mozilla. Most open-source projects live from external contributions as well as internal contributions. For Mozilla, it seems as if there are MoCo-people, developers at other companies, and a small number of other contributors. If Debian would help to address issues directly at the Mozilla-project, they wouldn't have to whine about Mozilla, and Firefox@linux would be a more stable product.

Generally, it's embarrassing to see the Linux community making life so difficult for Mozilla, as they are really VERY nice to everybody.
It's about a year that these topic has been brought up the first time. Debian hasn't reacted since, so they are to blame.

@James
Mozilla doesn't invest many resources in GTK+ performance issues, because with Cairo, everything will be faster anyway. Firefox 2.0 doesn't do much work on the backend, all resources go to Firefox 3.0 (which will again be a backend-release, like Firefox 1.5). That's the release policy, and that's it.

Can someone explain to me what all the extra changes that Debian have introduced are? Some of the arguments in the threads here and there go along the line: "If Debian introduces a security hole, FF will get the blame". Valid point, I assume, but if it's mainly an issue about the logo, how could changing that introduce security holes? So I reckon Debian has changed more than that, but what? and why?
I'm not directly concerned, since I don't use Debian, but I remember from my Mepis days the butt-ugly 'Firefox' icon - the hassle involved in getting things to look the way I wanted them to was actually an important contributing factor to why I moved away from Mepis/Debian to ArchLinux (and I've never looked back).

Sebastian: Debian the project doesn't really have any issues with the speed or otherwise, that's more the users (including me) complaining. Debian has serious problems with the trademark license and the strength with which MoCo is enforcing it. Saying "Debian has a trademark non-free logo too" is not a response, since they don't enforce it much and really dislike it, but current trademark law is not really suitable to FLOSS projects. See Luis' comments and links at the openoffice v firefox post I linked above.

As for not reacting, Debian did react and had an agreement with Gerv saying "You can't use the logo but the name is fine", and now MoCo is coming around and changing the agreement (which is within their rights). However, it's also within Debian's rights to reject the new agreement as not sufficiently free for its users.

MoCo is not "really nice to everybody", they simply have their agenda and Debian has another, which includes supporting stable releases for several years. I suspect that modulo the logo trademark, Debian wouldn't mind getting patches approved and committed to the mozilla.org CVS if MoCo had a real vendor-sec setup, which apparently they don't.

eyolf: No one is saying that changing the logo might introduce a vulnerability. The fact of the matter is that Debian has introduced a large number of other changes ranging in complexity from changing the default home page (which is certainly acceptable) to rewriting pages of ARM assembler code. The problem is that no one who really knows the mozilla source base knows anything about what these patches do, or why they were included. It's quite possible that Firefox simply doesn't work on ARM platforms without those changes, but if that's the case why haven't those changes already been contributed upstream?

I think the real problem is that nobody wants to commit to the effort it will take to sort through all the changes that have been made and figure out what they're all for. It's a huge task, and one that's not liable to be very rewarding. For one thing, the only form I've ever seen these changes in is a monolithic patch that mingles all of the changes into a single file. Just sorting through that to separate the changes from each other will be a lot of work. Hopefully they all have bug reports in the debian repository, but we all know that doesn't always happen.

Mozilla's policy on the trademark is very clear and Debian can choose to comply or to provide their own branding + patches. Either way, the problem is on Debian's side.

Mozilla provides working builds for Debian, so there is no need to patch them. As can be read in this thread, the patches are more than superficial (and in some cases of a dubious nature) and so Mozilla is right to not want to assume responsibility (by endorsing them with their tradememark).

My guess is that Asa is right also about the difference between ubuntu and debian. Ubuntu will likely be a bit more pragmatic about what can be consired the single most popular open source desktop application. At least I'd hate to do the marketing for them when they decide to not bundle firefox.

Jilles: Debian's policy on copyright licences is very clear and Moz Corp can choose to comply with the DFSG, or cope with the Debian packages for Firefox being branded Iceweasel. Either way, the problem is on Moz Corp's side. ;-)

It seems odd that the Moz Corp are changing their minds on this issue so frequently - it wasn't that long ago that Gerv said that using the FF name without the logo was just dandy. With such a schizophrenic outlook, I'm not surprised that Debian has chosen to avoid the trademarks entirely.

James:

Well, so what I think Eric mean't was that Linux support *is* good, and will get better in 3.0.

The issue I have is that "Debian's version" sucks really really bad, and is really really slow.

Install a Linux Binary build from Mozilla.org (I used these instructions: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FirefoxNewVersion)

And compare how much faster and better it is.

Sad really, I would have though it would be the opposite, with Debian doing some improvements.

The funniest thing I've read in a long time was the following:

> Are the Debian logos and trademarks free?

No, the Debian logos are not free. This is considered a bug.

(http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622)

hey heres my browser..
http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/7664/xfmo9.th.png

grr @imageshacke.. heres a high def image.. the best!

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/7664/xfmo9.png

what i dont get is how importortant market share is to mozilla, it seems a few years ago it went from moving people from insecure internet explorer to killing ie's market share to trying to grab every internet user in the world, to making profit from their mark share, to who knows what else.. ever since they made a deal with "real", seems like their planning on becoming the next microsoft as with market share technqiues.

just a little rant on mozilla, but firefox f'ing rules..

There is a slightly less flamey and more mature discussion about this going on over at djst's blog, for those who care.

Asa, for my part, I'm very disappointed at your reaction to people who have been legitimate and useful contributors to Mozilla and Firefox in the past. Mozilla Foundation in this instance is acting like it is the only organization that has created value around Firefox, when in fact a large community of people have been creating that value for a long time and should have much more say in how the trademark is used and enforced. Absent my own better suggestion at this time, I think Chris Messina's Community Mark proposal is really the direction FFox should be going in.

I'm not sure who's in the right here, but given all the recent stories I've been hearing about Debian I'll have to go with Mozilla.

I think this comment from digg does a good job of summing up the situation:

"This is kind of a non-issue for the end user. It's not like you can't use Firefox on Debian or Unbuntu anymore. You don't get a banner saying "sorry, Firefox cannot be installed on distribution of Linux". This is more of an internal matter between Mozilla and Debian. But let's just blow it all out of proportion anyway, shall we?"

Regardless of who's right, Asa's attitude is disturbing. He doesn't seem to regret angering a vendor or users.

that was kind of immature.. i dont use debian.. but i;ve tried ubuntu.. what i dont get is debian and ubuntu using firefox in a microsoft way like makning firefox preinstalled and can't be uninstalled without serious operating system issues.. just from what i've read.

can you get arrested for using the extension firefox-something and making firefox look like internet explorer, or opera?

> He doesn't seem to regret angering a vendor or users.
If someone claims a text was written by you while it only was based on yours (and changed it in some bad ways like Debian did) and some fanboys cry out loud claiming complete nonsense, would you regret things they did?

1/ Under Debian distributions (including Ubuntu), Firefox is compiled using the pango text rendering flag, offering a much broader support for Unicode (Thai, Khmer, etc.). The price to pay is mainly speed.

2/ db48x: how can you see nobody really knows what these patches do? Debian is open source, so are the patches applied to Firefox.

Mozilla has all the rights to 'fight' for its trademark, so does Apple when it aggressively fights for its patents.

Nothing funny about this Mr. Asa Dotzler.

Understand mozillas position that they must protect their trademark but it is also true that ubuntu is based on debian so they also follow the same rules of not including trademarked stuff so most likely they will have the renamed version of firefox to - IceWeasel or whatever it will be called.

I definitely believe Mozilla should fight for its trademarks in text and imagery like that logo to ensure their users that if it carries the Firefox name, it's an official Firefox build, not some kind of Debian-patched one. I can see this quite important to avoid confusion, and tell users when changes have been made. Debian could perhaps call their variant "Debian Browser" if they now have to do this.

Protecting your trademarks have very little to do with how open your source code is, and how free the license is to use said code, so I don't really see how that need to be involved here...

i'm probably going to switch to gnuzilla now that i heard that mozilla has theyr'e images copyrighted...and tons of others are also. you better do something about this

This is silliness. People love to get all bent out of shape about this. Maybe the flamers on both sides should meet in a neutral location for a dance-off.

Seriously though, this is not something to be upset about. Debian can call their "FireFox" IceWeasel until this gets figured out. No big deal. It's a dry, boring, complicated licensing issue which nobody should be pissed off about. It'll take patience to figure out.