Did anyone see this story on Firefox?

[eraker]

It looks like it will be renamed in the next Debian release because of trademark infringement with the logo.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news...le.php/3634591

[Redman]

Oh boy oh boy ....

[gtmtnbiker98]

This sounds a little too familiar, doesn't it? Sounds like somebody is getting a little too big for their britches. Has anybody ever heard the saying "don't bite the hand that feeds you?"

[easuter]

maybe mozilla should attack redhat too. the bluecurve icon theme also has custom browser icons.

man this is pathetic...

[a12ctic]

to be safe, all that debian has to do is take the firefox name out, not a big deal to me. they can use the code and call it whatever they want.

[techieMoe]

Hello? Pot? This is kettle. I hate to tell you this, but... you're black. Seriously, a company has a right to protect their trademark. Debian themselves made a big stink when the DCC tried to use the "Debian" name without asking permission. I don't understand how such a supposed democratic organization can be so blatantly hypocritical.

::UPDATE:: Apparently this fellow agrees with me:

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3364701970.html

[Krendoshazin]

It sounds to me like what they're saying is, "if you modify it, don't distribute it as firefox", which is a strange thing to do as most of us that use patches know that they generally fix broken functionality, and the program at the end of it is still the same program it was before, it just works better.
I'm not sure if this breaks the freedom of distribution as they're still allowing you to distribute it, just not under the official name.

I can imagine that if something was broken because of the patch, mozilla is the first place a user will head, or they might even stop using it and tell their friends not to use it, simply because of an outside modification. I guess I can see the point in that.

Either way if they want to modify it, they'll just have to use a different name and logo. That's the problem with corporations these days, their reputation often means more than anything else.

[techieMoe]

Either way if they want to modify it, they'll just have to use a different name and logo. That's the problem with corporations these days, their reputation often means more than anything else.

Apparently that's not something confined to corporations, either.

[Cabhan]

The situation is ridiculous, but then, Debian has done the exact same thing before. And unfortunately, this 'solution' is just going to make life more difficult for the end users.

[Vergil83]

this has been brewing for a while
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel.../msg01160.html

Although it is a bad comprise for both Debian (and its kids) as well as Mozilla, it is the only solution I see. Mozilla's trademark policy says

Our code is free, but we do strictly enforce our trademark rights, we must, in order to keep them valid. Our trademarks include, among others, the names Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, Bugzilla and XUL, as well as the Mozilla logo, Firefox logo, Thunderbird logo and the red lizard logo. This means that, while you have considerable freedom to redistribute and modify our software, there are tight restrictions on your ability to use the Mozilla name and logos, even when built into binaries that we provide.

Basically, you are allowed to change/use their code, but you can not release it using the Mozilla name. The logic behind this is, if joe developer releases his own version of Firefox that is not of high quality, Mozilla will get "a bad name".However, DFSG says in article 8

License Must Not Be Specific to Debian: The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a Debian system. If the program is extracted from Debian and used or distributed without Debian but otherwise within the terms of the program''s license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the Debian system.

This says that if Debian gets certain rights, those rights must be passed on to everyone using Debian. If Debian uses the Mozilla trademark and doesn''t pass it on, Debian is violating its own guidelines.

I think the dcc issue is slightly different (that is just the name's trademark the firefox issue is connected with an actual program).