Re: Re: blog entry: "The Name “Firefox” Not Allowed In Ubuntu?"

[Eric Dunbar]

n 27/09/06, Conrad Knauer wrote:
> On 9/27/06, Daniel Robitaille wrote:
>
> > The Name "Firefox" Not Allowed In Ubuntu?
> > (http://djst.org/blog/2006/09/27/the-name-firefox-not-allowed-in-ubuntu/)
>
> Apparently this is a legal issue between Mozilla and Debian that's
> been going on for a few years now; here's a summary from January 2005:
>
> http://lwn.net/Articles/118268/
>
> The most current round was started by this bug report:
>
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622
>
> The Mozilla policy on its trademarks in "Community Edition" versions
> of its products is here:
>
> http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/community-edition-policy.html
>
> If Debian called it "Firefox - Debian Community Edition" or some such
> ("Firefox DCE"? witha  corresponding "Firefox UCE" for us? :) would
> that satisfy Mozilla's desire to maintain its trademark?  Hmm... I'll
> try to add that to the bug report :-)

As Daniel Robitaille mentioned, this would satisfy neither Mozilla's
trade mark needs nor Debian's licencing restrictions. Only a limited
set of changes are permitted under the 'Community Edition' moniker
anyway...

"A Community Edition is a version of Mozilla software that has some
set of customizations beyond those normally allowed under the Mozilla
Trademark Policy."

"The following changes are permitted within Community Editions:

Change certain preference settings
Change the default start page
Change both the structure and the contents of the default bookmarks
and personal toolbar
Change the default search engine and other search engines in the
search engine pulldown box
Include extensions that are also available through updates.mozilla.org
Include plugins, provided they can legally do so
Porting the software to different operating systems
Custom builds created using options to configure
It is very important that Community Editions of Firefox and
Thunderbird meet (or exceed) the quality level people have come to
associate with Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. We need to
ensure this, but we don't want to get in people's way. So, we are
taking an optimistic approach."


Plus, the use of 'Community Edition' is limited by Mozilla's QAQC
(quality assurance-quality control) process. If the 'CE' is found to
be of lower quality than permitted, the use of the Firefox trademark
can be restricted.

"Community members and organizations can start using the "Firefox
Community Edition" and "Thunderbird Community Edition" trademarks from
day one, but the Mozilla Foundation may require individuals or teams
to stop doing so in the future if they are redistributing software
with low quality and efforts to remedy the situation have not
succeeded. Doing things this way allows us to give as much freedom to
people as possible, while maintaining our trademarks as a mark of
quality-- which we are required to do in order to keep them."


In the end, I suspect that the only legal and ethical solution is for
Debian to rename their particular version of Firefox. Mozilla needs to
defend its use of Firefox (use it or lose it) and Debian needs to
adhere to its licencing terms.

Of course, I'm being an "arm-chair quarterback" (and I hate
American/Canadian football so I'm not sure why I'm even using that
saying ;-) so my assessment of the situation could be overly
simplistic.