[Bug 269656] Re: AN IRRELEVANT LICENSE IS PRESENTED TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE ON STARTUP

[Mark Shuttleworth]

Mozilla Corp asked that this be added in order for us to continue to
call the browser Firefox. Since Firefox is their trademark, which we
intend to respect, we have the choice of working with Mozilla to meet
their requirements, or switching to an unbranded browser.

It's strongly our preference, and that of most of our users, to have
Firefox as the browser in Ubuntu.

I think it's perfectly reasonable for Mozilla to have requirements and
guidelines for the use of their trademark - we have the same for Ubuntu,
and many other free software projects do the same. I would in fact
consider it a best practice to have a good brand on a free software
project, which means having trademark guidelines.

That said, I would not consider an EULA as a best practice. It's
unfortunate that Mozilla feels this is absolutely necessary, but they
do, and none of us are in a position to be experts about the legal
constraints which Mozilla feels apply to them. We had extensive
conversations with Mozilla in order to find the best possible way of
meeting their requirements while preserving the flow of use of the
system for our users.

Please feel free to make constructive suggestions as to how we can meet
Mozilla's requirements while improving the user experience. It's not
constructive to say "WTF?", nor is it constructive to rant and rave in
allcaps. Your software freedoms are built on legal grounds, as are
Mozilla's rights in the Firefox trademark. To act as though your rights
are being infringed misses the point of free software by a mile.

I believe we have a new package in Intrepid, called abrowser, which uses
the codebase behind Firefox without invoking the Firefox trade mark.

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AN IRRELEVANT LICENSE IS PRESENTED TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE ON STARTUP
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/269656
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