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

[aschuring]

In light of the recent comments, I'm starting to see the additional
problems with having firefox as-is in main, especially with the web
services enabled by default. Indeed, like Chip pointed out, Firefox with
web services cannot be freely used without taking note of its use
restrictions. I do accept Marks premise that web services are
fundamentally of a different nature than applications, and therefore can
not be treated the same.

But the bottom line remains the same: with anti-phishing enabled by
default, Ubuntu is shipping a piece of software in main that has use
restrictions in a default install (quoting from the draft Web Services
Agreement: "[...] which are [...] made available subject to the terms
below"). That's tough to reconcile with Ubuntu's promise of using only
open/free software. On the one hand, requiring the user to take positive
action in order to *disable* a web service he does not agree to is the
wrong approach, but on the other hand, the users most likely to fall
prone to phishing are the ones that will probably never go to the
preferences dialog to enable the feature.


Finally, there is one other point I feel I should comment on: "[...] there is no "GPL for Services" but we expect one to emerge over the next few years, and this work by Mozilla is an important first step."

The GPL is not a use license: you can use the software without even
being aware of the license. Like others have said, there is a GPL for
services (Affero GPL) but at its core it's still a distribution license,
not a use license, since it obliges the implementor of a service to
convey the source of the service to its users. I do not agree that
Mozilla is working on a "GPL for services" because what we're having is
still an end-user license. In fact, it's not even Mozilla's. The
agreement governs a web service provided (hosted) by Google.

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