21 ms·

> And stop attacking the Linux distros for the Firefox trademark (forcing them to create the Iceweasel fork) Debian's rules don't allow things that aren't free

by vacri 11y ago

> And stop attacking the Linux distros for the Firefox trademark (forcing them to create the Iceweasel fork) Debian's rules don't allow things that aren't free-free, and blocked the copyright-encumbered logo. Mozilla was protecting it's trademark and branding. Debian calling it iceweasel basically replaced the branding so that it could be used under Debian's rules. It turned out to be a fairly amicable result - debian still gets the software with full utility, and mozilla keeps their branding coherent (branding is important to making money with any model, but especially freemium). Also, this licensing stoush was ten years ago; it's not like it's fresh wounds.

matzipan 11y ago
So which part of replacing the Firefox brand with Iceweasel is coherent branding?
- yebyen 11y ago
  It's not just replacing the Firefox brand, it's replacing the onus of responsibility for the package. When Debian packages your software, they insert their own patches, they do their own disparate issue tracking and release archive management, they are quite effectively a separate product. If they called it Firefox, by Debian, it would be equally damaging to the Mozilla mark (in a sense of trademark law.) If they didn't do their usual Debian thing with the patches and the release management, it would be similarly damaging to the Debian mark, so-to-speak. (All packages get this treatment, no upstream software release vendor gets special privileges.)
  - davidgerard 11y ago
    This goes way back - I was a documentation volunteer in the run-up to the Mozilla 1.0 launch in 2002, and Debian did all manner of weird things to their Mozilla package that we then had to sort through to distinguish from the mozilla.org binaries (e.g. someone had to make a list of Debian Mozilla useragents so we weren't specifically checking their behaviour).
- sp332 11y ago
  Mozilla wants people to be able to trust the Firefox brand. They don't even use "Firefox" branding on their own nightly or dev builds. They only put it on software that's been through their own QA. So you're free to use the code, but they won't let you put the name or logo on any forks or even builds they haven't signed off on.
  - epoch1970 11y ago
    I think at this point that the Firefox brand has been tarnished, unfortunately. For many average users, the term "Firefox" reminds them of the slow browser they used to use before switching to Chrome. For more advanced users, the term "Firefox" reminds them of the browser that includes ads (even if these are being removed), has unnecessary functionality built in (Pocket, Hello), and has undergone questionable UI changes (Australis). For web developers, the term "Firefox" reminds them of the extra effort they still need to expend to test their creations in a browser that fewer and fewer people are using. For others, the term "Firefox" will now remind them of this failed mobile OS project. "Firefox" as a brand had a great reputation 5 years ago. But that reputation has eroded away since then.
    - cookiecaper 11y ago
      I disagree. Most "normal" users who used Firefox before Chrome came around are savvy enough to understand that software improves and evolves. There's no doubt that Chrome gave Firefox a much-needed shot in the arm. Many developers/advanced users, including myself, see Firefox as a bastion of freedom in what is otherwise a land grab by major OS vendors, an attempt to further increase their lock-in. Users remember Firefox as the browser that was so flexible, Firebug was possible, which sent every browser vendor into a tizzy to try to clone the featureset natively. Users remember Firefox as the browser that gives them control over their experience, unlike Chrome which babysits and won't let you interfere with Google's need to harvest data. The first 2 years that Chrome was out, it trounced Firefox all around. I switched back to Fx around that time. These days, Firefox's JavaScript performance is comparable if not better than Chrome's [0] and its extension ecosystem and extreme configurability make it a much better option than Chrome for me. The only reason I use Chrome now is to take advantage of the proprietary extensions that allow me to use Netflix or Flash on Linux. Mozilla has always and will always be a tinkerer's vendor. These people are not going to be offended when reasonable experiments are conducted, nor when reasonable experiments fail, as Firefox OS did. The biggest grudge I hold against Mozilla is really more about the community than the company itself, and that's the Brendan Eich debacle. [0] http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Loic 11y ago
I am sorry you are down voted because fundamentally you are right. If you have a trademark, you are obliged to handle the use of your trademark very carefully, these are the rules and this is not because you are an organisation supporting free software that you can escape these rules.
- ajsalminen 11y ago
  Why isn't this a problem for Linux? Or Perl, Python, Drupal or many of the other packages that exist under their trademarked names in Debian and other distributions?
  - perlgeek 11y ago
    There are several options: * The logos might be under a free license * The logos might not even be shipped (not a big deal for Perl and Python, which are primariliy command line applications) * The trademark protection only includes the name, not the logo, and so it doesn't force the owner to defend its usage to keep the trademark. For example https://www.drupal.com/trademark https://www.drupal.com/trademark mentions a drupal icon which is subject to traemark, and a logo, which is not (unfortunately the log link is a 404).
    - ajsalminen 11y ago
      Trademarks that are only for the name are actually handled differently? If that's the case it would explain it I suppose. First time I hear of this being a special case. Yeah, Drupal has the wordmark branding and the community branding as separate things. I just brought up these examples because all of them have Debian packages that apparently have no issues being named after the project but there are of course numerous others.
  - martius 11y ago
    Firefox is a brand present in a highly competitive market. It's a brand known by consumers who are used to associate a name and a logo to an experience and can easily get confused (such as people seeing the "blue E icon" as the way to "start google" for instance). Mozilla protected more agressively its Firefox brand to cope with malware-stuffed clones which were hijacking the name. Projects such as VLC or Android protect their brand too, Chrome is only available through official closed-source builds, many linux distributions only package chromium.

by vacri 11y ago

matzipan 11y ago

So which part of replacing the Firefox brand with Iceweasel is coherent branding?

yebyen 11y ago
It's not just replacing the Firefox brand, it's replacing the onus of responsibility for the package. When Debian packages your software, they insert their own patches, they do their own disparate issue tracking and release archive management, they are quite effectively a separate product. If they called it Firefox, by Debian, it would be equally damaging to the Mozilla mark (in a sense of trademark law.) If they didn't do their usual Debian thing with the patches and the release management, it would be similarly damaging to the Debian mark, so-to-speak. (All packages get this treatment, no upstream software release vendor gets special privileges.)
- davidgerard 11y ago
  This goes way back - I was a documentation volunteer in the run-up to the Mozilla 1.0 launch in 2002, and Debian did all manner of weird things to their Mozilla package that we then had to sort through to distinguish from the mozilla.org binaries (e.g. someone had to make a list of Debian Mozilla useragents so we weren't specifically checking their behaviour).
sp332 11y ago
Mozilla wants people to be able to trust the Firefox brand. They don't even use "Firefox" branding on their own nightly or dev builds. They only put it on software that's been through their own QA. So you're free to use the code, but they won't let you put the name or logo on any forks or even builds they haven't signed off on.
- epoch1970 11y ago
  I think at this point that the Firefox brand has been tarnished, unfortunately. For many average users, the term "Firefox" reminds them of the slow browser they used to use before switching to Chrome. For more advanced users, the term "Firefox" reminds them of the browser that includes ads (even if these are being removed), has unnecessary functionality built in (Pocket, Hello), and has undergone questionable UI changes (Australis). For web developers, the term "Firefox" reminds them of the extra effort they still need to expend to test their creations in a browser that fewer and fewer people are using. For others, the term "Firefox" will now remind them of this failed mobile OS project. "Firefox" as a brand had a great reputation 5 years ago. But that reputation has eroded away since then.
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    I disagree. Most "normal" users who used Firefox before Chrome came around are savvy enough to understand that software improves and evolves. There's no doubt that Chrome gave Firefox a much-needed shot in the arm. Many developers/advanced users, including myself, see Firefox as a bastion of freedom in what is otherwise a land grab by major OS vendors, an attempt to further increase their lock-in. Users remember Firefox as the browser that was so flexible, Firebug was possible, which sent every browser vendor into a tizzy to try to clone the featureset natively. Users remember Firefox as the browser that gives them control over their experience, unlike Chrome which babysits and won't let you interfere with Google's need to harvest data. The first 2 years that Chrome was out, it trounced Firefox all around. I switched back to Fx around that time. These days, Firefox's JavaScript performance is comparable if not better than Chrome's [0] and its extension ecosystem and extreme configurability make it a much better option than Chrome for me. The only reason I use Chrome now is to take advantage of the proprietary extensions that allow me to use Netflix or Flash on Linux. Mozilla has always and will always be a tinkerer's vendor. These people are not going to be offended when reasonable experiments are conducted, nor when reasonable experiments fail, as Firefox OS did. The biggest grudge I hold against Mozilla is really more about the community than the company itself, and that's the Brendan Eich debacle. [0] http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Loic 11y ago

I am sorry you are down voted because fundamentally you are right. If you have a trademark, you are obliged to handle the use of your trademark very carefully, these are the rules and this is not because you are an organisation supporting free software that you can escape these rules.

ajsalminen 11y ago
Why isn't this a problem for Linux? Or Perl, Python, Drupal or many of the other packages that exist under their trademarked names in Debian and other distributions?
- perlgeek 11y ago
  There are several options: * The logos might be under a free license * The logos might not even be shipped (not a big deal for Perl and Python, which are primariliy command line applications) * The trademark protection only includes the name, not the logo, and so it doesn't force the owner to defend its usage to keep the trademark. For example https://www.drupal.com/trademark https://www.drupal.com/trademark mentions a drupal icon which is subject to traemark, and a logo, which is not (unfortunately the log link is a 404).
  - ajsalminen 11y ago
    Trademarks that are only for the name are actually handled differently? If that's the case it would explain it I suppose. First time I hear of this being a special case. Yeah, Drupal has the wordmark branding and the community branding as separate things. I just brought up these examples because all of them have Debian packages that apparently have no issues being named after the project but there are of course numerous others.
- martius 11y ago
  Firefox is a brand present in a highly competitive market. It's a brand known by consumers who are used to associate a name and a logo to an experience and can easily get confused (such as people seeing the "blue E icon" as the way to "start google" for instance). Mozilla protected more agressively its Firefox brand to cope with malware-stuffed clones which were hijacking the name. Projects such as VLC or Android protect their brand too, Chrome is only available through official closed-source builds, many linux distributions only package chromium.