Comment 354 for bug 269656

Vadim Peretokin wrote 14 minutes ago:

> I don't think "Iceweasel" is a great name, and to begin with, "Firefox"
> isn't either. That, and since all Iceweasel does is strip the Firefox
> trademark - essentially stripping the credit of Mozilla that they worked on
> the browser (and they *do* own the trademark, and *do* work on it. Just
> their way of giving them credit is unacceptable).
>
> I'm not sure why is Debian encouraging the concept of taking someone's work
> and rebranding it. It strips away the credit of the original authors. And
> then they complain about Ubuntu... hypocrisy.

Are you sure you understand the principles of open source software? By releasing it under GPL, Mozilla say that they don't mind if someone takes their work and rebrands it, or else they would have released it as normal proprietary software, maybe given free as in beer but not as in freedom. And it is indeed the same thing that Ubuntu does with Debian, Canonical admits it, they take Debian Sid every six months, make some changes and then release it as Ubuntu. It is acceptable and it is desirable - if you don't like "stripping away the credit of the original authors", then there is plenty of proprietary software that insures just that. This kind of logic can NOT be transferred to GNU/Linux from users addicted to proprietary software and its tactics, and that's why this issue is such a big deal.