Comment 280 for bug 269656

+1 to confirm that this is a bug.

+1 for the solution to ship Iceweasel (or renamed "abrowser") as default. No EULA as default please. By all means have Firefox (TM) plus EULA in Multiverse.

This strikes me as an Ubuntu user (and advocate to my friends and family, many of whom now run it solely due to my persuasion) as a pivotal moment in Ubuntu's evolution. It's that difficult moment where you ask yourself whether, and how much, to compromise in order to reach a laudable goal. That goal is clearly bug #1. But replacing Microsoft's market share with something equivalent would, in the end, make the whole exercise futile. Ubuntu is not remotely there yet in MS equivalence (in market share or "badness"). But it is a slippery slope. Proprietary drivers I understand as a (hopefully temporary) necessary evil: some hardware will simply not work without them. But an unnecessary EULA on a key component? That's a step too far I feel.

I also feel that communication of this change has been poor: the first I knew about it was when the EULA appeared on an update to the Intrepid install I had solely for bug testing purposes. I thin the reason that this bug report is being polluted with a philosophical discussion is that the change was not opened up for discussion in a more appropriate forum before its implementation. And as an aside, to our sabdfl, please ensure that you don't lose the "b"! I, and may others, hugely appreciate what you have done so far: please help us keep the faith.

As regards Mozilla's behaviour, I haven't had a chance to try Chrome yet (all my 3 computers run Ubuntu uniquely). But I was already slightly predisposed against it due to its EULA and the fact that I trusted Mozilla more than Google in the "do no evil" stakes. Now I'm not so sure that I should trust either, which means that pure functionality will win. Yes, they have a legal right to enforce trademark protection. But enforcing your rights to the death is not always a wise move. And IAAL, BTW.