Comment 536 for bug 269656

Revision history for this message
Remco (remco47) wrote :

To Mark, all,

Well, I have been making too much a point of this. The reason for that is that the replies I got did not show they understood my main problem with the situation. No, I don't misunderstand trademark; trademark does impose limits on the Firefox® product -- and Firefox® is a different product from Iceweasel/Icecat/abrowser or "the code". (I use the ®-character to distinguish between the two products if necessary.)

I am perfectly OK with using whatever variation of Firefox myself, and I do think Mozilla makes a beautiful browser. I do think Mozilla is a "Good Thing" in the scheme of things, but I'm not so happy with the consequences of their trademark. I'm not against trademarks as a whole, but it has its problems.

And the reason I'd like to see Firefox® in restricted, is only because the branded product is more restricted than free software. It's a matter of sound classification, knowing what you get, so the user can choose his degree of freedom orthodoxity (is that even a word?).

For full disclosure:
* I did suggest earlier in this thread that we could switch to Epiphany. This was before the EULA had disappeared. This was mostly fueled by technical reasons. It integrates better by design.
* I also suggested that it's quite OK for services (free or non-free) to be available in Firefox. Freedom is a choice of the user as far as I'm concerned. And at some point free software has to interface with a non-free world.
* I'm not a developer of free software. I'm just a user, bug reporter and a computer science student planning on making a lot of free software in the future.
* Recovering from minor surgery, I might not have had the best mood ever. Sorry about that. ;-)

As far as I'm concerned, the matter is closed. Well, fixed.

Remco

PS. as long as we're admitting fandoms... big fan of y'all, Mark, pj, and the whole community! :) The fact that the hierarchy of communication is completely flat makes it very exciting to be here!