Comment 537 for bug 269656

Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> I wasn't part of that decision, so I'm only repeating what I heard,
> which is that Debian simply preferred not to be obliged to discuss their
> changes with Mozilla. I don't think there was any specific change which
> Debian wanted and Mozilla felt was problematic, it was more that the
> idea of having to maintain an ongoing relationship was not attractive to
> the specific developers involved at Debian. And that's a perfectly
> reasonable position, too.

That's not accurate. There were at least two sticking points where what
Mozilla insisted upon simply conflicted with the Debian Free Software
Guidelines. It was not that Debian "simply preferred" not to work with
Mozilla on an ongoing basis.

The two major problems were: 1) The Firefox (etc) logos have a copyright
license that is not DFSG-free, so Debian would not be able to use those
without a change in those licenses;[1] and 2) while Mozilla was willing
to make a Debian-specific exemption that entitled Debian to make
modifications to the code and still call the products
Firefox/Thunderbird/etc., Debian-specific licenses also violate DFSG #8,
because Debian has to be able to pass down to its users all the rights
that it has.[2] Debian cannot allow special exemptions that apply only
to Debian or this would leave its users in the lurch with less freedom
than Debian itself has.

One would think that Ubuntu, the organization that arguably benefits
from this Debian policy more than anyone else, would at least be
cognizant of it.

Brian

[1] See, e.g.,
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/identity-guidelines/firefox.html
[2] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines