Author: Jamie Webb Date: To: hampshire Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Iceweasel
On Sun, Nov 12, 2006 at 10:42:28PM +0000, Alasdair Ross wrote: > As I understand it (and I may well be wrong), IceWeasel *is*
> Firefox....just without the branding. The problem lies with the fact that
> the logo/name is not free in the GNU sense. Therefore Debian have decided
> to provide a truly free version for their distribution. I believe the code
> is the same but the branding has just been removed/replaced.
Not quite. The whole reason this ridiculous business came up (or at
least a large part of it) is because Debian wasn't prepared to put
their modifications through mozilla.org in order to get permission to
use the Firefox name. Those changes are almost certainly all small and
related to Debian integration rather than anything that would affect a
Web designer, but they are there.
> I agree to some extent with your comment related to web designers and the
> many differences between distributions, however it is more the number of
> browsers that would cause problems rather than distributions themselves. Do
> all Mozilla browsers not use the same Gecko engine though? If so then I
> guess this begins to alleviate some of the issues.
Yeah, I think the effects of this are largely to do with PR rather
than anything practical.
<rant>
IceWeasel is the result of the kind of idiotic zealotry that the world
would be far better off without. The Firefox trademark is protected
for some pretty obvious reasons (and incidentally similar is true of
the Linux trademark). It wouldn't kill Debian to play nice like the
other distros. So Firefox as distributed isn't DFSG-free? Big deal.
Isn't it sufficient that they had the /ability/ to make a 'truly free'
fork? Did they actually have to go and do it? All they've done is
create a potentially-damaging political mess where none needed to be.
</rant>
