Re: [Hampshire] Iceweasel

On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 01:21:30PM +0000, Jamie Webb wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 03:06:50AM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
> [snipped gratuitously to keep length down]
> > Do you not understand that Debian cannot legally provide their own
> > security patches to Firefox?
>
> The browser world is very sensitive about the security thing. Mozilla
> need to ensure that what gets called Firefox is the most secure they
> can make it. Attempting to do backports of security fixes just to
> satisfy Debian versioning policy is asking for trouble.

Works for every other package in Debian. And works very well
judging by the overall quality.

> > Nice of you to explain to the people who care about Free software
> > how their values are meaningless to you. Would it not be possible
> > to live and let live, or must they be forced to give up their own
> > values for the sake of convenience of those who don't agree?
>
> Values are generally a problem when they get in the way of common
> sense. The iGNUcious business, joke or not, is... unfortunate.

You've yet to explain how this whole fiasco is Debian's fault and
how Debian's actions defy common sense. Also if you find that them
upholding their core principles is not common sense then again I
have to ask why you are using the distribution.

> > There was me thinking that diversity was good...
>
> Often. If it's real diversity.

How is multiple teams of developers working to fix problems not more
diverse than making it so that only Mozilla corp can do any real
development? Come on, this is open source 101 here.

> > You don't feel that the situation was brought on by Mozilla corp making
> > legal threats then?
> >
> > What would you suggest Debian have done differently in response to
> > that?
>
> They could've complied with Mozilla's requests for them to distribute
> a more standard package some time previously, before the legal threats
> were made.

If you can't modify the software yourself and redistribute your
changes, it's not free software. Debian distributes free software.

There is no possible way to comply with Mozilla's requests and still
distribute Firefox named as Firefox.

Next suggestion please...

> It's Mozilla's software after all.

Am I being trolled here? Do you seriously not get why it's
essential to the whole ethos of FLOSS to have the right to fork a
project? What if this were XFree86 we were talking about and not
Firefox?

> Free software may be all about sharing, and the right to share,
> but that doesn't mean the wishes of authors shouldn't be respected
> if possible. That's just politeness, which is an important part of
> community.

So in your view, being polite is more important than the provisions
of the open source license, such as the right to distribute your own
modifications?

If you're expecting people to just "be nice" and say "oh bother"
well that isn't going to work too well in the real world is it.

> Incidentally, Mozilla aren't the only upstream provider that is pretty
> annoyed with the way Debian behaves; they are just the only ones to do
> something about it. The Apache project has complained that Debian's
> non-standard packaging is a support headache for them, and makes
> Apache look bad when users can't get it to work. They also want
> Debian, if they insist on making changes, to be far more clear to
> users that they are not using 'official' Apache (yes, it's not just
> Debian, but they are singled out for particular attention).

Every major vendor complains about every major distributor's
packaging style. It's been going on for years, only the names
change. If people don't like it they are free to go to the vendor
directly, or a different distribution; let the market decide!

I fail to see how it has any bearing on this discussion, which is
about you whining at Debian for doing something that Mozilla corp.
forced them to do, and you not yet being able to come up with a
suggested course of action that would even be legal for Debian to
do.

Andy