There seems to have been some controversy over the Mozilla proprietary artwork and the decision by the Debian and GNU projects to fork the popular Firefox browser. Many other online blogs are talking about IceWeasel and saying some many interesting things (this probably wont be one of them).
Most of the blogs seem to be stating reasons of stopping the GNUzilla project.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but to be honest, I really wish some of these bloggers would spend 10 minutes checking a few simple facts before they post.
My title is a link to Wikipedia's article on IceWeasel where I feel everyone can get a few of these facts:
"The name IceWeasel was coined to refer to Mozilla Firefox during a debate within the Debian Project in 2004 and 2005. Mozilla enforces trademarks vigorously and claims the right to deny the use of the name "Firefox" to unofficial builds. Distributions that do not have this permission must compile the Firefox source with an option enabled that gives Firefox a generic name and does not use the official logo or other artwork. Debian was given permission to use the trademarks, and adopted the Firefox name. However, because the artwork in Firefox has a proprietary license which is not compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, the logo remained generic...Now first off, I would like to share my opinion that Mozilla has every right to trademark their logo and name. Furthermore, I could argue this is something they definitely should do. When I use Firefox, it is nice to know that the code was checked by Mozilla security experts to ensure its stability and usefulness, and has not been tampered with by another party.
In September 2006, Mozilla backed out of their trademark agreement with the Debian Project, telling them that it must use both the name and logo together, or use neither. The "IceWeasel" name was revived in the Debian community as a possible name to give the Debian version of Firefox, and became widespread in referring to Debian's packages. The Gnuzilla project adopted the name for a Firefox distribution using free artwork, which Debian began supporting."
On the other hand, Debian has an obligation to use completely free software and make Mozilla software as stable on their distribution as possible. The security programmers at the Debian and GNU projects are also excellent at what they do.
The real questions here are more simple than people want to make them:
1. Should anyone be allowed to create a fork of Firefox?
2. Should a fork be allowed if it only changes the name and logo?
At least one of these questions is a good one. The first question however, I hope most people can agree that anyone can and should be allowed to make a fork of even the most popular of open source software. What is the point of having access to the source code if anyone outside of Mozilla is publicly ridiculed for using it?
Thats right, I hope you can see being open source is what made Mozilla possible in the first place. Did anyone forget Firefox is a fork of the Mozilla Suite? Did you not remember that Mozilla Suite code was carried over from Netscape Navigator. Well its true, Firefox is a fork of other open source code.
Mozilla also did many things to ensure the reuse of this code, allowing forks.
I can also point out IceWeasel is by far not the first fork of Firefox. Many web browsers use the easily embeddable Gecko rendering engine besides Firefox, and several of these browsers are direct forks of Firefox using primarily Firefox code. Several Firefox forks include Camino, SeaMonkey, Flock, and even Netscape.
Now, to try and tackle the harder second question. I must agree here is possibly a great open source debacle. Mozilla is only defending their right to have copyrighted logo and trademarked name (as they should). The reason that other free software projects are afraid to use the logo (and name) is a legal issue, agreed?
I remember a time when I first heard about Firefox and it was not called that at all. It seems Mozilla had named the new browser project 'Phoenix' and they were changing the name to 'Firebird' because of legal trademark issues. Then they had to change the name again from 'Firebird' to Firefox as it is known today, again they changed the name and logo because of a simple trademark dispute. So prehaps changing the name and logo is something you might have to do just to keep an open idea alive? In the case of Firefox itself, the answer is yes!
To take this a step further, several blogs point out how it is really only changing the name and logo and hence should not be considered a fork.
Wikipedia, again, begs to differ:
"Iceweasel is a full fork of Firefox, rather than a renamed package, allowing free software distributions a single point upstream for development, but intends to remain synchronized to the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox releases... Improvements to Firefox will be adopted by IceWeasel, in addition to IceWeasel's own development."The homepage of GNUzilla & IceWeasel states what these changes are:
- Some sites refer to zero-size images on other hosts to keep track of cookies. When IceWeasel detects this mechanism it blocks cookies from the site hosting the zero-length image file. (It is possible to re-enable such a site by removing it from the blocked hosts list.)
- Other sites rewrite the host name in links redirecting the user to another site, mainly to "spy" on clicks. When this behavior is detected, IceWeasel shows a message alerting the user.
My last point is to address bloggers who feel IceWeasel will hurt Firefox market share and help Internet Explorer. This makes little sense to me.
I would have to believe that IceWeasel will be more popular than other Firefox forks such as Flock or Netscape. It could also be argued that other browsers like K-meleon and Opera also hurt Firefox market share. However, I am not clear on how IceWeasel is going to effect Internet Explorer in any way as IE is only on the Microsoft Windows platform and IceWeasel is only available on GNU/Linux systems. I cannot see someone dumping Microsoft Windows for Debian GNU/Linux simply because they want to try IceWeasel.
For people who still feel Firefox is little more than a project designed to beat down IE market share, let me say I have personally always used more than one web browser. I was using several web browsers in Winodws (including Mozilla) before I ever used Linux. Today, if anything, I use even more web browsers in both Linux and Windows. Most computers I use have at least 6 browsers installed as there are features and advantages I like in each. I do plan to use IceWeasel more in the future, but not because of market share or at the cost of using Firefox less, as I plan to continue using a stable Firefox product as well. I currently also have 3 Mozilla nightly builds (Bon Echo, Minefield, and SeaMonkey) on my Ubuntu box and plan to keep testing other nightly builds as they become available. IceWeasel does not change my browsing habbits.
IceWeasel is here to stay, so I hope the open-source community can let this one slide.
As Chris K realistically commented on one blog:
"...Both sides (Mozilla and Debian) seemingly had no choices concerning recent events. Debian’s guidelines insist that packages have the ability to be modified, including icons. From the Mozilla side, trademark law does not allow making exceptions.Well said, Chris, I couldnt agree much more.
IceWeasel actually has some history as an alternative name for Firefox, so it seems to be a logical choice.
I, for one, look forward to using IceWeasel, especially since the alternative would have forced Debian to submit any code changes to Firefox whatsoever to the Mozilla foundation and wait for approval — including security updates.
I think the Debian organization made the only sane choice they possibly could. Frankly I don’t think either organization is thrilled with having this all happen. Chock this one up to Greek Tradgedy."
I hope I stuck to the facts and did not let my opinions (or alternative browsers) get in the way of the truth.
