Recent news are confirming that Debian's choice to not comply with Mozilla's trademark policy and rename Firefox to Iceweasel was a good one.

When the issue came up two years ago, most people focused on the wrong issue of Mozilla demanding to review the patches we apply, and while two years ago that would have been an actual burden, I must say they have improved in the last months on the patch review (and even inclusion) side. If they had changed the license for their logo (which was the actual uncircumventable problem), I might have considered changing the name back.

That would obviously have been a mistake, as Mozilla has found another creative way to badly behave. I'm so glad we chose the Iceweasel road.

Now, speaking of this infamous EULA, I filed a bug a while ago, because the EULA would also show up on unbranded builds, which was "resolved" invalid. Apparently, the main reason for keeping the EULA is because of the use of services that require an EULA, such as safebrowsing. The only terms related to this that I can see are:

5. WEBSITE INFORMATION SERVICES. Mozilla and its contributors, licensors and partners work to provide the most accurate and up-to-date phishing and malware information. However, they cannot guarantee that this information is comprehensive and error-free: some risky sites may not be identified, and some safe sites may be identified in error.

Does that really require to read the rest of the legal boilerplate ?

2008-09-15 08:07:59+0900

firefox

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