Re: What is Epiphany's role now?

[Evandro Fernandes Giovanini <efgiovanini gmail com>]

Em Ter, 2007-04-03 �10:57 -0400, Christopher Aillon escreveu:
> Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> > On Mar 31, 2007, at 3:45 AM, Christopher Aillon wrote:
> >> Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> >>> True, Internet Explorer wasn't Free Software, but neither is Firefox 
> >>> unless you debrand it.
> >> Pet peeve #27: Comparing "branding" to "software".
> > 
> > If there is something specifically wrong with my statement, then say so.
> > Branding is highly relevant to this discussion, because Murray began it 
> > by saying "The Firefox brand was just something [Linux distributors] 
> > couldn't do without".
> > 
> > (I understand both sides of the trademark argument and I'm not trying 
> > to dredge it up again, but that nobody has found a good solution to the 
> > problem doesn't make it go away. For example, that Firefox is not Free 
> > Software 
> 
> I've heard several reasons so far as to why Firefox is not free 
> (offline, not necessarily in this thread).
> 
> - Non free branding forces people to verify change with upstream.  In 
> order to get the branding, a build flag must explicitly be turned on. 
> It is _not_ branded by default.  If this is an issue for people, do not 
> turn on the build flag.
> 
> - The branding is distributed in the source tarball by default.  I do 
> see this would be an issue and I've been trying to explain to MoCo that 
> they should consider putting these in a separate tarball, but it would 
> help if distributors who care about this would bring that up to them 
> using their Ubuntu/Debian hats or whatever.  So far, I keep getting "how 
> do you know what Ubuntu/Debian wants?  I've never heard this complaint 
> before from them!"
> 
> - If the fact that by default the plugin finder service points to 
> something that will recommend non-free-plugins (e.g. flash) is an issue, 
> that's a preference that can be dealt with with a distro-pref.js file.
> 
> - If it's the fact that the source tarball ALSO contains random windows 
> binaries, the souces are commited in mozilla CVS so the software is free 
> indeed, just somehow the binaries got added to the tarball.  Reporting 
> them would help remove them from the tarballs.
> 
> If someone could detail what needs to be added to or removed from the 
> source in order to get people to stop complaining about it being 
> non-free software, I would love to be made aware and get this resolved 
> upstream.
> 

There's a full list here:
http://gnuzilla.gnu.org/fulltree/iceweasel-1.5.0.7-g2/remove.nonfree

The problem is that the Mozilla Corporation doesn't allow people to
remove some of these files (specifically, the ones with the Firefox
logo), but they are still not free according to the DFSG.

If you could convince them to enforce their trademarks without having to
resort to copyright law that would be a big step in solving the issues
the GNU and Debian projects have with Mozilla.

Cheers,
Evandro