Bug#815006: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

[Mike Connor]

While I won't pretend to fully grok the full nuance of DFSG interpretation,
this is a relatively accurate summary of the current position, and I
believe we're on the right side of DFSG at present from a licensing/policy
standpoint.  (Back in the day, out licensing of the marks themselves was
problematic, along with Firefox having a EULA, from a DFSG standpoint.
Happily, we were able to resolve both issues some time ago.)

The one point I'll clarify is that this isn't even something I'd call an
exception.  We have always sought to permit and enable modifications that
do not negatively impact users (in terms of security/privacy, user
expectations of Firefox stability/behaviour/compatibility, etc).  Other
distros have been following this process for more than a decade, so it's
definitely not a special case for Debian.  I'm thrilled that we're finally
making this step forward with Debian.  If other distros have questions or
concerns, I'm happy to provide answers.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 5:35 AM, Wouter Verhelst <w at uter.be> wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 07:48:25AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> > On Wed, 17 Feb 2016 16:55:42 +0100 Sylvestre Ledru wrote:
> >
> > > = About the Debian specific patches =
> >
> > Mozilla's trademark policy isn't clear about how much modification
> > requires Mozilla's written consent. Any written consent except for a
> > clarification to Mozilla's trademark guidelines would be specific to
> > Debian and thus would be in violation of DFSG item 8. Debian cannot
> > make agreements with Mozilla about this that don't also apply to all
> > distributors of modified versions of Mozilla's software.
> >
> > What is the plan to solve this dilemma?
>
> I don't see a dilemma.
>
> If Mozilla were saying "Debian is a big player, so we're giving them an
> exception", you'd have a point. But that's not what they're saying.
>
> Instead, they're saying "we've observed Debian's past behaviour, and
> consider that what they've been doing thus far is something we don't see
> as violating our trademark". That isn't Debian-specific; as long as
> other people could, in theory, get the same exception, we're good wrt
> DFSG#8 -- even if nobody ends up trying to get that same exception. It
> would still be the case if Mozilla were to reject the use of their
> trademark by some other party, if that other party were to do something
> really egregious.
>
> Of course, this is a balancing act, and something we (Debian) should
> carefully monitor. But as long as the above still holds, I don't see a
> problem wrt DFSG#8.
>
> --
> < ron> I mean, the main *practical* problem with C++, is there's like a
> dozen
>        people in the world who think they really understand all of its
> rules,
>        and pretty much all of them are just lying to themselves too.
>  -- #debian-devel, OFTC, 2016-02-12
>
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