Open Source goes Commercial?

esavior · Post by **esavior** » February 10th, 2004, 10:12 am

No I got your point, I just see it as an issue.
The question you need to ask yourself is who downloads non standard builds? I am going to guess my grandfather isnt going to be downloading a optimized build, if he wants firefox he goes to mozilla.org. People who are downloading optimized/nonstandard know a bit more than your average joe, and know not download firefox off of xxxwarezhouze.nu

So I just dont think its going to protect end users.

rmjb · Post by **rmjb** » February 10th, 2004, 10:24 am

Perhaps your grandfather won't go to mozilla.org but rather searches in yahoo for it and inadvertently ends up on muzilla.org. It could happen. But then you're saying he still wont know the difference, but you will when you watch his "Fx Browser" with a blue flame instead of a fox being run over, and you'll be able to tell him. If the artwork was not protected no one would be the wiser.

I think the trademark is a good idea and I don't see what the problems is. Of course people want to belong to this movement that is Firefox so providing sanctioned free artwork and a sanctioned free name should get arround that. There's pain now cause those things apparently are not avialable at this moment, but hopefully they will be soon, so that guy that went back to IE (shudder) will come back to the fox, he'll start back to use the browser reloaded; he'll take back the web; he'll get back to web browsing, redifined. (Okay, I think I've killed it).

- rmjb

Dougieha · Post by **Dougieha** » February 10th, 2004, 11:05 am

Ok...I agree with what rmjb said, and I think the ultimate solution to this problem is for the developers/branding team to provide, as rmjb said, "sanctioned free artwork and a sanctioned free name," but with clear ties to Firefox somehow, so as to mark un-official builds as being un-official but as still being Firefox. That seems to be the only clear way to make everyone happy again.

Dougieha

TheOneKEA · Post by **TheOneKEA** » February 10th, 2004, 11:06 am

That's right. That's exactly what they need to do.

esavior · Post by **esavior** » February 10th, 2004, 11:13 am

The whole thing with the name makes things over complicated, if you go to the build forums builders are trying to come up with names to use. If multiple builds didnt confuse people before, 10 more names will.

Me: Oh I use Firedoggy.
Friend: I have heard of firefox, whats firedoggy?
Me: Well its like firefox but they cant call it that.
Friend: What about Firemonkey Firedolphin Donkeyfirez Fireleaf Fireroxxor Fireloops NFX FXB VFFXB
Me: Same thing.

Phobeus · Post by **Phobeus** » February 10th, 2004, 11:22 am

That's exactly the extreme danger I see in this development. A new branding shall not only show "yeah, this is the right/originial firefox", it shall say that this is part of the movement itself. I really doesn't see the clue, why a branded copyright Firefox can't be named by unofficial builds with an text string in the about "This is an official build by mozilla fondation" and to force those who build unofficial to put an "This is an unofficial build, for the official move to" xyz. I think that some conclusion into this site would take a lot of frustration by everone and most people would be happy. I think it would be much better for the evangelism than having several people running arround telling everybody about "their favorite" browser. "What the hell is firestorm/firestipe/MyMozillaBrowser?" "It is an unofficial build of firefox?" We need to run in the same direction, even if we are praising the same product. :-/

Robin_reala · Post by **Robin_reala** » February 10th, 2004, 11:59 am

I think the trouble is that the people who are using unofficial nightlies are the people who are the most dedicated to the project. By removing the name from the builds you're metaphorically removing unofficial builds from the project and by association removing the nightly testers from the project.

All that's happened is that the Moz Foundation has succeeded in stirring up a lot of bad blood with its removal of official imagery. This won't affect people who'd want to use the name for illegitimate purposes (they'll just steal the images), all it does is isolate enthusiasts.

TheOneKEA · Post by **TheOneKEA** » February 10th, 2004, 12:13 pm

Robin_reala wrote:I think the trouble is that the people who are using unofficial nightlies are the people who are the most dedicated to the project. By removing the name from the builds you're metaphorically removing unofficial builds from the project and by association removing the nightly testers from the project.

All that's happened is that the Moz Foundation has succeeded in stirring up a lot of bad blood with its removal of official imagery. This won't affect people who'd want to use the name for illegitimate purposes (they'll just steal the images), all it does is isolate enthusiasts.

I agree with you on this. I really hope it doesn't come to that though.

Robin_reala · Post by **Robin_reala** » February 10th, 2004, 12:16 pm

Come to what?

rmjb · Post by **rmjb** » February 10th, 2004, 12:20 pm

Robin_reala wrote:all it does is isolate enthusiasts.

Sadly this does seem to be the case.

If any of the Fx devs are still reading this thread perhaps a sit down (pow wow) with these said enthusiasts should be had to work out an amicable solution.

- rmjb

jedbro · Post by **jedbro** » February 10th, 2004, 12:28 pm

Thumper wrote:
bengoodger wrote:If anyone replies to this with "But the graphics are still not OPEN SOURCE" then I will request you please remove any software from your computer that contain trademarked graphics with restrictions, such as Red Hat Linux, and especially Microsoft Windows or MacOS X.

People don't compile Red Hat Linux or Windows themselves. I assume this means that any OS which doesn't get an official Firefox binary is to be dropped from the source tree, given that unofficial builds merely dilute the "branding".

This decision is ridiculous. I assume the Mozilla Foundation is going to start going after the ISPs of anyone who includes the artwork in unofficial builds then?

- Chris

You obviously have no idea as to what you are talking about.
Your linux assumption is completly wrong, as are others.

Thumper wrote:It means the official builds aren't truly Free. Firefox is now a proprietary binary with limited rights granted to its use. This
is a fairly hefty deal for some.

- Chris

What you smokn' man? I want some of that

Aren't truley free? You must have been asleep that last year.
Do you really think the Default Theme is FREE?
If you head over to the authors page ( http://www.quadrone.org/faq/) you will find you can only use the QUTE theme with permission from the author, and yet you never bitched before!
Arvid has a reason to protect his hard work creating qute, this applies equally to mozilla.org and their products (which use Arvid's COPYRIGHTED artwork.

Arvid wrote:Under what conditions may I use your graphics and other material?
Unless otherwise stated, it is copyrighted and for personal use only. Contact me if you want to use them for other purposes, including theme ports.

The WHOLE point is mozilla.org wants the consumer to have a wonderful product that people can learn to love and trust.
You can't do this without having a name, and not letting your name get smeared around your back.

While I understand the confusion that many people have with this, I think that
1) Many of you don't understand (hence I invite you to re-read through this thread and Ben's and Bart's postings)
2) Relax and think about it.
3) Think about all the other products both open source and closed source and think about their TRADEMARK policy's.
4) If you find a better way of doing this, discuss it here, and let your voice be heard.

Sorry for being a bit harsh, but bitching and flaming about things you don't really know about or understand in context, does not help anyone is this community.

(this is not directed to you *personally* Chris)

David James · Post by **David James** » February 10th, 2004, 12:29 pm

Here's the question that Linux distributions are going to be asking themselves and mozilla.org in short order:

Can Debian, Red Hat, Suse et al use the Firefox icon and the name "Firefox" when they repackage it in .deb, .rpm etc format for redistribution?

This is quite important since Firefox (like Mozilla) is likely to work a heck of a lot better repackaged than simply downloaded as the configuration scripts can be used to set various environment variables better (thus avoiding mailto: problems as well as possibly plugin issues and the like).

If not than I could well see Debian either sin-binning Firefox altogether or (hopefully) renaming it and assigning it a new icon (probably the Debian swirl).

Robin_reala · Post by **Robin_reala** » February 10th, 2004, 12:31 pm

On the Qute theme not being free - that's true but it doesn't mean that the Moz Foundation have removed it from CVS does it?

jedbro · Post by **jedbro** » February 10th, 2004, 12:32 pm

rmjb wrote:
Robin_reala wrote:all it does is isolate enthusiasts.

Sadly this does seem to be the case.

If any of the Fx devs are still reading this thread perhaps a sit down (pow wow) with these said enthusiasts should be had to work out an amicable solution.

- rmjb

While this is sad, and may be the case, I think these said enthusiasts should sit down and think about this.
I don't see why it would be so much harder to Comile a new version of FireFox with the only difference being it contains a
"Community Build Logo" and a slightly different name i.e. "Jed's FireFox" or "FireFox community build".
I really see no reason mozilla.org would object to something along the lines of that.

True, no "community build logos" exist yet, that takes time, and you have been invited to help out.

jedbro · Post by **jedbro** » February 10th, 2004, 12:39 pm

David James wrote:Here's the question that Linux distributions are going to be asking themselves and mozilla.org in short order:
Can Debian, Red Hat, Suse et al use the Firefox icon and the name "Firefox" when they repackage it in .deb, .rpm etc format for redistribution?.

If you read ben and barts comments above, you will see that this is not an issue.
They said they will probably work out an easy way for distributors to keep all the trandmark artwork and have that distribution be an officially supported one.

Robin_reala wrote:On the Qute theme not being free - that's true but it doesn't mean that the Moz Foundation have removed it from CVS does it?

You are correct. If that happened, imagine how much MORE moaning and groaning there would be

On another point, we are talking about an ICON and ABOUT SCREEN, I still don't see what the big deal is.

People forget this is being done to PROTECT the users.
I personally wouldn't want you re-distributing my QuickNote extension using my artwork and name if I wasn't sure about the quality of the re-distribution. But heck, the code is over at mozdev and GPL'd, so feel free to grab it, re-distribute it, but clearly make it known that it is not an official release by me, and the best way of doing so is via the artwork. (window icon and about screen).