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Posted on 10/09/2006 7:47:29 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
Excerpt:
At the moment, I'm ticked off because the Debian community's recent hissy-fit over the Mozilla Corp.'s trademarked Firefox logo has led them, and others, to forking the Firefox code to avoid the use of the logo.
Gnutella, part of the Free Software Foundation's GNU Project, is creating "the 'GNU/Linux' version of same, to be dubbed 'IceWeasel.'" This may, or may not, become the logo-free version of Firefox that Debian will ship in its next distribution.
Regardless of how this turns out, the Firefox "bug" has been removed from Debian.
What are these people thinking!
It will mean more work for programmers. It will mean more work for Firefox, or should I say IceWeasel, extension developers. It will be what all forks are: a major pain for both users and developers.
(Excerpt) Read more at desktoplinux.com ...
They're expected to be one of the very first versions of Linux to switch to the Firefox clones, since they are themselves are a free copy of something else, Debian Linux.
I was under the impression that no one "sold" any open source software, per se (except paying for delivery of the media and some pretty packaging, or things like that). What you pay for is support from a branded company for a branded version of the open source code. I would go pay a company like the one that makes Firefox if my company decides to make it our standard browser (currently 30,000 seats worldwide). We already do this with Red Hat Linux. Installing and using the software is free. We pay them for support. That's the business model.
I ain't paying the folks at GNU squat and, even if I did, they wouldn't be providing me the kind of support I require. Red Hat does a very nice job for us on the servers we use it on.
There's 522 versions of Linux according to this list, I'm sure that's not all of them, either. Won't it be great if you get 522 versions of Firefox too.
http://lwn.net/Distributions/
OSS PING
If you are interested in the OSS ping list please mail me
True, but he can't make it GPL. Remember, in the past you didn't have a problem with non-GPL OSS licenses.
These forked versions will start replacing Firefox in many if not most versions of Linux by default.
And they will win over and replace Firefox if they're better, and in the end we'll be left with the best software. I love competition.
Not all forks are bad. Kernel forks are a useful tool for developing new tech until it's ready to be merged back into the main tree. I think this one is stupid though. Typical leftists, shooting themselves in the foot.
There quite a number of "consevatives" on this site who think that stealing software is OK.
I second the nomination!
Oh, my God, it's the copyleftists, and they have sporks!
Run for your lives!
You can't, AFAIK. Firefox is run by the non-profit 501(c)3 Mozilla foundation. You can make a nice tax-deductible donation though, which will improve features, code quality and support.
Open Synaptic, click on Iceweasel, choose Mark for Complete Removal, apply.
Download Firefox from mozilla.com
Unzip and run.
2 minutes, problem solved.
He's not against "stealing" software -- that is, taking open source software to use somewhere else according to the license. He is against the GPL's terms that if you take (make a derivative work based on the software), you have to give back your changes to the author as payment. He's fine with the "take all you want as long as you leave the attribution" BSD license.
Or you can just have both versions installed, as I would imagine they would do so in different directories. It wouldn't make much sense for SporkWeasel to be installed in the "firefox" directory. I've got both Firefox 1.5.0.7 and firefox 2.0 rc2 installed. Which one gets called is determined by a symlink.
No I simply said just because you claim you need open source you can't justify using the radical leftist Stallman's license, you could use something else less radical and more business friendly. But now it appears Stallman is going to taint other open source products, and without enforcing software patents there's nothing anyone can do to stop him.
That pic is great! LOL
This obviously isn't about competition or making something better, it's clearly about leftists who refuse to use something simply because it has a trademark, but since it is open source they can make a free copy and put their name on it instead.
The unavailability of contracted support is one of the reasons we haven't switched to Firefox or any of the other similar browsers. We turn a blind eye to folks who want to use it, but we only provide support for IE (much to my chagrin). There are possibilities in the future that I can't discuss, but corporate America just can't depend on open source without contracted support that we can measure and count on. And we're not staffing up to be able to support it ourselves. Quite the opposite, in fact.
As I recall, you can run Firefox from anywhere you want. I've run it from my home directory before. All you have to do is copy and paste shortcuts for your plugins. Works just fine.
Heck, you could probably even put it on a jump drive this way...in fact, I think I did that once, too.
And you'll notice by their childish behavior they don't like it being pointed out. They're mostly college kids or still in their 20's, can't see past their own little world.
From a user perspective, the license needs no justification, because there is zero restriction on the use of GPL software. From a developer perspective, I respect the choice of the copyright holder. Personally, I have released my own software, but it wasn't under the GPL.
But now it appears Stallman is going to taint other open source products
Here's the magical part of the GPL, and of the like clauses in other OSS licenses. What would be cool is Stallman's ideological followers putting in thousands of man-hours improving their fork, only to have Mozilla re-incorporate those improvements into the main Mozilla-branded version under the GPL-like give-back clause of the MPL. Stallman might as well have handed the Mozilla foundation a bunch of cash.
Mozilla wouldn't have that ability under the BSD license. Stallman's own GPL,in that it inspired those terms of the MPL, is what is keeping him from "stealing" Firefox.
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