[Golden Eagle]

Looks like Firefox is being "forked" by the free software radicals at GNU, who believe all software should be free. Firefox should have known they were running that risk when they used an open source license. If they lose a few key programmers to GNU, it could be bye bye Firefox.

[Golden Eagle]

The "beauty" of open source? Leftists like Richard Stallman can rip your code and put you out of business?

[magellan]

It's not "open source madness", its "GPL madness". Mozilla is under and open source license (MPL). Just like the Apache webserver is under an open source license (the Apache License). I wonder if these GNU zealots will rewrite Apache under GPL. BIND is not GPL. Will they rewrite that? What about Sendmail (not GPL). What about XFree86 (not GPL)?

[Turbopilot]

Well, I'm quite happy with Firefox the way it is, so it's unfortunate if some nuts who want to modify the bloody icon screw it up for everyone else. Like the author, I too hate fundamentalists.

I did get a kick out of one comment from the article, though:

I want Linux to be as user-friendly as Mac OS X

LOL! Get it as user-friendly as Windows 95 first...then worry about bringing it up to par with the (5-year-old) "state-of-the-art" of WinXP and OSX.

[N3WBI3]

Firefox is getting forked because of trademark, not because of software code..

[sporkweasel]

the Free Software Foundation's GNU Project, is creating "the 'GNU/Linux' version of same, to be dubbed 'IceWeasel.'"

I hereby nominate "sporkweasel."

[Echo Talon]

this is why I'm afraid Linux is spinning is wheels instead of taking off... they have all these smart creative people spending all their time working on code, but in the end what are they doing? thats right reinventing the wheel, we have WAYY to may flavors with to may chiefs and not enough Indians,
seems like everyone has their own distribution.

[N3WBI3]

OSS PING

If you are interested in the OSS ping list please mail me

[zeugma]

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.

[ShadowAce]

[A CA Guy]

Stick with Dos 2 and forget all your worries I say!

[rzeznikj at stout]

A veritable mountain out of a molehill. I say this for three reasons:

I. The fork might not be bad--their code could end up finding its way into the mainstream program. Unlikely, but still possible nonetheless.

II. The GNU zealots want to remove the branding (a la CentOS) and release it under their own license. As far as I know (and I could be wrong), the MPL doesn't forbid this. But for this to actually succeed, what they put in there has to be clean-sheeted.

III: Nobody's forcing anyone to use it--if it's installed, all one has to do is remove it.

I won't use it--I guarantee you that much.

[Still Thinking]

I've used some pretty forked software in my day.

[DesScorp]

I'm a longtime Debian user, but I might be looking for a new distro pretty soon. Debian org's handling of this whole thing has been rediculous. And what 13 year old came up with "IceWeasel"?