» Why the Firefox fork doesn’t matter.
People are going very crazy about the Debian Firefox fork. People seem to hate the new name, the new logo. It seems that Debian is taking a lot of flak because of this, when it isn’t even Debian’s fault. Debian is just following the DFSG, which is one of the things which makes Debian great. However, the Mozilla Corporation (yes, Corporation), whose delegates obviously seem to just use Windows, by the solutions they present and the way that Firefox is released, has decided to play against the Free Software community by introducing a set of anti-Free Software rules.
This all started with this email by a Mozilla representative. While Debian had already been given an approval to be able to use the Firefox name but not the official graphics, it seems this representative, Mike Connor, was either unaware of this, or Mozilla’s policies have changed since then. Debian cannot, do this another way, as the graphics, which are protected under copyright law, are not redistributable. This creates a problem, as according to Mozilla, the name must go with the graphics. However, this is not the only issue, and this is something many people are skipping. While Debian might break the DFSG, and redistribute this graphic, Mozilla Corporation is asking that Debian send all of their patches for revision by Mozilla. That would mean that Debian would have to wait until Mozilla’s beaurocracy sifts through the patches before being able to release a security fix, something implausible when the Firefox included in stable, for example, is not supported anymore.
What Mozilla is asking Debian is impossible to do, for the two reasons stated before. Debian has always taken its social contract very seriously, always supporting Free Software, and making sure that main is 100% Free. Free code, free documentation, free graphics. However, Mozilla is asking Debian to break this contract, for very childish reasons, as having an open source without trust is impossible, and Debian has always been committed to its users, and would never actually change the true Firefox for something else. Again we see that the Firefox project is Windows-centric. Furthermore, many people have been pressuring Debian to do what OpenBSD does, which is to distribute a “Community Edition” Firefox. However, as stated by their policy, this does not include the ability to change the source code, even if it is one line.
Mozilla is also asking Debian to do something that is impractical, and would seriously hinder Debian users. By forcing the submittal of patches for review, the patching of security bugs, which are not few, would become very slow, destroying the reality that stable is as secure as possible, and making the bug fixing process much secretive. Still, Mozilla asked something that is not only impractical, but plain idiotic. Mozilla suggested that, instead of backporting fixes, that they upgrade when a new version is released, as that is what “other vendors” do, and that this was”progressively more difficult and risky in the face of ongoing security-driven rearchitecture”. However, this email shows the hole in the reasoning of the Mozilla stance, as the other vendors have done this as they “realized it was less work to migrate customers”. Debian does the work it needs to do in order to protect its “customers”, which in fact are not only the users of Debian, but also those of Ubuntu, Mepis and others.
Now that Debian has said that they would change the name of Firefox, people are going apeshit at the fact that they are going to fork it. However, people do not realise that Debian has already forked Firefox. Mozilla has said that the patchset that they used on top of Firefox was effectively forking it, and they did not have the right to redistribute a “forked” Firefox with the same name, even if these forks just fixed bugs that Debian fixed for the good of both its users and of the Mozilla Corporation, Foundation and users. Mozilla would have a point if Debian started including new features, or purposefully removing them in order to make the Firefox brand weaker. However, Debian is not.
While the Debian stance was “hoping we can find a middle ground somewhere”, the Mozilla stance was not. They are not interested in helping the open source community thrive, but only to break the trust of many and go on their own goals, making them no better than their competitors. I hope that not only Debian changes the name of the browser, but also other distributions in order to force Mozilla to rethink its policy and where its friends are at. It sucks that Mozilla rethought their old position. This has not made the Debian brand weaker, but has only made the Firefox brand weaker. Way to go Mozilla.
