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iceweasel insted ao firefox

Hi,
The debian communuty uses iceseal instead od firefox ??

is there a special reason and what is the difference between them.
best regards

Iceweasel is a fork of the Firefox project. Same goes for Icedove and Thunderbird.

Similar to OpenOffice, and LibreOffice.

There are plenty of google hits with the differences and what/why it happened. For the majority, it makes little to no difference.

Iceweasel is more of a rebranding of firefox. Some good info here-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla...Debian_project

Not that similar to open office/libre office, that is more of a fork, less of a rebranding (libre office was forked from open office after orcale bought sun, because of the possiblility of oracle would discontinue open office or restrict it).

There were a few issues at stake with Firefox and Debian. Not only was their branding issues the logo and Firefox name, there was also security issues.

Quote:

The Firefox logo is trademarked, so Debian doesn't consider it to be Free and will not include it as part of its distribution. Mozilla claims that using the Firefox name without the official branding is a trademark violation.

Furthermore, Mozilla claims that if Debian runs any patches to the version of Firefox included with Debian distros, it has to run them by Mozilla first for approval.

....

Quote:

"In an e-mail sent to Debian developers, Mozilla staffer Mike Connor explained that the Mozilla Corporation has been handling patch approvals from distributions since the corporation's inception in September of 2005.

"The way this works (and the way Red Hat and Novell have already gone through the process for 1.0 and 1.5) is that you have to submit patches that deviate from the source tarballs in order to continue to use the trademark," Connor wrote.

"This is us attempting to tell you that what you are doing is not correct and needs to change.

"If you are going to use the Firefox name, you must also use the rest of the branding," Connor continued. "This is not something where you are free to pick what parts you want to use. Either use the trademarked logos and name together or don't."

-Internet News

Quote:

Additionally, as Debian releases are frozen on a long-term basis, software in the frozen stable releases needs to be patched for any newly-discovered security issue. Under the revised guidelines, in order to use the Firefox name, approval from the Mozilla Corporation would have been required for all security patches, but the Debian project felt it could not put its security in the hands of an external corporation in that manner.

-Wikipedia

Quote:

Originally Posted by abd_bela (Post 4559856)

Hi,
The debian communuty uses iceseal instead od firefox ??

is there a special reason and what is the difference between them.
best regards

Iceweasel IS Firefox - https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...irefox-919284/

Quote:

Originally Posted by craigevil (Post 4562859)

Iceweasel IS Firefox - https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...irefox-919284/

Take a deep breath Craig ;)

I disagree with Iceweasel is Firefox because Iceweasel!=Firefox.
They are both almost the same and it's arguable which is "safest" or "more stable" but since they are not identical they are not the same thing.
Personally, I am lazy so I use the latest Firefox and force add-ons to work because I found Iceweasel version numbers weren't ideal at the time. Then I decided to get Firefox from the Firefox team.

$ apt-cache policy iceweasel
iceweasel:
Installed: 9.0.1-1
Candidate: 9.0.1-1

Well how about that? Same version as the current Firefox release, and it was released the day after Mozilla released Firefox 9.0.1.

If you use the mozilla.debian.net repo you can also install Aurora and Beta versions.

Sounds good. I may try it.

Besides all that, Iceweasel is a better name.

It really is the same thing under the hood but with up to date Debian security support. I trust Debian more than Mozilla (a fine bunch none the less).

I don't blame craigevil at all. This topic really does get old very quickly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 273 (Post 4562887)

I disagree with Iceweasel is Firefox because Iceweasel!=Firefox.

Oh well that explains it... :rolleyes:

Quote:

Originally Posted by 273 (Post 4562887)

They are both almost the same and it's arguable which is "safest" or "more stable" but since they are not identical they are not the same thing.

You can be pedantic about it, but if you're going to say program A is not program B because program A, despite being virtually identical, has a different name and different logos, then you're missing the point. If this were going on in the proprietary software world it would be a team of software patent lawyers screaming "Iceweasel IS Firefox!" not a few well meaning individuals on a forum trying their best to advise others.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 273 (Post 4562887)

Personally, I am lazy so I use the latest Firefox and force add-ons to work because I found Iceweasel version numbers weren't ideal at the time. Then I decided to get Firefox from the Firefox team.

No, being lazy is adding the mozilla.debian.net repo.

The '!=' was a little tongue in cheek.
A lawyer may well say they're effectively the same due to the common codebase but by that logic Debian==Slackware==Aandroid depending on how much they have to overlap.
The fact is their updates are coded by different people and Iceweasel has, in the past, lagged behind in versions by quite a long way causing problems with add-ons. Even if it has caught up now with only a small team of developers it's not guaranteed to stay that way so add-on problems could happen again.
The flip side, I suppose, is that Iceweasel could well be more secure and will obviously always be tested with Debian before it's shipped.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 273 (Post 4564669)

A lawyer may well say they're effectively the same due to the common codebase but by that logic Debian==Slackware==Aandroid depending on how much they have to overlap.

A program and a distribution are certainly two completely different things, so that's not a valid comparison.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 273 (Post 4564669)

The fact is their updates are coded by different people and Iceweasel has, in the past, lagged behind in versions by quite a long way causing problems with add-ons. Even if it has caught up now with only a small team of developers it's not guaranteed to stay that way so add-on problems could happen again.
The flip side, I suppose, is that Iceweasel could well be more secure and will obviously always be tested with Debian before it's shipped.

No... Iceweasel is simply built from Firefox source with the name and branding changed. The version of Iceweasel in the stable release has fixes backported from newer releases, the newer versions in the mozilla.debian.net repo are simply built from source with the changed branding. It does not lag behind (unless you're concerned about 24 hours or so?), newer versions have always been available in backports or experimental - it's just that some n00bs choose to rant about "stallmanism" and installing "the real firefox" before actually finding out the facts.

http://wiki.debian.org/Iceweasel
http://mozilla.debian.net/

They must have bucked their ideas up then because it certainly has lagged behind as mentioned in an article linked to on the thread here suggesting they're the same.
If there's now a guarantee in place that they're following the same version as the latest Firefox then I'll admit they're interchangeable -- certainly wasn't my experience going back not all that long and I still see Iceweasel as largely pointless fork.