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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).
Last edited by cascade9; 01-01-2012 at 07:35 AM.
Reason: typo
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."
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.
Distribution: Debian Sid AMD64, Raspbian Wheezy, various VMs
Posts: 7,680
Rep:
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.
I disagree with Iceweasel is Firefox because Iceweasel!=Firefox.
Oh well that explains it...
Quote:
Originally Posted by 273
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
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.
Distribution: Debian Sid AMD64, Raspbian Wheezy, various VMs
Posts: 7,680
Rep:
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.
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
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.
Distribution: Debian Sid AMD64, Raspbian Wheezy, various VMs
Posts: 7,680
Rep:
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.
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