Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 11th Oct 2006 14:46 UTC, submitted by brewin
As previously reported, Debian plans to release its newest version, Etch, in December, and wants Mozilla's Firefox Web browser to be part of the distribution. Mozilla, however, told Debian it couldn't release the software without its accompanying artwork. Now a legal expert says that the existing distinctions between copyright and trademark laws should have prevented this from becoming an issue in the first place. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols also discusses the issue.
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Member since:
2005-11-05
This seems to have become a surprisingly divisive issue, whatever the pros or cons on either side. This is Ian Murdock, one of Debian's founders:
"Steven is right on the money with this rant. This is so maddeningly stupid I’m embarrassed to be even remotely associated with this."
It's hard not to agree that it's pretty crazy to do away with the name most associated with taking open source mainstream. A name is a powerful thing and "Iceweasel" is a naff substitute, really. Just my 2 cents, but maybe Debian could have agreed to Mozilla's suggestions, kept the name, and then put Firefox in the non-free folder of their repositories.
There seem to have been quite a lot of articles about Debian on the tech sites in the past few months, and almost all of them have been rather critical. Has Debian always been this unpopular? Sigh.