Battle Brews Over Firefox In Ubuntu 8.10

[clint999]

How many read the EULA?

Choose your way - choose your path:

User friendlyness -or- Brand protection

[WSmart]

WTF!

How much do you want to bet this is really about money? The real question, in that case, is whether it's OK for our open source projects to be funded by cooperations, do we want that? I don't think there's anything wrong with that, in a market that's not poisoned with billions of dollars of black market money. That's not the market we have today. We have corruption in high places, massively. So is it a concern if our open source projects are in bed with that filth? Very clearly it is a concern. Does it make an absolute statement? No; concerns are not accusations.

If we have people saying “WTF!”....that's a separate but related issue, moral corruption. If I'm feeling angry, then I'm not going to stomach that anger. That doesn't mean there's any reason to be angry. That's not a statement about anything. It's just an expression of my feelings. If we're going to let people tell us what's appropriate for us to feel or when it's appropriate to feel or why we feel what we feel, in my extremely not humble opinion, that's the real place where we begin to lose our liberty. I understand there are rules to posting here that we have to follow those rules, but I don't think we should restrict those sorts of expressions. Right or wrong, so what. It don't mean anything. And if it makes YOU angry, that's your issue, you need to take a time out and think about it, put down that baba of alcohol and actually try and make something of yourself for a change, for Christ's sake.

Thanks Phoronix Community for the opportunity to discuss these things here. I don't think these are sweet it under the rug, meaningless issues. I think these are life and death, real issues. Very cool that we're talking about them here, even if the story appears to be how out of place any dissent on the issue is.


Be real; be sober.

[deanjo]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10044054-92.html

Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker, said in a blog post Monday that Mozilla had made a "giant error" in putting the wrong content into the end-user license agreement (EULA), which lays out how people can legally use the software.
"The most important thing here is to acknowledge that, yes, the content of the license agreement is wrong," Baker wrote. "The correct content is clear that the code is governed by Floss (free/libre/open-source software) licenses, not the typical end-user license agreement language that is in the current version. We created a license that points to the Floss licenses, but we've made a giant error in not getting this to Ubuntu, other distributors, and posted publicly for review. We'll correct this asap."

[xav1r]

What really puzzled me about the firefox EULA, is why Mozilla Corp are so insistent on its presence. But after Mark Shuttleworth's last launchpad comment I think that I've worked it out. Google pays Mozilla Corp a lot of money to provide the default web search in firefox, and since Firefox 2 provides half hourly phishing blacklists to Firefox browsers. The details of that agreement are probably secret. Mozilla has made an agreement with Canonical to include the EULA, but the reason why seams to be secret. So my guess is, that Mozilla are insisting on the EULA, because it is a requirement of their deal with Google. Mozilla can't say this because the Google deal contains a non disclosure clause. The EULA provided with firefox 2 contains just one clause that wasn't in th firefox 1.5 EULA a clause mentioning that the user accepts Mozilla's privacy policy. IMHO Mozilla are contractually bound to insist on Firefox users accepting the privacy policy.

So which was the clause that wasnt in firefox 1.5 that is in firefox 2, and is that clause and many more now in firefox 3?

[Vadi]

Yep, that's how you can enforce your trademark without sticking an EULA into people's noses.

Stick it to people who actually violate it, and after they do, instead of everyone who doesn't.

[energyman]

http://ubuntulite.tuxfamily.org/?q=node/171

[Vadi]

Read it. The "Ubuntu recently included a patch that causes an End User License Agreement for Firefox to appear." line is interesting - it's sounding as if this is something Ubuntu willingly did.

Great wording, really. Couldn't innocently shift the blame any better myself.

[KellyClowers]

Please read Mitchell Baker's new blog post about this:

http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/09/15/ubuntu-firefox-and-license-issues/

[energyman]

or maybe creative labs and their stuff.

[sock]

What really puzzled me about the firefox EULA, is why Mozilla Corp are so insistent on its presence. But after Mark Shuttleworth's last launchpad comment I think that I've worked it out. Google pays Mozilla Corp a lot of money to provide the default web search in firefox, and since Firefox 2 provides half hourly phishing blacklists to Firefox browsers. The details of that agreement are probably secret. Mozilla has made an agreement with Canonical to include the EULA, but the reason why seams to be secret. So my guess is, that Mozilla are insisting on the EULA, because it is a requirement of their deal with Google. Mozilla can't say this because the Google deal contains a non disclosure clause. The EULA provided with firefox 2 contains just one clause that wasn't in th firefox 1.5 EULA a clause mentioning that the user accepts Mozilla's privacy policy. IMHO Mozilla are contractually bound to insist on Firefox users accepting the privacy policy.