apparently I'm a dinosaur

Even though Iceweasel has been a reality since November, it seems that there is still some backlash about the rename. Thanks very much to Andrew for jumping to my defense (and also for organizing dinner the last time I was in Mountain View, it was a fun evening). Nothing he said was fundamentally incorrect, but it doesn't paint the full picture.

Once upon a time (somewhere around Firefox 0.9) we happily shipped the fox hugging the globe icon. Then it was pointed out the copyright license on that piece of artwork wasn't DFSG free (and probably wouldn't be free under any reasonable free software or even open content license), so we removed it and used the plain globe icon they shipped in the tarball instead. Eventually the Mozilla Foundation asked us to remove mozilla- from the package name (it was mozilla-firefox at the time) which we did, and the issue of the icon and trademark came up. After explaining why we couldn't ship the icon they gave us permission to continue to use the name. They said they would periodically check up to make sure we weren't shipping crap that would harm the brand. This seemed a fairly good compromise and we accepted.

This situation persisted for a year or so, in both Debian and Ubuntu, but then the Mozilla Corporation (who was now in possession of the trademarks) insisted we couldn't use the name without the non-free logo. They also wanted to approve any changes made before they were uploaded. They are certainly within their rights to do this, but to hear Mr. Fowler tell it we were on a crusade to purge the name from the distro. We were not, we were content with the status quo. I also must take exception with Mr. Fowler stating: "They've persisted, despite the best efforts of the Mozilla project team to engage with the Debian packagers to resolve the situation." I think from the discussion we were trying our best to reach some sort of compromise and the Mozilla side seemed firmly entrenched in their position, not offering us a lot of alternatives. The non-free nature of the logo and the unprecedented "control-freak" review process didn't leave us with a lot of alternatives.

Ubuntu does ship the officially branded version of the Firefox, but they have a weaker set of freedom guidelines than Debian. Whether you think that is good or bad is personal choice, but one of the reasons I like Debian so much is its commitment to free software, even if that means not everything is as easy or expedient as one would like.

With respect to the new name and icon, this is again a matter of personal taste. I do tend to think "Iceweasel" doesn't have that much sex appeal but it was a popular choice and had the benefit of having already been used to refer to a potential name fork of Firefox. And BTW this is really only a name fork, the amount of changes we've actually put in to the tree (beyond renaming ones) are minimal. In fact the last time it was checked, our patches were a strict subset of the patches Ubuntu uses in their Firefox package. So Iceweasel is in fact functionally identical to Firefox with what I like to think are some minor improvements from upstream.

As to your other points, I will admit to being poorly-socialized, but I think most who have met me wouldn't call me self-obsessed, egotistical or a moron.

I think Debian is developing a bit of a bias against it where we're assumed to be a bunch of crazy Free software nuts, and the presumption is anytime we act against the grain we're the ones being unreasonable despite any evidence to the contrary. I don't know how we can fight this perception, but I think we should.

Dude, I could not agree with you more.

However, you seem unwilling to take Ubuntu to task over it's decision to use the trademarks. It's not clear to me under what circumstances you can even use the icon, since the copyright file doesn't list what the copying conditions are, in fact it doesn't mention the logo graphic copyrights at all. I think this is a big loss for distributions everywhere. While this would appear to be expedient and make users happy, but it creates more work for the derivers of Ubuntu and it also makes it harder for Ubuntu to derive from Debian. It also sends the message that this sort of thing is alright, that we should just accept upstreams doing this.

There's been an amazing amount of press and blogging about the whole Firefox trademark issue. Some of it very positive and with a good grasp of the crux of the problem. Some of it not so positive. I hope you can forgive me using my blog to ask a question but: Ian, where did I go wrong? What could I have done to salvage the situation? I'm certainly not pleased with having to do this but I didn't really see a whole lot of other options.

It was also nice to see Linux.com do a more in depth analysis of the issue. I'm glad to see Larry Rosen seemingly agreeing with me that they could have a free copyright license and a more restrictive trademark license, as I had proposed many times. They did manage to misquote me a little though. "annoyingly bureaucratic and is completely unprecedented in the Free Software community" was said in reference to Mozilla's requirement for patches to be vetted, not the discussion about the trademark.

With all the GR fever going on right now, I thought I would join the fray. I've upgraded to a paid LJ account so I could post a poll. So I've picked what I think are the best suggestions for Firefox's new name from my previous blog entry. Please pick your favorite:

Poll #827142
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 85

What should Firefox's new name be?

Vote early, vote often!

Note: I reserve the right to pass the results through my Diebold voting machine to "correct" the outcome if necessary.

Phoenix, that was a cool name. Damn you PhoenixBIOS. Firebird was good, and who needs another database anyway? Mozilla Firefox is a cute name, with a cute logo. A logo we can't use. Oh wait, we can't use the name either?

So the Mozilla Corporation has asked us to stop using the name "Firefox" in our version of Firefox, unless we use the fox on a globe logo. We can't use the logo because its copyright license is not free. Even if somehow we could do this, they want to vet every patch we apply before we release a package called Firefox containing it.

This puts us in a very difficult position. If there is no traction on the Mozilla side and Debian stands firm on the freeness of non-program files, I don't really see anyway around having to rename Firefox. So what should this new name be? Preferably something clever, nice sounding and not trademarked. I'd like it to be something other distributions can use if they're so inclined. And while Iceweasel is cute, and I enjoy the parody, I'm not sure it has enough sex appeal. Suggestions welcome.

New mozilla-firefox packages to fix JavaScript regressions (#385452 and #385248) that caused 1.0.4-2sarge10 to crash when using Google Maps.

Please test these packages so they can swiftly be added to the security archive.

After my despondant post the other day, Alexander Sack came through again with patches for the Bookmark regression. Please test them! If I don't get any negative feedback I'm sending this on to the security team. Positive feedback is also encouraged, just so I know that people care :)

With mozilla.org stopping official security support for the 1.0.x branch a mere 6 months after the release of 1.5 is really starting to cause pain. I can understand wanting to move on to the new thing, but ending it so quickly really makes it hard for distributions with long support cycles. Alexander Sack worked very hard backporting most of the fixes into sarge. Unfortunately, it looks like one of the patches breaks submenus in Bookmarks menu.

So what do we do? Announce discontinuation of security support? Give up and ship 1.5 as other distros have done? Many users might welcome the latter, but the the ones who count on the stability of stable might not be so pleased.

Users of sarge, please try these new mozilla-firefox packages, that contains backports of the security fixes from Firefox 1.5.0.4 (with some small exceptions). There are a rather large amount of fixes in there, so please try it and report any breakage.

It's nearly 3am and I'm waiting for firefox 1.5.0.3 to finish building so I can upload it. This is what my life has come to. The strange thing is I like it.

Packages have been built backporting the security fixes from 1.0.8 into sarge's package. This package has gone to the security team and there should be a DSA soon. All the fixes were backported throught the tireless efforts of Alexander Sack. If anyone sees him, buy him a beverage.

In other news, the 1.0.8 release is the end of life for the 1.0.x series. With etch at least 8 months away (wouldn't it be great if we released etch in 8 months?) doing security releases for firefox will likely increase in pain.

Martin F. Krafft writes about Firefox's un-UNIX-like behavior. I mostly agree with him. Aside from the X forwarding bug in the remote implementation (which has been reported numerous times already), the main problem is the inconsistency in the interface. If I run firefox from the command line everything works fine and it behaves like a normal UNIX application (ie taking over the terminal unless I background it). If I go to another terminal and run firefox file:///tmp/foo.html, this will open a new window or tab in Firefox and immediately exits. This is very un-UNIX-like, there's no way to know if the program is actually exiting or if it's just launching a new window. These leads to fun bugs with programs that call firefox as an external viewer (see #278990 and #284174). If running firefox causes it to connect to an already running instance, it should wait(2) on that process, since that would make a lot more sense from the UNIX perspective (and perhaps a -remote flag to have the "fire-and-forget" functionality we have now, because that does make sense in some situations too).

As far as I'm concerned the whole profile mechanism is a waste of code and a hold over from the old Netscape days, for people without multiuser systems. It should be dropped completely. Although we'd probably need to be able to run multiple Firefox processes on the same profile before it could be stripped out.

There is definitely a strong Windows mentality that pervades Firefox. I still remember when the extension mechanism was first introduced back in 0.9 and you needed to run as root (or the Administrator under Windows) for it to work properly. Madness. Although UNIX does seem to be more suited to an environment where processes are lightweight and short-lived. Big, monolithic applications are a more recent phenomenon.

I've just uploaded firefox 1.5.0.1-1 to unstable, it contains a whole bunch of fixes, quite a few from my Ubuntu counterpart Ian Jackson. I can only hope that it continues like this, it will mean good things for Firefox in Debian. I also spent way too much time on Sunday doing routine bug triage, cleaning out old junk, etc. We're under 300 bugs now! Which is still a depressingly high number, but is more manageable and probably unavoidable with such a popular package. Just hope it never gets above 300 again.

I've always seen the relationship between users and developers in the Free Software world as fluid and more of a partnership. That means trying your best to fix problems yourself, and if you can't, make it as easy as possible for other people to fix it. Here's an example of a bug that isn't helpful:

The user tried to install
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/extensions/sage/sage-1.3.6-fx mz.xpi
He is told he needs to edit his preferences to permit this, and given a button.

It turns out instead he needs to edit about:config, and set
xpinstall.enabled = true.

And indeed when he finally does, installation fails as it is an
invalid file or something.

One would be much more confident if there were a debian sage package.

It is not at all clear what the submitter is complaining about. Do they object to the preference setting for software installation? Is there a bug installing extensions? Or do they want sage packaged in Debian? Bug reports should make it clear what the submitter thinks the single problem is. When asked if the were really wanted an RFP bug, the response was:

Please reassign it that way if that is correct. All this is over my head.
Thanks.

If you've submitted over 1000 bugs maybe learning how the bug system works and is organized is a good idea? I'm not trying to attack Dan, but he is a good example of not being helpful.

I just uploaded firefox 1.5.dfsg-3 to unstable and it should get in to archive today. It should fix issues with plugins not being found and the remaining branding issue with the about dialog box. The Mozilla trademark and branding stuff still bugs me. I understand their desire to not let anyone use their name on some broken all to hell version, but to require anyone who is distributing their software to jump through hoops to actually call it "Firefox", that no one else seems to require, seems fairly arrogant. They also seem to be more interested in the business aspects of things rather than the community that got them where they are.

Call me a grinch if you must. Merry Christmas.