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Author: John Morris
Date:  
To: Hendrik Boom
CC: dng
Subject: Re: [Dng] Plan for Devuan to use Mozilla products as is
On Wed, 2015-03-04 at 14:25 -0500, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 07:45:22PM +0100, Anto wrote:
> > Hello Everybody,
> >
> > I guess it is very likely that the first release of Devuan will use
> > the re-branded Mozilla products.
> >
> Debian *could* have used the firefox binary direct from Mozilla, but
> they compile everything from source, as it's the only way or them to be
> really sure that the executable matches the source code.


Close. You can't build a firefox package from the source and
redistribute it unless you have a signed agreement on file with Moz
Corp. For example, Fedora ships a locally built package with the logos
and other branding intact but they (read RedHat) signed a trademark
licensing agreement with Moz Corp, details not disclosed. Debian was
offered a similar deal (again, exact details not public best I can
remember) but it didn't matter because there was no way they were going
to distribute a package that only they could rebuild and redistribute.
It violates every ideal of both Free Software and Open Source. Not to
mention the nightmare it would cause every distro downstream from
Debian, like this one.

Gerv@??? told me I had to rebrand WBEL's Firefox. Just
rebuilding the unmodified RHEL source rpm was an unacceptable
modification in his opinion. He never officially blessed my compromise
of leaving the package and binary name firefox (since a key goal of WBEL
was 100% compatibility with RHEL) and just iceweaseling the art, browser
titlebar and menu icons, but I didn't get another nastygram either.