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Hi gang. |
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As reported on Slashdot today, it appears that there are some hidden |
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licensing hassles with the trademarked products of the Mozilla project, |
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such as Firefox. |
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Some details can be found at: |
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http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/licensing.html |
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In brief, it appears that: |
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1) The source code is completely free and open, and can be redistributed |
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in modified form. |
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2) The artwork and names, such as "Mozilla", "XUL", "Firefox" and firefox |
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logo are generally trademarked, and not redistributable if the product |
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has been modified. |
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They specifically state that the pre-build binaries are freely |
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redistributable, and I guess we can infer that compiling from unmodified |
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sources is also okay, but from the following thread, it seems they want |
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some control over which patches we apply if we are to name it "Firefox": |
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http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200403/msg00006.html |
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I wonder if this means that: |
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1) We need to have our GRPs sanctioned, since we apply arch-specific patches. |
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2) Our users should be thoroughly notified that they cannot redistribute |
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binaries they build of Firefox (and other trademarked mozilla projects). |
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(Which kinda shoots catalyst in the foot for making a customized |
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internal desktop-distro using mozilla or firefox). |
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Is this something we should start worrying about? |
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Kind regards, |
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Karl T |
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-- |
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gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list |
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