Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Licensing pitfalls with net-www/mozilla-firefox

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Fri, 2004-03-19 at 04:39, Karl Trygve Kalleberg wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 06:18:58PM -0500, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
>
> > I'm just curious, but wouldn't this only possibly affect the *-bin
> > ebuilds for mozilla/firefox/thunderbird?  If so, is it even really an
> > issue, since we provide the original binary distribution from mozilla?
>
> Yes, it only affects binary redistributions of mozilla stuff, and yes, our
> *-bins are safe, since they're unmodified.
>
> > I know that we would need to look into this for GRP, but for the regular
> > distribution, it seems to be a moot point.  Am I just wrong here?  Can
> > we simply start providing mozilla-bin in GRP rather than mozilla?
>
> The GRP includes our binary redistribution of the mozilla stuff, and is
> modified (if only with arch-specific patches), so it requires a stamp
> of approval.

I think I was saying that we could instead provide the *-bins in GRP,
rather than our patched up ones, but then I realized that we might not
have nearly as many *-bins available as we have supported arches, so I
can see the problem here already.

> However, one of the main selling points (or "giving away points") of Gentoo
> is that you can use it, for instance in combination with catalyst, to build
> your very own binary distro.
>
> Looking strictly at the mozilla licensing scheme, it means *every* user of
> catalyst that builds a mozilla project with trademarked logos needs to
> obtain their own stamp of approval before redistributing their binaries.
>
> This hampers easy deployment of a catalysted Gentoo on any organisation;
> people are not even allowed to build livecds that they copy to their
> neighbour, strictly speaking.
>
>
> One very appealing alternative is making our own artwork, and renaming the
> package to direfox or something (or firef*x, but * is very problematic in
> filenames), to avoid this nuisance.
>
> Another, would be for the mozilla organisation to have a completely
> open-sourced version, in addition to their own restricted version.

...or simply allowing redistribution of their artwork provided it is
distributed with their packages would meet the need, I think.  I would
love to see a non-restricted set of mozilla packages, though.

Unfortunately, this is starting to become a very unwelcome trend in the
open source world with some very large and important packages.  No good
can come from this.  ;]

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Games Team

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