Take a look at this article over at internetnews. Basically, mozilla's branding requirements and subsequent copyrights are not compatable with Debian's free software philosophy. As if Debian didn't have enough problems right now. This may create many offshoots of firefox with 'rebranding' to be compatible with the GPL.
WTF! That is just silly. Why bring this issue up now when it could have been resolved over a year ago? The Mozilla developers are obviously on some kind of power trip now that their unsecure browser has gained some spotlight. Meh, it doesn't bother me anyway because I use Opera
Me too. Opera has been the best browser around for a long time and still mops the floor with firefox.
I use Swiftfox installed manually along with Opera 9.02, and sometimes even Konqueror if I'm already in it. I wouldn't worry too much about this. It's still a Linux distro, and as such is much less restrictive on which packages can be included "out-of-the-box" than the BSDs.
In what way? Debian's philosophy is freedom at all costs and rejects all non-open source, non-free, non-granola-eating packages from it's base "out-of-box" install (and repos). BSD does not, it only rejects proprietary packages (and not ports) because of licensing. Maybe I don't understand what you mean.
BSD can't even include GPL'd or Creative Commons licensed software, nor can you include GPL'ed code in BSD software. You can add such things through ports (much as you can add things like closed-source NVidia drivers in Debian), but it can't be shipped with the distro without polluting the license and rendering it undistributable. Conversely, Linux can ship with BSD code included with no problems.
That's not really true. FreeBSD ships with X.org, apache and lost of other GPL'd software. The BSD core system can't incorporate GPL code but the system CD's can include it without problems. The BSD license only covers the core system, accessory software is exempt. DesktopBSD and PCBSD ship with proprietary drivers and tons of GPL stuff. Here is an snipit from the wikipedia article on the BSD licence: Code: The licenses have few restrictions compared to other free software licenses such as the GNU GPL or even the default restrictions provided by copyright, putting it relatively closer to the public domain. It may be more friendly to commercial enterprise but it is still free.
I realize this, but that's much how Sun ships a seperate disc of optional GNU tools along with Solaris. They may be important for Solaris' everyday functionality for most admins, but Sun cannot incorperate the GPL code into their codebase directly. How is that different for BSD? [ot]Oh no, not another GPL vs BSD debate [/ot] Yes, but the BSD license and the GPL are two very different types of freedom. The idea behind the GPL is that once code is released under that license, it can never be totally closed. Furthermore, anybody who wishes to contribute to the code for their own benefit must pass those changes along in the source code if they plan on distributing the program at all. The advantage here is that widely-distributed code will mature very quickly and become production-quality much faster than under other methods. Additionally, companies which rely on GPL'ed code will always have an exit strategy if the company they are paying for support goes belly up, ditches development of the code, etc. They have the source, so they can always either hire some other company to maintain it, or else develop it themselves. The negative aspect of GPL is that companies who are adverse to sharing their code changes are basically disqualified from basing their products on GPL'ed code. In contrast, the BSD is more of a "do what you want with it" license. This has it's strengths and weaknesses also. The main advantage is that it picks up where the GPL leaves off, allowing anybody to make changes and effectively close the code. That makes BSD more embedded friendly, as well as infinitely more appealing to those who would not like to share their code with others (even if they didn't write much of it themselves). On the other hand, changes made in such a circumstance don't often make it back to the main codebase. For instance, there is a fairly major bug in the BSD network stack involving dynamic routes. Cisco has fixed this bug ages ago in their proprietary version of the BSD core, but these changes will never make it back to the core BSD group. As a result, even though the problem has already been solved, the core BSD team must "reinvent the wheel" and fix the bug themselves. That means less time actually developing BSD, more time writing redundant code which would have been avoided under the terms of the GPL. So in conclusion, I am not advocating the GPL over the BSD license or vice-versa. But to call one better than the other, one must first consider the question: better for what? Depends on what you're doing, really. For a user with needs like mine, I'd say the GPL is definately better for me. It keeps the code open, which is what can benefit me the most. If I was a company who wanted to create a product using BSD as a base would hold a different opinion. ...Then again, Linux certainly has its share of commercial acceptance as well.
That is not the case in freeBSD. The system CD's can include GPL software, probably because freeBSD is free (in cost and rights) and solaris is not. From what I understand, the freeBSD license only applies to the core system and not anything bundled with it. That is why they can include GCC, apache and others in the distrobution discs. Everything outside of the core system is ditributed under the individual license of that piece of software (GPL or other 'free' licenses). So, a freeBSD system CD has many licenses. Yes, BSD cannot include GPL code into the base code but that restriction does not apply to other software included. I'm not saying that the BSD license is better, it's just not as restrictive as you say it is. GPL is not without it's restrictions. LOL! Sorry, that was not my intention. Somebody has to stand up for BSD
I watched a documentary called Revolution OS, which is a series of interviews and clips about open source and the Linux movement. In it, Richard Stallman explained the idea of "copyleft". He postulated that in the cases of the BSD licence, or if the software was put into the public domain (which GPL is not) someone could make some minor changes and turn it into a proprietary system. He then said, that users using the particular system would be using a proprietary system, but they wouldn't know about the freedom of the original code. With the GPL, "wherever the software goes, the freedom goes with it". That was just the opinion of RMS, I think that there is a place for proprietary software, but I still prefer the GPL since I'm an everyday user. It really does depend on the circumstances of which one is most suited to the task. I quite like these debates, it brings out more information for everyone to learn from .
I don't really see what the big problem is. If Debian developers have a problem with Mozilla's trademark, then it would have been simpler to just rename it and rebrand it in the first place. On the other hand, doesn't the Open source definition have a part about maintaining the author's integrity, and part of that is if you change the software you might have to rename it, so it doesn't reflect on the author.
Debian came up with the name back in 2004 or 2005 but they have just started to use it. The GNU movement has had issues with mozilla for some time and this last spat put it over the edge. Debina has become WAY to religious. It's a shame to see it potentially going down the crapper.
I agree that it seems trivial in this case. It's also causing an undue amount of drama around an already turbulent distribution. A pity really, as Deb is one of the best. But ultimately, everybody is making too big a deal out of all this. Anybody bright enough to use Debian in the first place can certainly install Firefox manually. I'm doing exactly that, using Swiftfox (architecture-optimized Linux build of Firefox). Whether or not Debian ships with Firefox really doesn't matter to me at all.
