I think Debian is going too far.ĭebian needs to understand the dynamics of change and balance that with a realistic approach to distro development (trademarks or no) versus an idealism that is so narrow minded so as to be almost impossible to adhere to in the day-to-day Linux world. If this kind of thinking remains, many packages will have to be rewritten. Pretty soon, every package will have to be logo free and trademark free. But I think Debian, as well as all distros, need to walk a fine line here or risk being sidelined to obsolescence. I understand that Debian has the social contract and made a point early on to have only “free” software in their distribution. Now, Debian decides that Firefox is not free because of the trademark. And more than one source has noted that Debian is having problems both with the success of Ubuntu as well as the patches that Ubuntu is contributing back to the Debian developers. And there has been some in-fighting in the project as well (Dunc Tank comes to mind).Ī highly regarded developer quit the project citing internal squabbles then, Mark Shuttlesworth acknowledged that tension exists between Ubuntu and Debian. They could easily stop adding Firefox to their distro and let the end user decide whether or not to use Firefox rather than taking an action that will amount to duplication of effort at best, forking Firefox at the worst.įor a non-commercial distro, Debian sure has seemed moody as of late. If anyone is putting Debian users at risk with this behavior, it’s Debian. When a distro like Debian makes customizations of Firefox, Mozilla needs them to pass the changes by them so that they can verify their own patches work and don’t break anything. Considering the Windows platform is 90% of the PC market, I admire the Mozilla foundations continuing efforts to release simultaneously on all it’s supported platforms. Mozilla releases patches for all the platforms it’s browser is on at the same time. It’s too bad that Firefox has this attitude. By not using the Firefox name, they are free to do updates as they see fit. Since Firefox gives priority to Windows, this can put Debian’s users at risk. The Firefox people object to Debian doing its own security updates and calling the update Firefox.
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