Re: Ongoing Firefox (and Thunderbird) Trademark problems
Humberto Massa Guimarães <humberto.massa@almg.gov.br> wrote:
>> We drop their products from Debian, they lose market share. We
>> drop their trademarks, and *we* lose market share: "eh, wtf,
>> Debian hasn't got firefox? mozilla? thunderbird? sunbird? omgwtf
>> $DISTRO has them!"
>
> Maybe my market perception is *very*, *very* different from yours,
> but IMHO the would be quite the opposite.
Not necessarily.
> If we drop their products, the market sees: "Debian is without the
> main FOSS internet suite!" and says "$DISTRO it is then", ie *we*
> lose market share.
If we drop their products, we issue a PR explaining why we dropped
them. Just like we're about to do with the GFDL'ed docs.
> If OTOH we drop their trademarks, our (prospective) users won't even
> notice, because:
>
> (1) if they install or use a live-cd, they will see the browser icon
> and "Iceweasel Web Browser" caption, and won't notice, and
The icon won't be the firefox or mozilla icon. The name won't be
firefox or mozilla. The user will notice.
> (2) if they read about Debian before they install/use a live-cd,
> they will stumble somewhere in the info "Debian uses a rebranded
> version of Firefox called Iceweasel to protect its users (that may
> want to modify and redistribute the software) from any trademark
> liability.
Don't count on it too much :) In the drop case, they would probably
start looking for a firefox/mozilla package for Debian and would
eventually end up on a d.o page explaining why the packages were
dropped, thanks to the Google Magic (tm).
JB.
--
Julien BLACHE - Debian & GNU/Linux Developer - <jblache@debian.org>
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