[Steve Langasek] > DFSG#8 has regularly been interpreted as meaning that if a software > license isn't free, it can't be made free just by giving Debian > additional rights. This keeps us honest, by eliminating any > incentive proprietary software authors might have to create a market > for themselves by making a deal with Debian. That's all very well, and I agree with that interpretation - if one is to follow the letter of the law. But philosophically, if we think that rebranding Firefox is so great and terrible and will cause such problems, why would we want to foist this upon our downstream users? Or perhaps the contrapositive says it better: if we don't think our users will mind having to rebrand Firefox before distributing modified versions, if that's no big deal for them, why not demonstrate how easy and painless it is by doing the same within Debian? If we're willing to tell the customer to rebrand their modified software, shouldn't we be willing to do the same? That there is such a hue and cry over rebranding Firefox in Debian indicates to me that it *is* a significant burden we would be (and are now) asking of our downstream users.
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