Re: Debian, Iceweasle, Firefox!
The choice of words by the OP was unfortunate, to say the least.
But among all his blathering there was the germ of a valid point.
Debian IMHO should carefully weigh the advantages and
disadvantages of adhering --uncompromisingly-- to the letter of
its doctrine.
The renaming of the programs certainly did have disadvantages to
users. In the first place (in my experience) it introduced various
problems with customised menus and window managers.
Then there are the new names and logos themselves. What is an
"Iceape"? How should this beast be pronounced? Webster's does not
say, nor does the Concise Oxford, because it does not occur there.
The logos are hideous (especially the Iceape one); they seem
designed to frighten users away. My eternal project of converting
"Aunt Tilly" types to Debian has just been set back again. The new
names by themselves also isolate Debian from the rest of the Linux
world (including the Debian clones like Ubuntu, Mepis). Is this a
good thing? I doubt it very much.
But the worst result of this unwillingness to "negotiate until the
problem is solved" surely is in the human/psychological field. We
may consider it a given that the relationship between the Mozilla
people and the Debian people has received some serious blows. This
will certainly have a negative influence on the smooth technology
transfer between the two sides. The quality of the Debian versions
of the Mozilla products can only suffer from this. Most likely it
already has.
All this is due to over-concentration on "legal" hair-splitting
rather than quality of code. This is always bad; we have seen this
before, with bad results for the packages concerned (dosemu;
xcdroast). Some creative and flexible thinking surely could have
come up with a compromise, an exception, or some other workable
formula (lawyers always can; unfortunately some other lawyers, and
amateur lawyers, seem to delight in stoking the fires of
conflict). I still hope that there are some cooler heads among the
influential circles in Debian that can reverse this disastrous,
and IMHO ridiculous stance.
Regards, Jan
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