Re: Ongoing Firefox (and Thunderbird) Trademark problems
* Julien BLACHE ::
> 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 $DISTRO has them!"
> >
> > Maybe my market perception is *very*, *very* different from
> > yours, but IMHO the would be quite the opposite.
>
> Not necessarily.
We *will* have to agree on disagreeing, then.
>
> > If we drop their products, the market sees: "Debian is without
> > the main FOSS internet suite!" and says "$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.
And *then* Debian will be left without a mozilla-compatible web
browser, not without Mozilla itself.
>
> > 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.
The firefox and the mozilla icons (and and even their brands) are
not so-well-known as you are assuming IMHO.
My experience (6 years) as a final-user-supporter: they see the
thing that looks like a globe, a planet, or has "web browser" or
"internet" as its caption, web browser interface (forward, back,
url, topping the browser panel) appears, they are happy.
>
> > (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).
QED. In the rebrand case, they will look for said package and Google
will take them to a page saying "Firefox is called Iceweasel under
debian to protect you from trademark lawsuits", they think "oh,
good, this Debian fellow is a nice guy helping protect me."
--
HTH, Respectfully,
Massa
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