Firefox licensing issue
While Firefox itself is licensed under a free license, there's an issue
in the way the Mozilla foundation designed it to include their own
package system for extensions and themes.
Take Firefox 1.5 for example, I've had it for a few hours, downloaded a
few extensions.. whoops. Looking at the readme in Foxytunes, for
example, I find non-free terms (below).
At no point did I see any notification of the license before installing
this extension, and only by viewing a text file embedded in firefox's
installation directory did I learn of this. Note that this is covered
in a bug report, but no action has been taken yet to fix this problem:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=275743
I don't have any recommendation as to how to solve this problem in
debian - I'm pointing this out, however, as an issue that the debian
community may wish to do something further with.
Terms of Use
============
Copyright (C) 2004-2005 Alex Sirota (alex@elbrus.com)
This version of FoxyTunes is free for your personal, non-commercial use
at home or at work.
You may copy, use and distribute FoxyTunes provided that the following
conditions are met:
1. This notice is included in all copies.
2. The FoxyTunes engine is used only by the FoxyTunes extension.
3. You do not re-package FoxyTunes for purposes other than localization.
4. You do not charge any money for FoxyTunes, except for covering
reasonable distribution costs.
As a contribution to the Mozilla developer community, portions of
FoxyTunes are covered by less restrictive licenses. Those licenses, if
present, will be noted prominently at the top of the source files.
No other rights, including licenses to copyright, trademark, patent,
trade secret or any other proprietary rights, are implied or granted.
Please contact the author (Alex Sirota) if you have questions about
this notice or if you want to use FoxyTunes for purposes not covered
by this document.
Music Player Daemon Client Library - libmpdclient
(c) 2003-2004 by Warren Dukes (shank@mercury.chem.pitt.edu)
XMessageBox by Hans Dietrich (hdietrich2@hotmail.com)
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS''
AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS
BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF
THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
--
The recognition of individual possibility,
to allow each to be what she and he can be,
rests inherently upon the availability of knowledge;
The perpetuation of ignorance is the beginning of slavery.
from "Die Gedanken Sind Frei": Free Software and the Struggle for Free Thought
by Eben Moglen, General council of the Free Software Foundation
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