Re: Debian, Iceweasle, Firefox!
On Sunday 28 January 2007 22:52, Greg Folkert wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-01-28 at 21:38 -0500, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> > On Sunday 28 January 2007 18:33, Paul Johnson wrote:
> > ...
> >
> > > > Do you see a difference?
> > >
> > > You could have cancelled and looked into why that is. iceweasel
> > > provides firefox because it *is* firefox. There is no functional
> > > difference between firefox and iceweasel. You're making a
> > > mountain out of a molehill.
> >
> > Here's the part I don't get. Even though I'm making a living as a
> > programmer, I'm self taught and have missed a lot -- and I don't
> > know C or C++. I've tried to make sense of the listing of what was
> > taken out of Firefox to make Iceweasel, yet I found it hard to
> > follow.
> >
> > Just what was taken out as non-free if it doesn't effect
> > functionality? If it doesn't make a difference, why is it in there?
> > Or have all the non-free things been replaced by free code
> > already?
>
> The whole thing comes down to this.
...
> They only way to fix this issue was to:
> 1. Get the Mozilla Foundation to compromise on its stance,
> allowing quid-pro-quo from before, They said it'll never happen,
> ever. They were "protecting" the Firefox Branding
> 2. Get Debian to compromise, making exceptions to its policy on
> DFSG. Thereby compromising the whole foundation that Debian
> is built upon. Possibly forcing hundreds of other compromises of the
> DFSG.
> 3. "Fork" the Firefox source, to be changed to the point where
> it was no longer defying the Mozilla Foundation's terms, but also
> complying with the Debian Free Software Guide(DFSG).
>
> I'll bet you can guess which one the maintainer(s) was(were) forced
> to choose.
>
> Any questions?
Okay, I get that and thanks for the rundown, but at one point I saw a
list of differences between Firefox and Iceweasel, including a long
list of things that were removed from Iceweasel. A lot of it looked
technical, but it did seem to indicate there was a lot more than a logo
and name that were removed. When people refer to the non-free code, is
it ONLY to the logo and name? It just seemed like the list of changes
was a lot longer than that.
Hal
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