Re: Iceweasel's UserAgent
Mumia W.. wrote:
> On 05/07/2008 05:23 PM, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote:
>> [...]
>> Which leads to the question: Shouldn't Iceweasel at least advertise
>> itself as Firefox?
>
> No it should not.
>
>> Because after all it _is_ Firefox, only with a different name.
>>
>>
>
> That depends upon timing and perspective. In a real, legal and
> organizational sense, Iceweasel is a different web browser maintained
> by a different organization from Mozilla, and it should have a
> different name and advertise itself as what it is--a different web
> browser.
>
> However, history does show that Iceweasel shares some code with
> Firefox. History also shows that the Microsoft Internet Explorer
> shares some code with Spyglass and NCSA Mosaic. This does not justify
> MSIE advertising itself as anything other than "MSIE x.x."
I see a difference. I believe that even at first release, MSIE was
already different enough from Mosaic. Even if not, nowadays it certainly is.
If some day Iceweasel starts to change so much that it gets somewhat
different from Firefox, then it should not advertise itself as Firefox
anymore. However, as far as I know, Iceweasel is exactly Firefox without
the name and artwork, and with other quite small changes.
Rendering-wise, it is exactly the same.
And while this is another topic, I personally hope Iceweasel does not
drift much from Firefox. The name change is already very bad for Debian
and its users (even though it's unavoidable, I understand), so let's
minimize the problems.
--
Don't read everything you believe.
Eduardo M KALINOWSKI
ekalin@gmail.com
http://move.to/hpkb
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