[Hamara-users] [Hamara-devel] name challenge - alternate names for 'Mozilla Firefox' and 'Browser'

shirish shirish at hamaralinux.org
Fri Nov 6 00:27:24 IST 2015


in-line :-

On 11/06/2015 12:01 AM, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> [replying only to -devel list]
>
> Quoting shirish (2015-11-05 18:49:35)
>> The single reason why 'Mozilla Firefox' not is that the license under
>> which MPL (Mozilla Public License) operates simply states that if you
>> change the branding, change anything you can't anymore call it
>> Firefox.
>>
>> Also there are many functionalities in the browser itself that we
>> would be looking at taking out (and probably might use the debian
>> iceweasel package as a base to start to do that) and even strip more
>> if needed.
>
> While true that "Firefox" is a registered trademark, you need not invent
> a new name: "Iceweasel" is a well established and free to use name for
> the Mozilla codebase.
>
> I suggest that you take the iceweasel source package and instead of
> forking it you extend it to additionally build an iceweasel-light binary
> package.

Dear Jonas,

While I don't deny the possibility, that could be one of the ways to go, 
the problems are few here :-

a. Hamara would like to have its own branding to the browser which means 
logo, mascot the works. Now if we use Iceweasel, we would be forced to 
work within the constraints of the logo that we (as in Debian) already 
has as well as the mascot, although there has been quite some creative 
logos and mascot interpretations on the iceweasel logo as well.

See 
https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&biw=1162&bih=625&tbm=isch&sa=1&btnG=Search&q=iceweasel+logo

b. One of the other things that is also possible is there is possibility 
of confusion in Europe as well as the smallish chunk in India which has 
a debian user-base.

Having a different name and mascot side-steps the above issue easily.


c. Also what of if at some point in time, we want to move even further 
away from iceweasel than what it is today.

Having a different name, mascot would not put any expectations either on 
hamara or Debian one way or the other.

> I am sure others worldwide could have great benefit from a lightweight
> flavor of the Iceweasel package which worked as a drop-in replacement -
> i.e. worked seamlessly with all plugins and other hooks made for
> iceweasel (except obviously the parts you've avoided, which could be
> handled by Breaks: or Conflicts: in the binary package), and was as well
> maintained regarding security updates as Iceweasel is.
>

True, although another idea that I had was why not have netsurf as well 
which was featured in p.d.o. recently as well.

http://vincentsanders.blogspot.com/2015/11/i-am-not-number-i-am-free-man.html

While it is not mainstream yet (due to the javascript issues) still then 
they are trying to do something right.

I have used it now and then without much complains for some light 
surfing as well.

>   - Jonas
>
>
>
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-- 
Regards,
Shirish Agarwal,
Community Lead,
Hamaralinux.org



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