Firefox To Be Renamed In Debian 625
Viraptor writes, "Debian is ready to change the name of Firefox in its distributions, beginning with Etch. They say it can be done within a week. The reasons stem from Mozilla's recent insistence on trademark fidelity and its preferences regarding Firefox patches. Debian doesn't want to accept the original trademarked fox & globe logo; they don't see it as really 'free' to use. On the other hand, Mozilla doesn't want Firefox distributed under that name if it lacks the logo. Mozilla also wants Debian patches to be submitted to them before distribution, and claims that's what others (Red Hat and Novell) are already doing. But some believe development and releases will slow down if distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first. We will surely see more clashes between copyright claims and 'really free' distros such as Debian. Ubuntu is also asking similar questions." No word yet what the new name will be or what the logo will look like.
Well, then: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well, then: (Score:5, Funny)
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The artist needs to get out more!
Parent semi-NSFW (Score:2)
Re:Well, then: (Score:4, Funny)
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And OS-tans [wikipedia.org] ? What's your take on them [wikipedia.org] ?-)
Of course you're not. You happened by 4chan completely by accident, have never looked at any boards besides /b/, and keep on watching it just because of funny animal pictures. And to laugh at the sad geeks without lives who drool over the stuff.
Worrying
FreeFox (Score:5, Interesting)
I prefer FreeFox. Still very recognisable, while at the same time rubbing it in that Firefox is not truly free.
Re:FreeFox (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox is free, however it's trademark protected and that means you can't both hack it to pieces and use the Firefox name+brand. That's entirely reasonable - if I took Debian, changed things randomly that broke it in obscure ways then shipped it as Debian using the Debian logo of course they'd be pissed off too.
And for those who are wondering, yes, this is exactly what happened. The tensions between the Mozilla team and Debian have been around for ages, this is not news, but it got a lot worse lately. Firefox is getting larger and the quality of the brand matters a lot more, meanwhile, the Debian guys were taking Firefox and making massive changes to it. For instance I've seen persistent reports from many different people that the Ubuntu Firefox is much slower than the official build. The last time I came across this issue, it was because Debian had completely forked the XULRunner platform - some guy felt it was "too Windows-like" and that "the UNIX way was superior". So, day was night and night was day and the XUL platform Mozilla wanted to push was already incompatible and forked. The developers who had designed this platform were understandably angry and now Debian has got what it deserves.
Anyway, none of this really matters. Debian is non-existant on the desktop and has an atrocious brand. Meanwhile Firefox has a very strong brand. One of the reasons Fedora et al ship Firefox and not the GNOMEified Epiphany equivalent is because customers know the Firefox name and want it, and don't know the Epiphany name. On the desktop Debian vs Firefox is no contest.
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This shows that Debian are confused. (Score:3, Insightful)
What is the OS and what are the "Extra apps"?
Does this mean Firefox is part and parcel of the OS, and if so then why is the whole domain of GUI stuff treated as extras? If not, then why the urgent need to impose their tweaks on those programs?
I keep getting the impression they don't want to have a clear policy on desktop use, reworking applications, trademarks, etc, so they just switch between different attitu
Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's a quote. [wikiquote.org] From Matt Groening.
Firefox. Iceweasel. It's clever.
Re:FreeFox (Score:4, Informative)
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Or, they couldn't. Trademark law forbids not only names that are the same but also "quite similar" to a trademark.
Re:Well, then: (Score:4, Insightful)
Way to go, Debian.
How did I know /. readers would confuse the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't, particularly — the trademark isn't the problem. What we care about is that it also has a copyright license that does not allow any derivative works. So, you can't start with a Firefox logo image, pull up your favorite image editor and hack it into something new and interesting — say, for example, an icon set for a desktop theme.
Debian takes the right to modify software very seriously. And yes, that includes images shipped with software.
It is possible to trademark an image yet still allow derivative works to be created from it. Mozilla Corp, unfortunately, chose not to do this.
Re:How did I know /. readers would confuse the iss (Score:5, Interesting)
Debian just can't expect to get a free ride for doing a half-job. Or even, as the case appears to be, a quarter-job.
As has been pointed out: Debian takes its image and mark very seriously, too. Why the bitching by Debian supporters when they have to make changes for the very sort of thing that they do themselves?
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In a word, you can take any image bundled in a Debian "free" package and do whatever you want with it, no one will have anything to say about it.
I think it excludes the Debian logo itself though, and this is considered a bug.
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Oh for heaven's sake..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh for heaven's sake..... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Just s/Debian/Mozilla and you have the exact reason the Mozilla people are protecting their image. For shame, Debian.
Re:Oh for heaven's sake..... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh for heaven's sake..... (Score:5, Informative)
Fairly liberal I'd say, and if you care to contrast with Mozilla's trademark policy [mozilla.org] it makes a world of difference.
Selective quoting (Score:4, Interesting)
Or (regarding the Debian Official Use Logo):
It would seem that Debian recognizes that the use of trademarks is important to protecting the reputation of a project, and may even require approval in some cases. So why should they expect FireFox to be any different?
/K
Re:Selective quoting (Score:5, Informative)
They don't, part of Debian's build process for Firefox strips the logo (and some other things, anything considered "non-free" actually). They had striked a deal with some Mozilla spokeperson some time ago about that, and were allowed to use the Firefox name without the Firefox logo (the Mozilla branding usually requires you to have them together, and probably imposes some other things, if you want to use the Mozilla Firefox brand), but it looks like that policy has changed and they can't anymore.
Which means that now they can either include the logo (which they can't, since it's non-free, unless they move Fx to non-free packages) or stop using the name.
They picked the later.
Please mod down misleading parent post (Score:4, Interesting)
If you had actually taken the time to read the page you linked, you'd notice that Debian has TWO logos to explicitly prevent situations like the one that Mozilla is creating.
From the page that YOU linked:
So what, exactly, is your problem with Debian's logo situation?
Re:Please mod down misleading parent post (Score:5, Informative)
Not really different. In fact, Debian is happy to use the open-use Firefox logo, and that's what we're already doing. The "problem" is that Mozilla Corporation has demanded that, if we don't use the official-use logo, we stop calling our browser Firefox. Of course we will comply.
Nothing to see here, except Debian preparing to comply with the demands of a trademark holder.
The only remaining problem is what to call the browser instead. I'd probably support a friend's [erinn.org] suggestion of Firefaux, except that I think it would violate trademark law, which prohibits "confusingly similar" names. Because of this I think it's a bad idea to use either "Fire" or "Fox" in the new name. So ... yeah. Iceweasel.
Re:Oh for heaven's sake..... (Score:5, Informative)
And of course, the Linux kernel does not, and never has, required patches to be submitted before they're used. Distros like Gentoo maintain a set of their own patches for the Linux kernel, with no problems. Debian also has their own kernel patches, last I checked.
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The gentoo kernel which has the patches is different than the linux kernel.
* sys-kernel/gentoo-sources
Latest version available: 2.6.17-r7
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of files: 40,538 kB
Homepage: http://dev.gentoo.org/~dsd/genpatches [gentoo.org]
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Way to flex those muscles, Debian.
Re:Oh for heaven's sake..... (Score:4, Informative)
According to the DFSG, they'd have to keep it in nonfree if they wanted to keep the name.
Re:Oh for heaven's sake..... (Score:5, Insightful)
The alternative would be that the distros used different versions of the mainline kernel, compiled with different options. I fail to see how adding a few additional patches, and third-party drivers would make things much worse. Besides, most of the incompatibilities between different distros has not been caused by changing kernels. They are caused by different compile-time options, different choice of packages, difference in package systems, filesystem layout differences, different versions of shared libraries, and the ever-changing C++ ABI.
I don't fucking much care what makes web "designers" happy. Instead they should focus on keeping us readers happy, which means that any web-page should be designed for any browser. That means IE, mozilla, opera, or simply whatever standard-conforming browser you have.
If your page is fragile enough to break if someone uses a version of firefox with a patch to change the name and logo, then it will surely also break between firefox 1.5.0.5 and 1.5.0.6. By your logic, browsers shouldn't be improved either.
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If Linus tells them that he doesn't want them to use his trademark in relation to their modified version of the kernel then yes, they will stop using the trademark. What would you suggest instead, fight it out in court?
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Re:Oh for heaven's sake..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Debian is not allowed to ship software which can't be modified by users of the distro, it's against their policy (the Debian Free Software Guidelines). Since Mozilla won't cooperate with Debian, Debian has to rename Mozilla's software. That makes everyone happy. Debian can follow its own guidelines, and Mozilla can choke the life out of their software with their tight iron-fist. Everyone wins.
This is not a new issue, either. Nearly every distro dumped XFree86 when they started acting this way. They forked it and now we have X.org. (XFree86 is completely dead now.) OpenBSD ditched Apache for the same reason.
Re:Oh for heaven's sake..... (Score:4, Informative)
Close, it's more like this:
- Debian says, "I want to modify the source so that Firefox can better fit in with my OS."
- Mozilla says, "Sure, but you have to run changes through us to release it with the official branding. We want to protect our brand and QA those changes before you ship something that will reflect on our image."
- Debian responds, "Um, no. We do what we want because it's free software. This isn't going to fly with us."
- Mozilla answers, "Well, you're free to have the source and do with it what you will, but the logo is copywritten and the name is trademarked and we reserve the right not to let you use it without our permission. The only way you're getting that is to let us QA the changes or ship it unmodified."
- Debian says loudly with it's nose in the air, "OK, fine! We're not using the name or the logo, because we do what with Free software. That's what makes it free."
It seems like the natural course of events happened here. Debian wants everything to be free. Mozilla wants to protect a brand. So Debian takes what's free and makes its own brand. I think the culture of that at Mozilla is not into Free Software as an ideology (and there are many blog posts by Mozilla employees that say so) but that it is a means to create great software. I think the culture of Debian is that they're really into Freedom and the software will come over time. Given the availability and an infinate amount of time, the probability of creating great software goes to 1. (They like the Math equations over there in the Debian camp!)Of course, it all doesn't matter as long as Ubuntu gets to keep the Firefox branding. If not, I'm sure there will be scripts written to change it all back. Freedom, baby! Yeah!
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In a sign of frustration, the new name will be (Score:5, Funny)
In a sign of open warfare, the new name will be (Score:5, Funny)
Make up your own names (Score:5, Informative)
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Thank you. You saved me the trouble of linking it myself.
BTW, my current window is named Mozilla Fireoriole. I prefer the A.C.M.E. prefix myself, but can't be bothered to actually completely remove Mozilla. It just doesn't seem right.
Re:Make up your own names (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, the fix is trivial, i'll even walk you through it:
FireBollox (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:FireBollox (Score:5, Insightful)
Debian really needs to get the stick out of their ass. It's a great server distro, but if they want any sort of desktop marketshare then they have to change. Ubuntu better tell Debian to shove it and include the logo and Firefox as Moz wants them too otherwise you're just going to confuse people. Not everyone wants to read Wiki's and forums to figure out that the browser they have is indeed Firefox.
In addition, so Debian starts patching and they start breaking extensions. Hmmm...people get pissed and stop using the browser and then stop using Debian cause the browser sucks.
Re:FireBollox (Score:4, Insightful)
But they should! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, this is an issue that the open source world has not thought very deeply about yet.
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Debian's dedicated to the Free Software ideology, not to capitalism.
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nice blue globe (Score:2)
new logo (Score:5, Funny)
I can't see that catching on though, they'll call it WaterVole or something equally stupid
the browser formerly known as ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:the browser formerly known as ... (Score:4, Insightful)
That was just Prince wanting to release albums but not owning his own stage name. Apparently, his earlier contract included the stage name. The contract must have been for albums and term of years, so that when the albums were out he could contract elsewhere, but he couldn't take his name with him.
Or, I suppose you could say that "Prince" was his slave name.
Nerds arguing (Score:5, Insightful)
Watching open source development is like watching 50,000 nerds argue.
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I dunno, I can see where the guy from Mozilla is coming from - Firefox is open source, and you can fork it or rebrand it to your hearts content, but if you want to call it Firefox then you need to use an approved version/submit your patches for approval. I can see that there could be bad consequences for the Firefox brand if they didn't enforce this, and a substandard derivative became confused with the main branch - remember a lot of Firefo
To pre-empt the "ZOMG MOZILLA TEH NAZI" crowd... (Score:5, Informative)
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=
The trademark problems discussed make the issue pretty clear.
Re:To pre-empt the "ZOMG MOZILLA TEH NAZI" crowd.. (Score:4, Informative)
the conditions you need to get on board with:
- All changes the distributor wishes to make to the source code must be
provided as discrete patches, along with a description of why the change
is required
- Releases are expected to be based on the CVS tag and/or source tarball
for the release version, plus approved patches.
- build configurations should also be submitted for approval.
- The logo and the trademark are required to be used together.
To me #1 and #3 are blatant restrictions on the freedom of using firefox, so I can agree with Debian's stance of calling it something else.
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I think it is in my best interest (as a user) that Debian alter its package so that mozilla.com can no longer prevent me from doing so; therefore rebranding the Firefox browser (or even renaming the package, if n
Stakes (Score:4, Insightful)
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Actually, it's because Firefox is arguably the most popular and most visible Open Source product (practically all current Linux machines have Firefox installed, and a sizable number of Windows and Mac machines do too). You don't see this discussion about the GIMP, Apache, even Emacs, because the user base is smaller and is familiar enough with the product and where it comes from that branding isn't an issue.
Homer's view (Score:3, Funny)
Submitting patches (Score:5, Informative)
This is only the case if the Firefox trademark will be used. Now that Debian is changing the name, they don't need to have their patches vetted.
There's been complaints for years and years at Mozilla over the dubious quality of some of the Debian patches, not to mention the very large amount of them (Debian users have a hard time getting support in the Mozilla IRC channels because there's a thousand and one new weird issues that are unique to Debian), and that's directly helped shape the policy that the trademarks can only be used with unaltered products, or with the alterations directly vetted. This is not unreasonable. The actual code is still completely free and available for everyone to do with as they please - it's purely the Firefox branding (and its meaning as a high-quality product) that's being protected here.
Read the Mozilla Trademark Policy [mozilla.org].
To Debian: Pick Your Battles (Score:4, Interesting)
Debian's problem has always been that its handlers place users and the usability of their distribution far below very petty internal arguments intended to frame the distro as some sort of legal pioneer (Debian Linux vs. Debian GNU/Linux "controversy" anyone?). It's a huge turnoff to the non-zealots among us, and certainly makes for bad PR.
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Seriously, Debian is the THE zealot distro. They obsess about Free Software. If that's not your thing, go with something else, plenty alternatives around.
Thank you... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't like the hard-line approach but want to get gritty: try Gentoo. Don't like their politics; Linux From Scratch. Want something immediate and usable? Redhat. Suse. Mandrake (I just can say Mandriva with a straight face). Linspire (from the founder of mp3.com!). Or even Ubuntu, although I don't know how close they are to the core Debian crew
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My point is that Debian never claimed to be something else. Those users simply made the wrong choice, and perhaps Debian should have never got so popular in the first place.
Continuing my earlier example, if you decide to buy a $350 computer from Dell it would be a bit stupid to then complain that it looks cheap (well, duh), that performance is unimpressive, and that the stability of components selected to be absolutely as
Re:To Debian: Pick Your Battles (Score:5, Insightful)
Debian did not choose this battle. They have been distributing Firefox for years in the same way they distribute other open source software. It was Mozilla who forced the issue by threatening legal action [debian.org] if Debian doesn't change the name or start submitting all patches (even security patches) to Mozilla for permission before they are applied. Mike Conner of Mozilla says "you should consider this, as I previously said, notice that your usage of the trademark is not permitted in this way, and we are expecting a resolution. If your choice is to cease usage of the trademark rather than bend the [Debian Free Software Guidelines] a little, that is your decision to make."
Debian asked "could we at least get a stay of execution? Etch is going into deep freeze in less than a month. Would it be possible to resolve this after the release?" and Mozilla responded that "If we were forced to revoke your permission to use the trademark, freeze state would not matter, you would be required to change all affected packages as soon as possible. Its not a nice thing to do, but we would do it if necessary, and we have done so before."
Many legal squabbles are instigated by Debian, but this isn't one of them. Mozilla has forced the issue. Linux Weekly News wrote a good summary of the situation. [lwn.net]
-Fyodor
Insecure.Org [insecure.org]
Re:To Debian: Pick Your Battles (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that, but that statement directly revoked the previous standing agreement Debian had with Gervase Markham from Mozilla, which essentially said that Mozilla trusted Debian's (generally conservative) judgement on patches. With this pointed out, Mike Connor confirmed that Gervase did indeed make that agreement, and that Mozilla wished to revoke it.
I understand the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation's issue here, and they certainly have the right to defend their trademarks; that defense itself doesn't necessarily go against Free Software principles. As I understand it, Debian doesn't have any problem with the *trademarks* on the software, because a big build switch exists to turn them on and off; however, Debian *does* have a problem with the non-free copyright license on the images, and thus doesn't use them.
The other problem lies in the fact that Mozilla doesn't really care about the quality of Debian's patches, as much as about getting everyone to use the official releases, regardless of distro policy. They don't like Debian backporting security fixes to 1.0 rather than upgrading people to 1.5, or backporting fixes to 1.5 rather than using Mozilla's (large) point releases; Debian has a "no new upstream versions" policy for stable releases, to avoid breaking things, and many people who run Debian stable rely on that policy.
Root of the conflict: trademarks, not copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with allowing the name and logo to be separated is that it damages the brand identity - people might wonder whether this "Firefox" with one logo is really the same as a "Firefox" with a different logo, or people might think the unofficial logo is the official one (which would clearly harm the brand - consider Firefox t-shirts and the logo).
Mozilla also wants Debian patches to be submitted to them before distribution, and claims that's what others (Red Hat and Novell) are already doing. But some believe development and releases will slow down if distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first.
Both sides have a point. Often, problems that users encounter with "Firefox" in distributions turn out to be a result of the questionable downstream modifications [burntelectrons.org] the distro maintainers added. Do you really think Mozilla would be worried and spending their time on these kinds of issues if there wasn't a good chance that people would associate Mozilla Firefox with low quality due to distro modifications? If there was no risk of damaging the brand, it would certainly be better for everyone to use the same logo and name.
From the distro's point of view, of course it's annoying to have to get approval on all patch sets. However, there is generally a long time between releases anyway (especially Debian's releases
We will surely see more clashes between copyright claims and 'really free' distros such as Debian. Ubuntu is also asking similar questions.
One irony of the situation is that Debian itself has the same problem with their branding: if you modify the distribution, you can't call it Debian any more. It's an unfortunate issue that if you want to have a useful (i.e. recognizable and trusted) brand, you can't allow people to ship their own derivatives of your product while using your branding.
Allowing users of your product complete freedom is a nice ideal, but it's not possible to do under the current laws unless you place no value on branding.
It is about copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
It is only now, that Mozilla has changed the way they police and grand permission for their trademark, that the trademark has become an issue. Other distros have been able to get trademark permission. There is no way for Debian to get this same permission while that image remains under a non-permissive copyright & while it remains a term for trademark use.This is really ridiculous--brandnames and logos are separated ALL the time.No other F/OSS software package seems to have an insurmountable problem with this. They don't even have major problems with Gentoo & the strange CFLAGS or compiler arguments that some users of that distro use. Bugs are typically reported to the distro. If it is an upstream probelm, they'll hear about it.It is more than "annoying." It is dangerous. Distros should NOT have to wait for approval for patching security bugs. This isn't just theoretical--Debian does backport fixes to versions of Firefox that Mozilla stopped maintaining. While there is some time between releases, the package repositories get updated all the time.
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Erm, no they aren't. Many, many companies use logos that are simultaneously their brand names.
That is completely wrong. Many projects have big issues with "questionable downstream modifications". I spent several years
Debian's bug on the issue; Mozilla's behavior (Score:2)
I'm not a Debian user & do use many Mozilla products, but I think MozCo could have handled this better.
The logo is under a non-permissive copyright, which Debian objects to & which Mozilla has always defended from others using in "non-official" builds (including in Gentoo and the "optimized" builds for Windows and Mac by fans in the forums). These builds used a generic logo (the blue globe of the official logo, but without the orange firefox) or made th
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It IS about the copyright on the logo (Score:4, Insightful)
Remind me... (Score:2)
Oh, yes, I remember, they couldn't work together to provide a unified user experience, each wanted to be distinct and make stuff different just for the sake of being different.
There seems to be a general forgetting of who the real enemy is.
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Perhaps because "winning" in certain ways is not really winning. Unseating Microsoft is not a particularly good goal. Making better software is.
Glad Debian is picking the right battle here. (Score:3, Insightful)
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If you bothered to actually read the original bug report you would know that Mozilla did just change their policy. They just rescinded the agreement reached by the Debian package maintainers and Gervase Markham that allowed Debian to use the name 'Firefox' without having to submit all their patches for approval, and without having to use the (non-DFSG-free) Firefox logo.
Questions on Thunderbird & Other Mozilla Produ (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Questions on Thunderbird & Other Mozilla Pr (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the big problem here is that Mozilla keeps changing what they consider acceptable uses of their trademark & don't have a coherent policy. No one knows what the heck to do.
Firefox logo/trademark is important (Score:5, Insightful)
The people of Debian are being stupid. The Firefox logo is an important logo and should be kept. Debian protects their trademark(s), why shouldn't Mozilla? I use Ubuntu over Debian, I just hope Ubuntu doesn't follow this stupid example of Debian. Mark S. seems to have his head on straight and since he is a business man I would think he understands the importance of a trademark.
It is not like Mozilla is trying to lock up the code and make everything proprietary. They just put a lot of effort into getting their name _and_ logo known and want to keep it that way.
Debian shouldn't have to be a Firefox promoter (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that exactly what's happening here? Debian's acknowledging that the Firefox trademark is protected, and therefore preparing to change the name in Debian. I'm sure there are people involved in Debian who'd like to keep the Firefox name, but unless it can be done within the terms of Debian's main goals, it's not going to happen.
That said, why should Debian be bending over backwards and sacrificing how it does things so a single package (out of thousands) can keep up its perceived market-share, as you seem to imply in your post? People such as yourself might care about Firefox's market-share, but this has nothing to do wiht Debian. Besides, who cares if Debian people are being stupid? It's their right to govern their distribution as they see fit [debian.org], and if this bothers people outside, such as Firefox users who don't want to see their perceived market share diminish, then it's their problem more than Debian's.
I know it's not just you, but your post is an example of what seems to be a huge misunderstanding everywhere that the open source "community" is some kind of big organisation with common goals. It's not -- it's a vast collection of people who share and use each other's source code through the application of open source licenses. What people use it for and who uses it is up to the people involved. Personally I like this, and I prefer it hugely over proprietary vendors arguing with and paying millions of dollars to each other to decide who can see what, what works where, and how broken something will be when it's released. Trying to imply that there's a massive open source organisation, though, and that everyone has the unified goal of having OSS take over servers and desktops and whatever else it takes to get noticed, is ridiculous.
It's Firefox that's clamping on the restrictions here, and rightly so for their own interests since Firefox wants to associate its name with a level of quality that it has control over. Fair enough, but if the Debian developers decide that Firefox's interests are incompatible with their main distribution goals, they're completely within their rights to do this. Any "loss in perceived market-share" is entirely because the Firefox team hasn't done everything necessary to cater to what its users require.
What Happened to "Community Edition?" (Score:4, Interesting)
Note also that the "community editions" also forbade use of the official logo!
Funniest part (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, we certainly wouldn't want Debian Stable's release frequency to slow down any further than it already is.
I am not a troll, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been a Debian supporter for a long time, but when Firefox is no longer called Firefox I will no longer be a supporter. With the more practical Ubuntu around, it's not a hard decision to make.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
People keep bringing this up, and what it boils down to is the assertion that, while certain freedoms are important for source code, those same freedoms aren't important for other types of digital content. I've tried for years to get people to explain what principles would make this valid — why certain
This is why I don't use debian (Score:3, Insightful)
new name? ok... hmm... (Score:3, Funny)
Well, there's Firefox, and fire is one of the four elements (fire, water, earth, and air), and of course a fox is a type of canid. So, the logic choices are obviously:
Well, I guess those aren't the only permutations. There is also Airwolf, but unless the Debian people are really into bad 1980's television shows about helicopters...
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This, however, is a dispute about trademarks. Even GPL software can have trademarks.
Re:My god (Score:4, Insightful)
This is close, but not quite true. All Mozilla, SeaMonkey and Firefox code is tri-licensed (MPL/GPL/LGPL), no exceptions. (Actually it used to be that a small percentage of code wasn't under the GPL yet, and Mozilla spent a couple of years tracking down the owners and acquiring permission to really make it all GPL-ed.)
And then there's the Firefox binary, which is licensed with the Mozilla EULA [mozilla.org].
But yeah, as you said, the issue at hand here is purely about trademarks, which (sadly?) need to be strongly protected for legal reasons.
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FireForked (Score:2)
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A new name (Score:5, Funny)
Why not fireballmer (Couldn't resist)
Re:Can we get an internet or web in there somewher (Score:4, Funny)
Here are my suggestions...
Firefox should be "HTTP/FTP/Gopher/Archie/XML Renderer"
DreamWeaver should be "Software for Designing HTTP/XML Format Documents for Internet Usage"
C should be "Low to Medium Level Computing Language"
Gentoo should be "Linux Distribution for People Who Prefer to Churn Their Own Butter" (I kid, I kid)