Article: "Fixing linux" - opinions?

[MJ Ray]

simo <simo.sorce at xsec.it> wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-12-13 at 08:38 +0000, Noah Slater wrote:
> > No, you cannot modify the artwork and redistribute.
>
> This is plainly false, as long as you don't use the trademarks you can.

Here's the complete artwork license in the Mozilla Firefox source tree:-

You are not granted rights or licenses to the trademarks of the
Mozilla Foundation or any party, including without limitation the
Firefox name or logo.

For more information, see: http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/licensing.html 

Source: http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/670cb792e94a/other-licenses/branding/firefox/LICENSE


So, it only speaks of trademarks and doesn't grant *any* permissions.
As it stands, you cannot modify the artwork and redistribute and this
is intentional: you do not have the freedom to redistribute modified
versions of what is called Mozilla Firefox - it is not free software.
Happily, you can cut lumps out and call that free software, but that
means only a subset of Firefox is free software.

Some of my previous summaries of this topic:-
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/blog/2007/debian#iceweasel
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/blog/2006/debian#iceweasel

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237