Re: About Firefox licenses

[Reed Loden]

On Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:52:50 +0100
al3xu5 / dotcommon <address@hidden> wrote:

> Il giorno venerdì 15/01/2010 01:22:34 CET
> Javier Garcia <address@hidden> ha scritto:
> 
> > so.. if all the FF licenses are free, FF 3.0 is also totally free???
> 
> not exactly...
> 
> the 3-licensed FF source code is free software, but
> 
> the binary FF released by Mozilla are not freely redestribuable
> (including trademark and copyrighted stuff) so they are not free
> 
> FF includes some non-free plugins (plugins with a non free software
> license) like adobe reader and flash

Wrong, no plug-ins are included in a default Firefox install (besides
the "default" dummy plugin that doesn't do anything; I think that's
even been removed lately).

> FF recommend non-free software as plug-ins and addons

Not sure I care. As much as I absolutely *hate* Flash, it's now pretty
much a required component for surfing the Web. Gnash just doesn't cut
it for now... I'd very much love to see Flash killed and Open Web
things used in its place (such as SVG, canvas, etc.), but I don't see
that happening anytime soon.

> FF suggest using non free formats

Such as what?

> so... please AVOID USING FF, use GNU/IceCat instead!

... and why exactly would anybody in his/her right mind recommend
that people use some random program that really is just somebody
else's code, which adds some more code that hasn't been reviewed from
anybody who actually knows what's going on, and very likely
hasn't been run through any of Mozilla's unit tests, plus likely wasn't
compiled with all appropriate optimizations that Mozilla has figured
out. Please explain that to me. (note that my problem is with your
reasoning for recommending IceCat and not with anything Giuseppe has
done).

~reed

-- 
Reed Loden - <address@hidden> / <address@hidden>
GNU Project [gnu.org] / Free Software Foundation [fsf.org]