Debian Frees Mozillas
Okay, right after I’ve bulk upgraded my debian packages, I couldn’t get my Thunderbird Mail Client to run. First I thought, maybe some bugged version upgrade again. I checked at my Kmenu, a name “Icedove” came into my attention. Icedove Mail Client? So I clicked on it to check out what on earth is that. Guess what, it’s Thunderbird! No difference I can tell with the previous version of thunderbird I had before upgrade.
So I was curious, tried to dig some information out of this. It seems that Mozilla foundation has enforced its Trademark Policy against Linux distributions that maintain/release Mozilla software suits (those you can easily get with your deb/rpm package manager). Various Linux distributions release their own security patches, and their own versioning method have made these releases “Unofficial”, according to Mozilla. So the names (Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird etc) and the logos cannot be used in these unofficial releases.
The GNU project has introduced new names for several mozilla products in this page. Mozilla to Gnuzilla, Firefox to Iceweasel, and Thunderbird to Icedove. Sounds pretty parody, but I can live with it. There’s a news entry at lwn.net, about the discussion of both parties, and the conflicts that lead to this outcome.
I’m neutral regarding this issue, as I personally think these two parties have made very great effort in what they do, delivering quality softwares to the end user that is. So if you are a debian user, please remember that IceWeasel and Icedove that you use, are modified version of Firefox and Thunderbird. Credits go to both the Mozilla and Debian teams.
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