[WikiEN-l] Firefox (was Re: Wikipedia: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly, Dec 2007))

[Oldak Quill]

On 21/10/2007, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 10/21/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 21/10/2007, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Firefox became too concerned
> > > with their name and it's usage, and people stopped using it (Debian) -
> > > who does that help?
> >
> > Ho hmm. To clarify, by "people stopped using it", I meant people
> > stopped using the name (not that people stopped using the software).
> > For Debian (and other hard-FLOSS projects), Firefox's policy on the
> > usage of their name was too non-free and it needed to be changed (to
> > ColdWeasel, I believe).
> >
> If Firefox had said that the name Firefox could only be used for free
> software, I don't think Debian would have cared.  The problem with
> Firefox is they tried to restrict the use of the name in free
> software.

The allegory may not have been a good one, but I think there's
something there. Since so many people are effectively locked-into
proprietory knowledge (the influence of the great publishing houses,
the media, advertising, bookstores, &c.), I don't think it would be
healthy for us to selectively discriminate against the closed press in
this way.

If there is something we could do to encourage O'Reilly to relicense
the book in a free manner (they have a history of doing so, I think I
read), it would be worth doing. I don't think attempting to block them
using "Wikipedia" would achieve this and would cast us in a bad light
(a free/open project using trademark law to stop our name being used).

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)