[solved] The melting of Iceweasel?

[charles95]

If you are not already aware Debian has changed its policy on which versions of rebranded Mozilla software to ship with Wheezy. Wheezy will now ship the latest ESR versions of Iceweasel and Icedove. As of now that meanse version 17 and when version 24 is relased Debian will ship that as well. The reason cited is that they do not have the resources to continue backporting patches to older versions. Here's the security advisory: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2699

My question is this. Is there any point in continuing to rebrand the Mozilla software. The original quarrel which resulted in the rebranding was the backporting of fixes. Now that that quarrel has effectively been resolved why continue to change the name and logo when the software itself is not going to be modified anymore?

[AnInkedSoul]

changed its policy

for security updates

on which versions of rebranded Mozilla software

in stable-security

fixed that for ya

Wheezy will now ship the latest ESR versions of Iceweasel and Icedove. As of now that meanse version 17 and when version 24 is relased Debian will ship that as well.

false

The reason cited is that they do not have the resources to continue backporting patches

to the versions in oldstable-security

fixed that for ya again - might want to read a bit more carefully from now on

My question is this. Is there any point in continuing to rebrand the Mozilla software.

Does debian have a mozilla trademark license? How will anyone wanting to redistribute debian packages of firefox do so since they do not have a mozilla trademark license? Is that going to work considering debians free software guidelines?

The original quarrel which resulted in the rebranding was the backporting of fixes.

Nah I think that was patching in general which I suspect will need to continue.

when the software itself is not going to be modified anymore?

except that it probably still is going to be....not to mention the trademark issue...

[buntunub]

http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/20 ... 00757.html

There seems to be some confusion here. The Firefox and Thunderbird official logos (e.g. the fox-on-globe) are covered by a different license which is far too restrictive for Debian.

[charles95]

Whoops. Looks like I misunderstood that advisory. I didn't realise that the firefox logos were actually protected. I just thought that Mozilla didn't want Debian to ship a browser that was called Firefox and had the Firefox logo if Debian were going to patch it without Mozilla's approval.

One thing I would like to say though is that my statement about the latest ESR thing is not "false"

I am typing this on Iceweasel 17.0.7 which is the latest ESR. In the advisory it says "As such, this update introduces packages based on Firefox 17 and at some point in the future we will switch to the next ESR branch once ESR 17 has reached it's end of life." The next ESR branch will be version 24 so that is not incorrect. They may not ship version 24 as soon as Mozilla push it out of the gate but they have said they will release it.

Anyway. Thank you for clearing up my confusion over this matter.

[AnInkedSoul]

One thing I would like to say though is that my statement about the latest ESR thing is not "false"

Wheezy ships with 10, you can get 17 via the security repo.


We're changing the approach for security updates for Iceweasel, Icedove and Iceape in stable-security.

[AnInkedSoul]

what you said

If you are not already aware Debian has changed its policy on which versions of rebranded Mozilla software to ship with Wheezy.

what was actually said

We're changing the approach for security updates for Iceweasel, Icedove and Iceape in stable-security

what you said

Wheezy will now ship the latest ESR versions of Iceweasel and Icedove.

what was actually said

Instead of backporting security fixes, we now provide releases based on the Extended Support Release branch.

what you said

The reason cited is that they do not have the resources to continue backporting patches to older versions.

what was actually said

We don't have the resources to backport security fixes to the Iceweasel release in oldstable-security any longer. If you're up to the task and want to help, please get in touch with team@security.debian.org. Otherwise, we'll announce the end of security support for Iceweasel, Icedove and Iceape in Squeeze in the next update round.

crystal?

[charles95]

crystal?

Yes. Crystal. Sorry about that. I misread it and misunderstood the intentions. Thank you for correcting me.