Arguing With Customers
October 21st, 2007
We seem to have been trolled into revisiting the Firefox logo copyright and trademark terms. Joy. Since the debate is heating up again, we might as well try to make some positive progess. First, it’s obvious that Mozilla and Debian relations have been pretty icy. It would be diplomatic to say that mistakes have been made by both sides. Frankly, it also happens to be true, so I’m going to go with it.
Usually, this discussion devolves into name calling: The Mozilla Corporation is a ruthless megacorp bent on subverting the definition of Open, Free, and all other positive adjectives. The Debian project are a bunch of license bikeshedders that want to remove gif support from a branded Firefox release. You get the idea.
Eventually, someone will point out that Debian has the same problem that Firefox does! It’s just one link down the distribution chain. “True,” the Debian folks say, “but we consider that a bug.” As if Mozilla thinks everything is just peachy. Well, I have some news for you. Linux users and developers are customers, and anything that makes you argue with customers is a bug. The disagreement concerns the available remedies. Personally, I don’t think there is one at this time, but I would love to find a solution that’s acceptable to all concerned.
I encourage you to read all of Branden Robinson’s proposed trademark policy for Debian. In particular, pay attention to the types of activities the trademark holder must engage in. I’ll post some juicy excerpts here:
“Sadly, the Free Software community in general has not developed trademark policies for copyrighted works that have meshed very well with the DFSG, nor with the Open Source Definition, nor even with simpler statements such as the Free Software Foundation’s ‘Four Freedoms’ that many of us consider essential properties of Free Software.”
“…Examples of the Free Software community’s difficulty with developing a copyright and trademark policies for logos include AbiWord, Mozilla Firefox …and ourselves.”
“Both representatives of AbiWord and Mozilla Corporation noted the licensing terms we have on our Open Use Logo criticized us for holding them to higher standards than we held ourselves. “
“…to my knowledge, no trademark-using project in the Free Software community has done anything more productive than point out that we all live in the same glass houses.”
Yes, every project with a consumer brand has this problem. AbiWord, Mozilla, BitTorrent, OpenSolaris, Debian, and on and on. Still not much accomplished, unfortunately. Personally, I think one big deficiency with the current license work is that it focuses solely on application names, and doesn’t mention the status of graphical logos. That orange fox around the globe is just as central to Firefox’s reputation as the name itself. Please do your best to understand the desire to protect that. It can force unpleasant distribution terms if all of the “Free” options are unacceptable, just like it does for Debian itself. Please don’t take this opportunity to dismiss concerns about the reputation of the graphic as irrelevant.
In a comment on a post I won’t link to, Jeff Walden wrote:
“Would you rather Mozilla be disingenuous and distribute the artwork under licenses that can’t actually be used, because trademark requires stronger conditions than those licenses allow? As far as I can tell that’s what every other group with trademarked art is doing, and I think that’s completely bogus.”
I think I agree with that, but I could be missing something.
Comments are open. Be cool.
October 21st, 2007 at 4:57 pm
I agree with most of what you said except the notion that because a customer complained something *is* wrong with your product. If I complain that my dishwasher doesn’t also give me a back massage that doesn’t mean something is wrong with my dishwasher. While I have a need that this product isn’t filling, that doesn’t even necessarily mean the company that makes my dishwasher needs to care, even if my sore back is caused by bending over to load the dishwasher.
There may be room for improvement, or innovation, but it’s just as likely that something is wrong with my expectations (or how I load it) as there is with the dishwasher.
“The customer is always right” may be true, but the solution is finding out the best way to meet that customer’s needs. If that way is always to alter your product to accommodate then eventually you’re not following *anyone’s* ideals, least of all your own.
October 21st, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Yesterday I was walking around the streets of New York wearing a Firefox fleece. Throughout the day various random people would walk up to me, ask me if I worked on Firefox, and then proceed to tell me what they thought about it. This was rather strange, as I have rarely found strangers in New York to be so outgoing and friendly.
From a variety of comments, I found two common themes:
1) People most commonly referred to Firefox as their “favorite search engine.” (which gives you a clear indication of the level of technical experience we are dealing with in mainstream audiences).
2) Most people were upset that the first time they downloaded Firefox “from our web site” they got a product that was loaded with toolbars, “caused lots of popups,” or in didn’t work at all. Clearly these people were not downloading Firefox, they were downloading “Firefox (spyware addition, TM).”
It is very easy to dismiss these concerns by saying “anyone who downloads firefox from a domain other than mozilla.com deserves to be executing random malicious code on their system.” But we are talking about millions of people who can’t correctly disambiguate between a Web browser and a search engine, and I personally think protecting them is far more important than giving up our only means of defense, just to establish how much we love Free Software.
October 21st, 2007 at 6:11 pm
I agree with Majken and Alex. I want to love Free Software without compromising on their concerns.
Alex: funny, usually people tell me that Firefox is antivirus software.
October 21st, 2007 at 6:49 pm
What’s even funnier is that people that I know usually refer to Firefox as “Mozilla.” You can almost hear the sigh in my head when they say that.
October 21st, 2007 at 6:54 pm
If I may be so bold, the copyright license of the logo is a moot point, in that it also falls under the trademark rules, which is what truly prevents the logo’s reproduction. We could make the logo GPL or Gnu FDL, and it wouldn’t matter because the trademark license still governs it’s use.
I think it’s pointless to relicense it, and I think it’s nothing but a straw man for people who have a reflexive reaction against the ideas of centrally controlled intellectual property (such as restrictive copyrights, trademarks, etc) and also the commercial success Mozilla has seen. I think these people see Mozilla as having “sold out” despite the fact that in reality, Mozilla has remained loyal to it’s roots of a free software base while managing to cash in to help fund and further development. Rather than being purely volunteer, Mozilla is able to pay people to hack on Moz code all day.
Mozilla source code is more free today than it was on March 31 1998, because today the NPL is dead, so Netscape has no special rights, and when you use the code you’re free to use it under the MPL, LGPL, or even the GPL.
If all this success and benefit comes from not being able to freely share a name and a logo that didn’t exist a few years ago, I’m fine with that. But I think some people don’t like that compromise.
October 21st, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Grey,
I sort of agree. I think things like the IceWeasel logo are obviously derivative works, or at least parodies. I’m not sure there’s a lot of space between that kind of thing (which is totally ok imho), and imagery that would imply a non-existent endorsement. That’s why I always ask about use cases.
I don’t think people who disagree are slaves to a reflexive reaction. I think they have a different value system that doesn’t necessarily conflict with my own.
I hope we can find a solution, and I don’t think anyone actively involved in Mozilla or Debian is acting in bad faith.
October 21st, 2007 at 9:58 pm
I agree, I don’t think anyone is acting in bad faith either. But I think the bandwagoneers who jump on and bash the tar out of MoCo are just that, bandwagoneers, and I think they’re not acting in good faith. I think they’re the ones with a bad reflex.
And I’m all for a loose definition of parody. I actually like the IceWeasel logo, and think they should be allowed to use it. I applaud them for being bright enough to exploit parody in such a manner, but I decry their coloring of the issue behind it, and their reasoning. I think Mozilla is actually being quite fair about how they allow the trademarks to be used. The issue here, IMO, is Debian didn’t like being hoisted on such a petard they themselves use.
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:01 am
Just to be pedantic: As I understand the terms, the IceWeasel logo is neither a derivative work or parody. It’s just its own thing…
A parody usually implies using some work in a nominally infringing way (it being an imitation of the original, as a rhetorical tool), and the law gives you a loophole here since it would otherwise be stifling critical speech. So, if someone wished to criticize Mozilla with a flawless copy of the Firefox logo which was biting off Richard Stallman’s head, that would be a parody.
A Ford logo modified to read “Fnord” wouldn’t be a parody; it’s simply amusing. [Unless you were maaking some sort of Discordian critique of Ford, perhaps.]
It doesn’t seem like a derivative work, since it shares only a general theme (animal wrapped around something round), and doesn’t seem to be otherwise based upon the original Firefox artwork. Even if it looked very similar, that wouldn’t make it a derivative work.
Maaaaybe one could make sort of trademark claim, but that’s not a copyright issue and has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
October 22nd, 2007 at 4:48 am
Isn’t the IceWeasel logo protected by trademark law and hence just as “un-free” and “non-open” as the Firefox logo?
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:54 pm
[...] Debian/Mozilla pissing match [...]
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:08 am
Asbjørn, copyright is an implied right under modern (post-Berne convention) law. Trademark is an affirmative right — you must assert it and protect it or you will lose it.
Do you have any reason to think that the GNU or Debian teams are asserting trademark rights to Iceweasel or Icecat?
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:06 pm
my previous comment is pending moderation, and perhaps I was a tad combative:
I do not believe that GNU or Debian is claiming a trademark on Icecat or Iceweasel — absent such a claim, trademark law does not apply, only copyright.
I should shocked and a little dismayed to find out I am wrong.