Comment 516 for bug 269656

Prateek Karandikar wrote:
>> All of the software in question can be freely modified and distributed.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>
> If this was so, you could have removed the EULA yourself to begin with,
> and much of this discussion would not have occurred. Remco put it well:
> "The mere fact that Mozilla has any say in this makes Firefox non-free."
>
Prateek, we have been over this several times now.

We could ABSOLUTELY have removed the EULA, and then we would have had to
call the browser something like Iceweasel or abrowser. And in fact, if
you look in Intrepid, there are packages of that there just in case we
or you want to do that.

However, since we would prefer (and our users would prefer) Firefox, we
do need to work with Mozilla. That's perfectly reasonable. And the
results of that engagement have been positive: the EULA is gone, and I
think we are converging on a reasonable approach modulo final legal
analysis as PJ described. Engagement is always our first approach, and
only if that fails should we ostracise an upstream. Upstream is our
rock, right? They do the rocket science that makes free software
possible, we should respect and engage positively with them to the very
greatest extent possible.

I hope you consider Debian free software, but you cannot just take Etch,
change a few things to suit you, and then call the result Debian. Same
for Ubuntu, or Gentoo, or ... any branded, trademarked service. That is
not a restriction on your ability to modify the code, it's a restriction
on your ability to pretend that the result is someone else's work.

Mark