Adam Williamson wrote:
I think a rather large part of the problem here is that all the
above
'special exception' pleading applies far more to Firefox than it does to
Thunderbird. Firefox is a special exception; it's a phenomenon, the
single most successful F/OSS app, an app with its own very definite
distinct identity which many people know. It clearly does have a
reputation to protect and I can entirely agree with it being very
careful about that.
Thunderbird...uhhh, not so much. It's nowhere near as popular as
Firefox. Most people don't know what it is. It's not really a 'special
exception'; it's just another application like the ten gazillion others
we ship which don't have onerous trademark restrictions attached.
I think it'd be appropriate for Mozilla to take a rather more liberal
line with Thunderbird than it does with Firefox, if that's legally
plausible.
Agreed, but I think even Firefox doesn't deserve this kind of preferential
treatment.
In fact, I don't see Firefox as being the "absolute requirement" it's
painted to be at all, we could even consider just not shipping it at all and
picking a different default browser for the GNOME spin, e.g. Epiphany which
is the official GNOME browser. (The KDE spin already does not ship Firefox,
we default to Konqueror.) It's just a web browser.
Kevin Kofler