Firefox Uses Incorrect Icon

http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/faq.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/02/msg01877.html

Since the firefox package in ubunut is not the official one, from the mozilla
organization itself, it cannot use the trademarked icon.

The trademark policy just means that we'd need to get permission from the
Mozilla Foundation to use the official branding in the Ubuntu packages. They
have given permission to use it in the Fedora packages, so this isn't completely
out of the question.

-> Jeff

Please talk to Moz foundation folks and see what the deal is with this.

Spoke to them before warty, wasn't feasible to resolve it for that release. Will
continue discussions with them for hoary. For various reasons, we make things
complicated for them. :-)

*** Bug 15186 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I just submitted a trademark usage request upstream as
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=313246

OK, guys... from Ubuntu's point of view, what prevents you using the logo? Is it
merely obtaining our permission, or is there an additional issue with the fact
that the logo file itself is not under a free software licence?

(Please note I'm away for most of November; during that time, Frank Hecker
<email address hidden> is my boss and the point of contact.)

Gerv

I am going to close this bug because for legal/marketing reasons Mozilla does
not want derived packages to use the official Mozilla-Firefox name or logo.
Calling the Ubnutu product firefox and using the recommended firefox logo at
http://iconpacks.mozdev.org/ seems like a good solution. Will close upstream
bug also.

-dtf

"I am going to close this bug because for legal/marketing reasons Mozilla does
not want derived packages to use the official Mozilla-Firefox name or logo."

Says who? :-) I'm the first point of contact for Mozilla trademark issues, and
we certainly want some derived packages to use the Firefox name and logo,
including Ubuntu's. Who told you that we didn't?

We'd need to sort out a trademark licence - this is an unavoidable requirement
of trademark law, which requires that the trademark owner take steps to make
sure the trademark is preserved as a mark of quality - but I hope that shouldn't
be a problem.

Gerv

This bug should be reopened. The Mozilla people have clearly indicated that they are open to talks re giving permission for usage of the Firefox (and Thunderbird I hope) artwork. Please kindly talk with them and for Edgy I hope to see the regular Mozilla artwork for both Firefox and Thunderbird (and any other Mozilla products like Sunbird too, if applicable). Thanks.

This bug should be reopened. The Mozilla people are willing to talk to us about this. If they were not willing, this should be rejected, but they are willing, so it should not be rejected.

I am taking the liberty of reopening and confirming since by default rejected bugs are not shown in people's "bugs I am subscribed to" list so the developers may forget this bug.

Doing the same as before for Thunderbird, if you will forgive the liberty.

Shiramana: Gervase is no longer the mozilla guy working on trademarks. And their *current* policy is much stricter.

Dennis,

Gervase was the guy who handled this when he posted to this bug. That was almost one year ago. We've let a year pass by since his post, and two years since the opening of this bug. I certainly hope that not another year needs to pass before we fix this bug.

Whoever the current contact is, let's catch them and ask them. I tried a first-level scan of the Mozilla trademarks page but found that not a single person but only a generic address is provided. http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/index.html has more on this.

While we are at it, why don't we use a slightly different logo? Like a fox sitting (not lying curled up) and on top of a globe (not below it)? Would that still be copyright/trademark infringement?

P.S: It's Shriramana, with an "r".

P.P.S: Apparently Gerv wrote http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/008347.html last year too.

The problem is only getting worse. It appears that Mozilla doesn't want the name being used either[1]. Mike Connor[2] is the gentleman from Mozilla that filed the bug this time, and appears to be handling trademark issues for the Corporation.

The inherent problem is that the logo (and apparently the name as well) are non-free works. This goes against Debian's Free Software Guidelines. They have already pretty much determined that they will be changing the name and logo of their firefox package to comply with the DFSG and Mozilla's trademark.

Since Ubuntu's packages are based on Debian's, and Ubuntu has similar requirements for packages in main, I wouldn't expect this bug to be fixed the way you would like. More than likely, the powers-that-be will (and, IMHO, should) follow Debian's lead. However, Mr. Connor hints that he is reviewing the patchset Ubuntu applies to the Mozilla tarballs. This is the first step towards being approved for use of the trademark, so I may very well be wrong.

As an aside, Debian's firefox maintainer has an entertaining poll going on what they should rename Firefox to[3].

1. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622
2. <email address hidden>
3. http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=827142

I just think that the Debian guys are being very immature on the subject because the DFSG is an ideal to which they *cannot* comply since the Linux kernel also has a trademark assigned to Linus. Maybe Debian should cease to exist as a distribution.

So, on the subject at hand, it is great that Mr. Connor is reviewing the patchset Ubuntu is applying to Firefox so the problem can be resolved "In The Right Way".

Bloodypriest, the difference is that Linus is not threatening to sue those who distribute altered versions of Linux.

I think we need to try and use the official name and brandings. Firefox is becoming a recognisable brand on windows machines. By having it in ubuntu, we help ease the transition to linux.

Mozilla is willing to let us use their trademarks, as long as we submit our patches for review to them before we release them. This is coming straight from Mozilla: "We presently have working relationships with most of the major Linux distributions, including Red Hat, Novell, and Ubuntu."

More info here:
http://cbeard.typepad.com/mozilla/2006/10/mozilla_tradema.html

The current state in edgy seems to be that the official firefox logo is used in the Applications menu but the unofficial "only the globe" icon is still used everywhere else (i.e. in the taskbar, in the about dialog, etc.).

Since the Mozilla guys seem to take this branding issue seriously, perhaps this should be fixed.

I also imagine that basically the same issue applies to Thunderbird which uses the unofficial logo throughout.

The last firefox upgrade fixed the artwork in the About dialog.

But the icon in the task bar is still wrong!

Same here. Icon in the "about" dialog and menue is the correct Mozilla-Firefox icon, but in the taskbar it's still the blue globe.

The funny thing: when you start Firefox, the icon during startprocess is the right one in the taskbar. When Firefox is open, it's the blue globe.

Suzan, that is because when you are launching a custom application, it always starts with the icon that you specified. Once it is fully loaded, the application's real icon is shown.

I also see the official icon in both the panel launcher and Applications menu, but not in the window list after Firefox is loaded.

The launcher icon needs some padding; right now, it fills the entire height of the panel and looks quite a bit bigger than the surrounding icons.

Mozilla Thunderbird Uses Incorrect Icon too! Please replace this icon
with the iofficel icon. Thanks.
Regards Louis

Fixed in this version:

firefox (2.0+0dfsg-0ubuntu1) edgy; urgency=low

  * Bump version to 2.0 (no upstream changes from rc3)
  * browser/components/search/nsSearchService.js
    - Set MOZ_OFFICIAL to "official", distributionID to "com.ubuntu"
  * debian/branding: new subdirectory with images
  * debian/rules:
    - build: uudecode and substitute images in source tree, use debian/branding/icon64.png
      instead of debian/firefox.png
    - clean: restore images in source tree, remove uudecoded versions

 -- Matt Zimmerman <email address hidden> Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:56:42 -0700

Firefox still has the wrong icon in the task bar, in alt+tab, etc. Should this be a different bug, or should this bug be reopened?

Neither; that bug is already filed (bug #68180)

So will we have the real Thunderbird icon for Feisty?

I had assumed all the fuss from Mozilla about their trademarks applied to Thunderbird as well?

On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 03:11:33PM -0000, Mika Fischer wrote:
> So will we have the real Thunderbird icon for Feisty?

That has not yet been established; completing the necessary work on
repackaging Firefox is more important.

> I had assumed all the fuss from Mozilla about their trademarks applied
> to Thunderbird as well?

The subject of our discussions to date has been Firefox, not Thunderbird.

--
 - mdz

Fixed with 1.5.0.10.

Thanks Alexander :)

replace subtile '<unnamed>'?