http://spot.livejournal.com/299409.html
Talking with a giant lizard about a fox on fire
There has been a lot of noise about Firefox in the last day or so, specifically, about their new EULA in Firefox 3. Ubuntu discovered it and people are rightfully unhappy about the state of affairs. You can read more about that here.
So, what's the big deal?
We noticed this in May, when the Firefox 3 pre-builds enabled a EULA, and we immediately reverted Firefox to a pre-EULA state in rawhide, for a few reasons:
1. The EULA was intrusive, it forced itself on the user as a pop-up, and if they disagreed, firefox would close.
2. The EULA conflicted with the MPL, which we felt was the license for the firefox binaries that we delivered in Fedora.
3. The EULA was clearly Non-Free (as in FSF).
4. Most of the EULA was redundant, a restatement of various tenets of trademark and copyright law.
Most Fedora users never noticed this change, because it only happened in rawhide for a brief moment (literally a day or two), and we immediately reverted it. To be very clear, we did not patch the EULA out, we simply rolled back to an earlier Firefox build that didn't use it.
It was at this point that we contacted Mozilla and began discussions with them about correcting this issue. We continue to see a lot of value in including Firefox in Fedora, and using it as the default web browser, but we weren't willing to sacrifice our freedoms to do so. We've been in discussions with them since that point, mostly lawyer to lawyer stuff that I can't go into, but our goal was always to ensure that we could walk away with license terms from Mozilla that:
1. Permitted Fedora to continue using the Firefox trademarks
2. Clearly upheld the MPL as the valid software license terms for the Firefox binaries and source (not just for Fedora, but for everyone)
3. Meet the criteria for Free Software
4. Are presented to the user in a non-obtrusive, non-clickthrough agreement way
Since it eventually became clear that we were not going to be able to resolve the legal terms before Fedora 9, we asked Mozilla for permission to separate the terms of their "web services" from the EULA, and simply display those. They agreed to permit this on a temporary basis, which is why Firefox 3 in Fedora 9 does not display their EULA, but instead, opens a tab to http://fedoraproject.org/static/firefox/. This is fair, reasonable, and actually rather common. You agree to specific terms to use LiveJournal, Facebook, GMail, and all sorts of other webservices, and this is no different.
To the best of my knowledge, none of our Fedora users minded. We delivered Firefox in Fedora 9 under the MPL, and presented users with the additional terms for Mozilla's webservices, and how to turn them off in Firefox if you didn't agree with the terms. (These are things like detecting phishing and bogus websites against a master database of eeeevil when you try to open them.)
During this time, Mozilla continued to insist that they needed a EULA, that the Mozilla Public License was simply not good enough for their needs. Rather than simply walking away and punishing Fedora users by forking or switching to "Iceweasel", we opted to work with Mozilla to try to make something that would meet the four criteria I stated above, as distasteful as we find EULAs. If we were going to have to use Firefox under a EULA, then we might as well help Mozilla to make the least offensive EULA that they could bear.
Here's the result of our efforts: http://lockshot.wordpress.com/2008/09/1 ... ributions/
That new EULA meets our four criteria, and if that's what Mozilla decides to implement, we can live with it. We'll put it on the static/firefox/ page on our website and present it to users on start-up.
However, there are a few points that I feel I need to make:
While this new EULA is far superior to what we originally got with Firefox 3, it is still a EULA, and in my opinion, still really doesn't serve a useful purpose. The MPL works really well as a binary and source license (I'm not going to debate its merits vs other licenses), and it is widely adopted and used in many communities outside of Firefox. This EULA serves to undercut that, and says that Mozilla doesn't have confidence in the terms of the MPL. I'm sure that this isn't what Mozilla intends, but it is certainly what they achieve.
If you look at the revised EULA, it boils down to a few key points:
1. It states that the Firefox binaries and source are available under the MPL.
2. It states that you do not get special rights to the Firefox trademarks above what is normally permitted by law.
3. It states that the Firefox binaries are subject to US export control laws.
4. If you don't follow the terms of the license, you no longer get the rights to use Firefox under this license, which is how copyright law works in the US.
5. It tells you where the Mozilla Privacy Policy is.
6. It tells you about the additional terms for their Website Information Services (what we now cover at http://fedoraproject.org/static/firefox/).
7. It disclaims warranty (which the MPL already does)
8. It limits liability (which the MPL already does)
9. It defines the product with US Government terminology (which the MPL already does).
10. Some extra legalese about the EULA, that it is an agreement, governed in the state of California (and not by the UN), and if any part is determined to be unenforcable, the rest still holds. Oh yes, it's only valid in English. Basically, this is legal boilerplate.
Now, on these points:
1. Covered by the MPL
2. Covered by Trademark law (you don't need to state it to make it true)
3. Covered by US Export Control laws (you don't need to state it to make it true)
4. Covered by US Copyright laws (you don't need to state it to make it true), the MPL also covers this.
5. Okay, good to know.
6. Okay, good to know.
7. Covered by the MPL
8. Covered by the MPL
9. Covered by the MPL
10. 95% of this boilerplate is ... wait for it... covered by the MPL
To sum it up: The EULA isn't really necessary, aside from points five and six, which while relevant for users of Mozilla's web services, has ZERO to do with the terms for use of Firefox. In fact, the way that Fedora is handling it now, clearly covers point 6, and could easily be amended to cover point 5, then the need for the EULA falls away entirely.
Nevertheless, Mozilla continues to insist that they need a EULA.
Mitchell Baker wrote in 2004 that "the MPL is not designed for the average consumer who isn't interested in the complexity of a license aimed at development methology", and advocated for a EULA around Firefox 1.0. (see: http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2004/11/ ... agreement/ ). Obviously, I disagree with that, as do all of the Fedora (and RHEL) Firefox users who have been happily using Firefox under the terms of the MPL up to this point.
If Mozilla was smart, they'd back away from the idea of overriding a perfectly valid, functional, accepted and understood license with a EULA. They don't gain very much, and stand to lose a lot more. But that's just my opinion.
The EULA that we've helped them draft sucks a lot less than the one they started with. Fedorans, what do you think about it?
