Comment 443 for bug 269656

"I would have to respectfully disagree with Dragonlord; i believe that there is a large continuum of the freedom of software, akin to many things. Mozilla is a lot freer than many other web browsers out there, and they deserve props for that."

Probably, most (at least those who can see the issue rationally) would not disagree. I think Mozilla's response to this situation confirms that they are sensitive to the needs/ethos of the free-software community - even if some of their actions along the way might be construed as mis-steps.

"However, forcing what amounts to a EULA on the end users is simply not a good idea, as the vast majority of them have no intention of changing a single byte of code of Firefox and distributing it. Therefore, as posted by Dave Morley, I think a simple message bar would suffice, as it gives Mozilla a legal leg to stand on without annoying end users."

For me at least, the issue has moved beyond the blanket EULA in Firefox. It seems that the entire matter derives from the non-free services (e.g. anti-phishing) built into Firefox. (The trademark issue appears to be, at best, orthogonal, in that the impression existed that if Ubuntu repackaged Firefox with the EULA disabled, Mozilla would revoke Firefox branding rights - I don't know if that impression coincided with reality.)
It appears that Mozilla's intent with the EULA revolved around those non-free services - especially given that any explicit end-user assent (and at this point, it is actually implicit assent) is clearly limited to use of those services.

Thus, the issue for Ubuntu now is: what does it mean to have non-free services bundled by default in a free software application?

Asked another way, how do we compare/contrast non-free services bundled in Firefox with using Firefox to access non-free Yahoo services (mail, etc.), with using a Gnome Deskbar Applet backend to non-free Google services, or with installing non-free MP3 codecs for *insert music player*?

What is acceptable with respect to the free-software requirements for packages in the Main repository?

My personal inclination at this point is to err on the conservative side - to package Firefox in Ubuntu with the non-free services disabled, and to notify the user regarding what the services are, why they are disabled by default, what it means to enable them, and how to do so.

After all, the Ubuntu community may decide down the road that the non-free services do not encumber Firefox itself, and thus do not render Firefox as non-free - in which case the services can e re-enabled by default.

If, however, the community determines that having non-free services enabled by default in Firefox *does* render Firefox as non-free, then having enabled those services by default would have set a potentially bad precedent.