Thoughts on marks, the tri-license, and the notion of community
Being off for the week, I find myself thinking more and more about the goals of trademarks and the perils of balancing users and developers. There’s also some misconception around the tri-license and the GPL, and the concept of “community ownership” of marks. I was actually asked to comment directly on some of Luis Villa’s comments which seems to be missing some key points, and I think they’re important to reinforce publicly, instead of just into the historical record.
- The trademark and copyrighted icon were not created by the community. Firefox and its icon was created by the Mozilla Foundation in private, as a brand used for “official” releases as a sign of quality. To use these marks requires an explicit opt-in when building, with files segregated into other-licenses. Anyone can use the open source licensed code and unofficial branding, but they cannot use the branding that is a mark of the Foundation without a license. This is essentially the same as the official Debian logos and other copyrighted logos used in open source. As this was never in the commons, it wasn’t removed from the commons while the community “was still too unsophisticated” to notice some removal of rights. (As a note, I was in the community then, and I certainly would have said something if I felt like something public was privatized.)
- The only “legal advantage” the Foundation has is over the use of the mark it created for a particular browser brand. Iceweasel, Flock and Netscape are just three well-known examples of other projects, both community and commercial, that have been based on the open source codebase that is used for Firefox.
- There is an explicit opt-in branding switch that overrides the generic branding files with the official branding files at build time. Note that the official branding pieces are in CVS, but under other-licenses with other non-MPL code. This has been the case since the icons/branding files were added to CVS (they were originally unavailable to the public, but were added so people could use them in their own builds or with the appropriate approvals).
- Mozilla uses the MPL, not the GPL, but under the tri-license you may use the source under the terms of the GPL or LGPL and release changes under those licenses only. This is notably what Flock has done, which unfortunately means that anything globally useful cannot be pulled into mozilla.org CVS. While the option to use GPL exists for users of the source code, Mozilla is not bound by the terms of the GPL, and the official bits aren’t licensed under those terms, so talk of what is required under the GPL (v2 or v3) is largely irrelevant.
Do I believe that there is the potential for community division over marks and branding? Yes, of course, we’re seeing that to some extent. But I believe that marks are universally understood as a sign of quality, which is why people make fake Rolexes and fake Nikes and fake Firefoxes, because they’re seeking to take advantage of the value implied in the mark. Firefox is now a very powerful and trusted brand around the world, and there have been attempts to abuse the mark to target users because of this. I don’t want to see the community’s work diminished because of this type of behaviour.
The law forces some irritating realities in the process of protecting the work of the community and the needs of millions of users. If there’s a better way to get that protection, we’re definitely interested. That said, I don’t enjoy my public perception as the hatchet man, but I believe its an unpleasant necessity in the face of what we know now.
“The trademark and copyrighted icon were not created by the community. Firefox and its icon was created by the Mozilla Foundation in private, as a brand used for “official” releases as a sign of quality.”
To be precise, as Ben points out (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/017159.html), Kerz thought up the name and Jon Hicks made the logo.
But I think it’s more important to point out that while these things are now the property of the Foundation, the fact that they stand for what they stand for, and that they are so well known, is the work of the community (which includes, but is not limited to, the Foundation and Corporation). Where would Firefox be without the code-contributing community? And where would the Firefox brand be without SpreadFirefox and legions of enthusiastic community marketers and Firefox fans across the globe?
In a very real way, these people “created” Firefox, and its iconic status.
November 2nd, 2006 at 5:49 pmI suppose there is a bit of a disconnect for some people when they see something like “The trademark and copyrighted icon were not created by the community. Firefox and its icon was created by the Mozilla Foundation in private”.
I imagine a lot of people feel that the Mozilla Foundation is part of the community, perhaps the center of the community rather than something distinct from it. Realistically the MF is all those things but perhaps people only see the bit that is relevant to them.
To my mind the trademark makes a lot of sense. It is one of the few pieces of open/free software used by a lot of average (ie non-computer) people whose trust will be based on the name alone and would be seen as ripe pickings for ne’er do wells who would use the Firefox name if they could.
I guess it’s a matter of managing expectations, putting your reasons forward in a positive fashion and if people don’t see the issues in the same way then agreeing to disagree respectfully (with an emphasis on the respect).
November 2nd, 2006 at 5:55 pmOne important difference between Debian and Firefox in the use of trademarks is that if you’re not allowed to use the Official Debian Swirl, there’s other, professional branding you *can* use to say ‘This isn’t Debian but it’s derived from Debian.’ For Firefox, my understanding is that if you build it with official branding disabled, you get ugly branding and weird, inconsistent names depending on what version of Firefox you happen to be building (bonecho? minefield?).
If Firefox’s unofficial branding mode were pretty and consistent (“Iceweasel”, to pick a name at random
then a lot of the recent mess would have been reduced, if not avoided entirely.
November 2nd, 2006 at 9:41 pm“And where would the Firefox brand be without SpreadFirefox and legions of enthusiastic community marketers and Firefox fans across the globe?”
What would Nike be without its consumers? What about Wal-Mart? Don’t confuse contribution to success with contribution to quality. The consumer has many rights, the most important of which is the right to receive the product they’re expecting.
Just because you’ve bought 20 bottles of Pantene doesn’t buy you the right to make your own shampoo and resell it in those bottles. The people you’re selling those bottles to have a right to be buying bottles of Pantene’s product.
Not having that right, though, doesn’t negate your right to write to the company and have your improvements or suggestions as a valued customer considered and included, or your right to make and similar product.
You still have the right to contribute to the official release, and give feedback. You still have a right to that code, and you still have the right to change it however you like and compile it and distribute it. You don’t have a right to call it the same name as the official release. My right to get the official release when I install Firefox is greater.
November 4th, 2006 at 12:41 am