Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

Funny, I've been running Debian since 2007. I mainly got hooked on their 'testing' branch since it is just "always up to date".

But I always get people looking over my shoulder and asking "what the heck is 'iceweasel'. To which I explain the whole issue of Debian was distributing a patched version of Firefox with their OS back in ~2007 era and Mozilla, for trademark reasons, said you can't modify the browser and still distribute it with the official logos and name. Which lead to Iceweasel... but then a few years later Mozilla changed the license terms so now I guess here we are....

Debian user and Mozilla employee who uses Iceweasel here. I work on Rust, not Firefox though.

  > Why does the operating system have any say on what applications get released
  > and how often?

This has to do with the interaction between the original authors and the distribution itself. Let's go through an example:

1. I, Steve, write some bit of software, libfoo, and host it on my GitHub page.

2. Debian users would like to use libfoo. They have two options at this point: download and build libfoo from me, or get it from Debian's package repository.

3. In order to be put into Debian's repository, a suitable package needs to be created. What exactly that means depends on the package itself, but sometimes it's about things like "which paths are searched by default". Anything that integrates with the overall system. So someone, probably not even me, would need to say "I'm going to maintain a package for libfoo in Debian." They are responsible for taking from "upstream", my GitHub page, and producing a .deb for inclusion in Debian's repositories. This may involve modifying libfoo in some ways. It depends.

At any time, a user of Debian can choose: Do I get libfoo from Steve's GitHub, or do I get libfoo from apt? The reason that you might choose the latter is because Debian knows Debian better than I do. (Well, I said I use Debian above, but this works across distros, basically. I have no clue what Fedora's norms are, for example.) The package from Debian's repositories will be better integrated into the system, and will be tested for compatibility with other packages. Part of this is due to the release cycle of Debian itself; and this is what's being discussed here. It's not about when Firefox is released, it's about when the Debian package for Firefox is released. And what version of that package corresponds to which upstream version?

So! Back to this bug. Due to some... history between Mozilla and Debian, Debian's package for Firefox couldn't be called "Firefox." So it was rebranded to "Iceweasel." This bug is about re-synching the names, and having the Debian-provided package produce "Firefox" again.

Does that make sense?

It's interesting that the Paul brings up the trademark license clause regarding for-pay distribution.

    If you are using the Mozilla Mark(s) for the unaltered binaries you
    are distributing, you may not charge for that product.

While it restricts a freedom that Debian is unlikely to exercise, it's still a restriction. Presumably, that makes the trademark license indigestible to the Debian foundation?

> Mozilla releases new Firefox releases every 6 to 8 weeks. In parallel of these rapid releases [...]

One of the fun differences between the various organizations I've worked for is the differing ideas of how frequently releases should happen and what is considered "fast" and "slow" in different places. I've seen release cycles measured in weeks and those measured in years. I'm sure there are places that release every N days. How people get used to some particular cadence and start believing that it's the only proper (or possible) way! One of the achievements I'm most proud of is helping a group make a difficult transition from a long, irregular cadence to a fast, predictable one. Going from a release process of "Release when company leadership subjectively thinks it's ready" to "Release every 4 weeks on the day" can at first rattle some people who are attached to The Way We've Always Done It, and it requires more discipline in terms of development practices, testing, feature creep, etc. But it can be done!

Not saying a faster or slower cycle is needed for Debian or Mozilla (it would depend on a huge number of factors), but your release cadence shouldn't be considered some immovable law of nature.

> but your release cadence shouldn't be considered some immovable law of nature.

I agree, but I think it mostly depends on the product. If you have a bulletproof software implementation of, say, a finances managing system, then you will rarely need to update it -- as long as it has no bugs then the users will be happy with it.

On the flip side, if you have a program that has to be both secure, but also have a lot of features, and is used by a lot of people, then I think you will find yourself releasing every few days -- even if you just stick to staying on top of any vulnerabilities and bugs that could occur.