237714 - Need to explain what free means in the context of Mozilla

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Marketing :: General, task)

Description

[James Graham]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040315 Firefox/0.8.0+
Build Identifier: 

The mozilla.org website does a rather poor job of explaining that Mozilla
software is free (for example the paid CD link is above the free download link).
It also does a poor job of differentiating the term free as used by Mozilla
(free as in Open Source) to the term as used by Realplayer (free but only if you
can find the free version and don't mind spyware) or as used by Adware (e.g.
Opera) or shareware (free for a limited period). 

This is an important distinction to make, since people like free software but
are conditioned to believe that there will always be a catch; we don't have a
catch and we should say so. 

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[James Graham]

Attachment: Document describing what we mean by free version 1

This is my draft document for explaining what free means from the point of view
of the Mozilla project. There is a live version of the document at
http://www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~jg307/mozilla/mozilla-free.html

Comment 2

[bart decrem, not checking bugmail]

Thanks for doing this work.  I have a couple of concerns:
- This is kind of a long document.  Where would it go?  Generally, I'd prefer to
resolve the issue by making it more clear on the homepage that the download is
free of charge and by explaining what open source means on the About Mozilla page
- "free" is a loaded word.  RMS may object to how we define freedom.  He would
consider our license less free than the GPL.  So we try to avoid that word
- The non-intrusive bullet says we don't install commercial bookmarks.  In fact,
Firefox 1.0 will come with some commercial bookmarks, but not a lot.  We'd want
to tweak that wording
- The spelling is UK.  I'd prefer to have US spelling since this is a much
larger audience than our UK audience.

All in all, my preference would be to let this sit a bit and see if I can get
this issue resolved through redesigning the homepage and cleaning up the About
Mozilla page over the next couple of months.

Comment 3

[James Graham]

> This is kind of a long document.  

I can edit it down. Probably the entire last section could go, and maybe some of
the second section.

> Where would it go?

fantasai suggested http://mozilla.org/about/free.html Obviously deciding where
to link from would be harder e.g. would you want to link from the word 'free' on
the homepage or is that too much?

> I'd prefer to resolve the issue by making it more clear on the homepage that
the download is free of charge

I think that's clear, but it's not clear that the download is actually the same
product you get on the CD or if additional restrictions apply.

> explaining what open source means on the About Mozilla page

That sounds good; the About Mozilla page seems a bit fluffy at the moment.

> "free" is a loaded word.  RMS may object to how we define freedom.  He would
consider our license less free than the GPL.  So we try to avoid that word

But this is essentially the point of the document. Mozilla does use the word
'free' in the context of 'no cost' and moreover means something different when
it describes itself as free from when adware or shareware describe themselves as
free. 

Mozilla is certianly also Open Source, regardless of whether RMS would descibe
the MPL/LGPL/GLP trilicense as being "Free". That gives people certian rights
they don't have with most software (like unlimited binary redistribution) and we
should tell them so.

> The non-intrusive bullet says we don't install commercial bookmarks.  In fact,
Firefox 1.0 will come with some commercial bookmarks, but not a lot.  We'd want
to tweak that wording

Sigh. OK, I'll think of a better wording.

> The spelling is UK.  I'd prefer to have US spelling since this is a much
larger audience than our UK audience.

Sure, but I'd need an American to give a spelling review, since I'm not sure of
all the differences.

> All in all, my preference would be to let this sit a bit and see if I can get
this issue resolved through redesigning the homepage and cleaning up the About
Mozilla page over the next couple of months.

OK, but I think it is important that we give the impression that the free
product is the full, unencumbered, version and that we have a more ethical
definition of free than many other companies who pitch products as 'free'. 

Comment 4

[Daniel Wang]

Attachment: mozilla-org\html\about\opensource.html v1

based around http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.0/opensource.html and James'
version. Shorter, and hopefully better.

Comment 5

[fantasai]

I'd put it up at /about/free
(save file as free.html, drop extension when linking; I've checked in the
.htaccess needed to make this work within the /about directory)

Comment 6

[Daniel Wang]

Last I checked, MultiView is not working. Does this have to be done on a
per-page basis?

and fantasai, got any comment on the text?

Comment 7

[Daniel Wang]

We should add back the spyware line

  No spyware
    Our software will not attempt to collect personal information about
    you or the way you use your computer

I'm not sure the text is right. Mozilla kinda collects personal info (bug
208734). We should rephrase this and link to
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/250

Comment 8

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Gerv wrote on mozilla-documentation:
> I'm sure a document like this already exists on the website somewhere.
> Ah yes:
> http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.0/opensource.html
>                                                                                 
> Yours is presumably a derivative of this? Why the need for change?

Comment 9

[fantasai]

Bart, I'm taking responsibility for getting this ready and checked-in. 

Comment 10

[fantasai]

Attachment: new version

Comment 11

[bart decrem, not checking bugmail]

Comment on attachment 170689 [details]
new version

Fantasai requested review from me.  Not sure I'm the right person anymore
(perhaps rebron at meer dot net?), but this looks fine to me.

Comment 12

[fantasai]

Fix checked in, link to http://www.mozilla.org/about/free
Thanks jgraham!!