659568 - Make "browser/branding/unofficial" the default for Firefox unofficial builds

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Inspired by bug 657501.

In the past, a developer compiling their own Firefox tree got, by default, an app calling itself "Minefield". Our official nightly builds were also called "Minefield". Sufficiently generic, no problem.

But now that we actually call the official nightly builds "Nightly" (complete with fancy logo and branding), it's more confusing for your own build of Firefox to call itself "Nightly". It's not a nightly build, and certainly isn't from Mozilla.

We already have a branding flavor called "unofficial". In the past it was just "Browser" or "National Park" (eg "Gran Paradiso" for FF3), which got used for alpha releases of Firefox before we went to beta (at which point it used the full/official "Firefox" branding"). It's currently calling itself "Developer Preview" from the alpha-but-not-really that we released early in the Firefox 4 cycle.

We should freshen the "unofficial" branding back to just "Browser", and make that the default for when compiling Firefox. Official releases from Mozilla (nightly/aurora/beta/stable) wouldn't change.

Probably need to coordinate with releng to make sure official nightly builds are deliberately branded as such (ditto for Tinderbox builds). TryServer builds should probably be "unofficial" too?

Comment 1

[Matt McCutchen]

The default is either "nightly" or "aurora": see bug 649198.

Having a single, neutral unofficial branding package makes sense to me.  However, "Browser" is too generic and will be goofy in many contexts, e.g., "You have asked Browser to connect securely to www.cacert.org".  How about "Mozilla Browser" or "Gecko"?  Ideally you would join forces with the Iceweasel project to maintain a polished default unofficial branding package, but I don't know if that is politically realistic.

Comment 2

[Matt McCutchen]

(In reply to Matt McCutchen from comment #1)
> Ideally you would join forces with the
> Iceweasel project to maintain a polished default unofficial branding
> package, but I don't know if that is politically realistic.

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-mozilla-maintainers/2011-August/010825.html

Comment 3

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

I mentioned that to Kev in the past, half joking, half seriously: use Iceweasel for unofficial builds. I'm not sure if it makes a lot of sense to do so. I'm also not convinced the Nightly and Aurora branding really fit there. What I am quite convinced of is that the current unofficial branding (proposed for removal in bug 680151) is not very nice for unofficial builds.

Comment 4

[Matt McCutchen]

(In reply to Mike Hommey [:glandium] from comment #3)
> I mentioned that to Kev in the past, half joking, half seriously: use
> Iceweasel for unofficial builds. I'm not sure if it makes a lot of sense to
> do so.

There are other possible names.  My point is that all the parties whose only requirement on the branding is that it be unencumbered and reasonably polished (Debian, me, others?) might as well collaborate on a branding package, which Mozilla might as well make the default.  See also https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=582784 .

> I'm also not convinced the Nightly and Aurora branding really fit
> there.

If you mean they are poor defaults for unofficial builds, I agree.  Other issues with those branding packages are out of scope of this bug.

Comment 5

[Matt McCutchen]

Attachment: Change application name to "Mozilla Browser"

Pending further work on unofficial branding, I am using this patch to change the application name to "Mozilla Browser".

branding.nsi has a comment stating that the BrandFullNameInternal should not be changed, but the BrandFullNameInternal is currently different across all the branches.  What is the deal here?

Comment 6

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

Note that for a proper rebranding, you need to get rid of the hardcoded Firefox references in browser/locales/en-US/chrome/overrides/appstrings.properties and maybe browser/locales/en-US/searchplugins/answers.xml and browser/locales/en-US/searchplugins/google.xml. You also need to sort out bug 557752.

Comment 7

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

(In reply to Mike Hommey [:glandium] from comment #6)
> Note that for a proper rebranding, you need to get rid of the hardcoded
> Firefox references in
> browser/locales/en-US/chrome/overrides/appstrings.properties

I had filed that as bug 650274

Comment 8

[Kev Needham [:kev]]

Gecko shouldn't be used, because it's actually a trademark. With the unbranded builds, there shouldn't be any marks used in the name. Nightly is used because it identifies the nature of the build, and isn't a TM. No argument that it can be confusing, and we've banged around the idea of a neutral name for a while that identifies it as a Mozilla codebase, but not a Mozilla-managed/distributed product. 

We should have a TM review done on the use of "Mozilla". The code is part of the project, but if it's the default for builds that other orgs compile and use, it probably shouldn't be in the name as it may not originate from Mozilla, and we'd want to avoid confusion there. These are just personal thoughts, however, so I'll bump it over to the TM side for opinion.

Comment 9

[Kev Needham [:kev]]

Adding Slater and Liz for feedback.

Comment 10

[Matt McCutchen]

(In reply to Kev [:kev] Needham from comment #8)
> Gecko shouldn't be used, because it's actually a trademark.

It is missing from https://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/list.html (separate bug).

> With the
> unbranded builds, there shouldn't be any marks used in the name. Nightly is
> used because it identifies the nature of the build, and isn't a TM. No
> argument that it can be confusing, and we've banged around the idea of a
> neutral name for a while that identifies it as a Mozilla codebase, but not a
> Mozilla-managed/distributed product.

Yes, that is exactly what is needed.

> We should have a TM review done on the use of "Mozilla". The code is part of
> the project, but if it's the default for builds that other orgs compile and
> use, it probably shouldn't be in the name as it may not originate from
> Mozilla, and we'd want to avoid confusion there. These are just personal
> thoughts, however, so I'll bump it over to the TM side for opinion.

I was under the impression that the trademark restrictions on "Mozilla" were weaker so it could legitimately be used to identify derived products, but I may well be mistaken.  IMO, such usage would be fitting and Mozilla would do more good than harm to allow it.  The alternative is to go to something completely different like "Iceweasel", or decline to act and leave third parties to do it (the status quo).

Comment 11

[Liz Compton [:liz]]

Taking off my legal hat, I'm a fan of the idea of having a name that people who are building modified browsers from our code base can use as the name of their build if they want. I like the idea of it being something suggested by our brand names. Putting back on my legal hat, that name should not include any of our trademarks. It's fine for people to say "this browser is based on Mozilla technology" but not to give it a name that includes Mozilla, Firefox, Gecko, or any of our other trademarks. Hope this helps.

Comment 12

[Liz Compton [:liz]]

Also, once a few preferred candidates for the name have been posed, we'll have to do a trademark search to make sure they're available for use.

Comment 13

[John Slater]

Just so I'm super clear, at this point we only need a name, right? If so, I'd like to bring Matej in to brainstorm some possibilities...I think that's a good next step here.

Comment 14

[John Slater]

Looks like we'll continue the naming discussion in bug 682415. Will add Matej to that one too...more to come!

Comment 15

[Matt McCutchen]

Comment on attachment 555931 [details] [diff] [review]
Change application name to "Mozilla Browser"

(In reply to liz from comment #11)
> Putting back on my legal hat, that name should not include
> any of our trademarks. It's fine for people to say "this browser is based on
> Mozilla technology" but not to give it a name that includes Mozilla,
> Firefox, Gecko, or any of our other trademarks.

Understood, thanks.

As everyone has seen (and beat me to comment), I am refactoring the bugs.  Bug 682414 is a tracker for the complete unofficial branding package and depends on the other bugs Mike mentioned.  The selection of the name is now bug 682415.  This bug is now back to its original scope, of switching the default to browser/branding/unofficial.

Comment 16

[Kev Needham [:kev]]

(In reply to Matt McCutchen from comment #10)
> (In reply to Kev [:kev] Needham from comment #8)
> > Gecko shouldn't be used, because it's actually a trademark.
> 
> It is missing from https://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/list.html
> (separate bug).

That's because it's not our trademark. :)

Per http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/faq.html: "Gecko® is a registered trademark of Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape/AOL has licensed the trademark to the Foundation for use in describing our layout engine."

k

Comment 17

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

(In reply to Kev [:kev] Needham from comment #16)
> That's because it's not our trademark. :)
> 
> Per http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/faq.html: "Gecko® is a
> registered trademark of Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape/AOL
> has licensed the trademark to the Foundation for use in describing our
> layout engine."

Because I always spend far too long reading uspto.gov's website when I need to look this up, the "Gecko" trademark is serial number 75605466, registration number 2721647.