Closed Bug 343220 Opened 18 years ago Closed 17 years ago

Clarify and/or correct licensing references for Camino

Categories

(mozilla.org :: Licensing, task)

Product:
mozilla.org
Component:
Licensing
Platform:
PowerPC
macOS
Type:
task
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: alqahira, Assigned: hecker)

References

(
URL
)

Details

Camino currently ships with a Mozilla Corporation EULA that pops up when mounting the .dmg, and about:license in Camino states that "Official binaries of this product released by the Mozilla Corporation are made available under the corresponding EULA."

However, Camino is not an official product of the Corporation (nor of the Foundation) and it seems that we really shouldn't be using a MoCo EULA.  (The EULA was added in bug 309693; I'm not sure when about:license added the EULA statement.)

SeaMonkey, on the other hand, is also not a MoCo product and its dmg ships with  "The source code of this product is available under the Mozilla Public License or the Netscape Public License. Portions may additionally be available under other licenses." and the MPL instead of the EULA.  It seems to me that Camino should fall in the same category and do the same thing.

(I'll also note, as an aside, that it's awfully difficult to correct press coverage claiming that Camino is a product of MoCo or MoFo when the first thing that people see is the MoCo EULA.)
Frank, this is something we had talked about in passing (clarifying the position) but never came to a conclusion on.

Depending on the overall decision, there are two real outcomes we could have: 
1) Camino gets listed as a Mozilla Foundation product
2) Camino goes off on its own and gets released with no EULA and just under the MPL.

In bug 309693 comment 15, Josh indicated that MoFo laywers had approved Camino using the MoCo EULA. That seems weird to me since Camino is not at all related to MoCo.

Anyway, I'd love to hear feedback from all the relevant and interested parties.
Also note the Camino 1.0 press release (no longer publicly available from BusinessWire nor online anywhere else official AFAIK), which went through some form of review by some part of Mo*, states "Released under the Mozilla Public License, Camino 1.0 is a free download and is available now from http://www.caminobrowser.org/." 

Based on the press release being "cleared", iirc, we also repeat this licensing statement on the project website: "Camino® is based on Mozilla® technology and is released under version 1.1 of the MPL; for more information on licensing, consult the Mozilla licensing information."

The situation is horribly inconsistent at the moment :(
Here are my thoughts based on a first look at this issue. Note that that is not necessarily my final answer; I welcome comments and suggestions from those who have an interest and stake in this matter.

1. Obviously since Camino is not a Mozilla Corporation product we shouldn't be referencing the Mozilla Corporation in any legal or other material related to Camino.

2. Camino and Seamonkey are not exactly equivalent in terms of their status and how we might want to treat them. In particular, the Mozilla Foundation owns a registered trademark for "Camino" as a name for a web browser:

http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=76502072

(The trademark application was originally filed by Netscape and then later assigned to the Mozilla Foundation.) On the other hand "Seamonkey" is not a registered trademark of the Foundation, we haven't applied for a trademark for it, and it's not clear to me whether we've ever claimed it as a trademark (e.g., on the mozilla.org web site or in other contexts).

3. In the context of Firefox and Thunderbird, the main reason for using a EULA (as I understand it) was basically to protect the FF and TB trademarks; the EULA (among other things) prohibits modifying or altering the FF or TB logos, etc. (Per section 3, "You may not remove or alter any trademark, logo, copyright or other proprietary notice in or on the Product.") That provides the legal structure underlying the Mozilla trademark policy as it relates to Firefox and Thunderbird.

4. Given that we have a "Camino" trademark, and assuming that we'd like to protect that trademark (which I think is the case), then I think we should have a separate EULA for the Camino binary distribution. Per previous comments we can use the Firefox EULA as a base for the Camino EULA, but we need to make sure that all references to the Mozilla Corporation are removed and replaced by references to the Mozilla Foundation.

5. As for Seamonkey, since there's no associated trademark there's no real strong need to have a EULA, and so I think we can simply continue the current practice of assuming that Seamonkey binaries are distributed under the MPL. (Whether we want to apply for a Seamonkey trademark is another issue; I don't have any firm opinions on that question right now.)

Your thoughts?
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
(In reply to comment #3)
> 2. Camino and Seamonkey are not exactly equivalent in terms of their status and
> how we might want to treat them. In particular, the Mozilla Foundation owns a
> registered trademark for "Camino" as a name for a web browser:
> 
> http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=76502072
> 
> (The trademark application was originally filed by Netscape and then later
> assigned to the Mozilla Foundation.) On the other hand "Seamonkey" is not a
> registered trademark of the Foundation, we haven't applied for a trademark for
> it, and it's not clear to me whether we've ever claimed it as a trademark
> (e.g., on the mozilla.org web site or in other contexts).

For whatever reason, I was under the impression that SeaMonkey had been filed as a trademark by the Foundation (or maybe just that a trademark search had been done prior to finalizing the name), but that's really a side issue to this one.

> 4. Given that we have a "Camino" trademark, and assuming that we'd like to
> protect that trademark (which I think is the case), then I think we should have
> a separate EULA for the Camino binary distribution. Per previous comments we
> can use the Firefox EULA as a base for the Camino EULA, but we need to make
> sure that all references to the Mozilla Corporation are removed and replaced by
> references to the Mozilla Foundation.

That sounds fair enough. I guess I was unaware of point 3 prior to you saying it. Having a EULA to protect trademarks is a Good Thing (tm). So really we just need to s/Foundation/Corporation throughout the EULA and be sure whenever an update is made (which was what bug 309693 did) we copy the Firefox EULA with that change.

> 5. As for Seamonkey, since there's no associated trademark there's no real
> strong need to have a EULA, and so I think we can simply continue the current
> practice of assuming that Seamonkey binaries are distributed under the MPL.
> (Whether we want to apply for a Seamonkey trademark is another issue; I don't
> have any firm opinions on that question right now.)

Again, I see this as a side issue, but I'd say that if there's a chance you want the SeaMonkey trademark in the future, it should be protected under a EULA now.

I'd also mention that about:license currently links to mozilla.org/foundation/EULA which redirects to mozilla.com/legal/eula. If we go with point 4, we'll need the Camino EULA listed somewhere on either the upcoming Foundation website (since the Foundation will be granting the license) or on mozilla.org. We should not redirect to mozilla.com though (for reasons listed in point 1).

Finally, the EULA that appears on the DMG directs users to mozilla.org/licensing for translations of the EULA. That also points to the m.o/foundation/EULA which redirects to mozilla.com. That's something else that will need to be updated for us.

(Also, I'll be sure to update caminobrowser.org with the appropriate license information when we decide what that is.)
(Oh, and when I say "side issue" I don't mean unimportant. Simply, I do understand the difference between SeaMonkey and Camino now, and don't wish to get too involved with SeaMonkey trademarks in this bug.)
(In reply to comment #4)
> For whatever reason, I was under the impression that SeaMonkey had been filed
> as a trademark by the Foundation (or maybe just that a trademark search had
> been done prior to finalizing the name), but that's really a side issue to
> this one.

If a filing was done for SeaMonkey, it doesn't show up in a trademark search at uspto.gov. I looked for both trademarks with owner "Mozilla" and for "SeaMonkey" and "Sea Monkey". All I found were some brine shrimp and a cocktail :-)

In any case, if/when we revisit the SeaMonkey issue we can do some further investigation on its trademark status. However in the case of Camino there's absolutely no ambiguity as to the trademark status.

(In reply to comment #3)
> On the other hand "Seamonkey" is not a
> registered trademark of the Foundation, we haven't applied for a trademark for
> it, and it's not clear to me whether we've ever claimed it as a trademark
> (e.g., on the mozilla.org web site or in other contexts).

We currently claim it as an unregistered trademark here:
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html

> 4. Given that we have a "Camino" trademark, and assuming that we'd like to
> protect that trademark (which I think is the case), then I think we should have
> a separate EULA for the Camino binary distribution. Per previous comments we
> can use the Firefox EULA as a base for the Camino EULA, but we need to make
> sure that all references to the Mozilla Corporation are removed and replaced by
> references to the Mozilla Foundation.

In fact, I personally think we should have a doubly-parameterised EULA - so both the name of the product and the name of the shipping organisation are defined at the top. That would enable us to unify the Firefox, Thunderbird and Camino EULAs and save our translators a lot of trouble.

Gerv


Because we're planning on releasing Camino 1.1 alpha 1, I think we need to get the ball rolling on this and make whatever changes need to be made.

From the above, it's clear we need to change our EULA. While it might be valued to change to a "doubly-parameterised EULA", I don't see that happening in the near future. As such, I've filed bug 353753 to change our EULA to mention the Foundation and not the Corporation.

I also feel that we need to correct the redirect I mentioned in comment 4 that sends us to MoCo's website. How do we want to approach that as it'd be a change to either about:license or the redirect that exists server side on mozilla.org?
Depends on: 353753
(In reply to comment #8)
> I also feel that we need to correct the redirect I mentioned in comment 4 that
> sends us to MoCo's website. How do we want to approach that as it'd be a change
> to either about:license or the redirect that exists server side on mozilla.org?

That line in about:license is simply "wrong" for Camino and other non-MoCo apps (although I don't have much hope that'll be fixable on the 1.8branch, so a proper redirect server-side would be "good enough" for now, IMO).

(In reply to comment #9)
> That line in about:license is simply "wrong" for Camino and other non-MoCo apps
> (although I don't have much hope that'll be fixable on the 1.8branch, so a
> proper redirect server-side would be "good enough" for now, IMO).

A server-side redirect could certainly be done. Right now the relevant .htaccess file has a single line

Redirect permanent /foundation/EULA/ http://www.mozilla.com/legal/eula/

That could be changed to use apache rewrite rules that are conditional on the user agent (i.e., using RewriteCond and %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}).

However I'm not sure that really solves anything. AFAIK there is a single about:license source file (actually two, but one's a copy of the other), and that source file explicitly mentions the Mozilla Corporation in the context of the EULA ("Official binaries of this product released by the Mozilla Corporation  are made available under the corresponding EULA."); see

http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/toolkit/content/license.html

Changing the server-side redirect won't change the mention of the Corporation, and having a server-side redirect go to a Foundation EULA instead of a Corporation EULA might compound the confusion.
(In reply to comment #10)
> A server-side redirect could certainly be done. Right now the relevant
> .htaccess file has a single line
> 
> Redirect permanent /foundation/EULA/ http://www.mozilla.com/legal/eula/
> 
> That could be changed to use apache rewrite rules that are conditional on the
> user agent (i.e., using RewriteCond and %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}).

That won't work without some major hacking. I've tried doing that with /projects/bonecho/, and due to the website being behind the netscalar, redirecting based on user agent does not work well at all. I'm working with justdave on trying to get around this issue, but it's not boding well currently. If at all possible, please do not depend on this type of redirect.
Thanks for the heads up on the problems with redirection based on user agent. I think we're back to square one then: We have a single about:license source file that links to a single EULA URL. Ultimately I think we want to present different about:license texts to users depending on the product, perhaps through some sort of parameterization, but that's not going to happen in the short run. Also, Gerv has mentioned the desirability of looking at "templatization" (is that a word?) of about:license for other reasons, including localization. Maybe that problem can be rolled into this one.

For the short term that seems to leaves the option of duplicating the current about:license source file(s) to make Foundation-specific versions to be included in Camino, etc., and having those new files point to a new (and not redirected) URL on www.mozilla.org. Certainly duplicating the about:license files will cause more work to keep all of them in sync, plus I don't know if a change like this would get approval for the 1.8 branch. (The new about:license files wouldn't affect Firefox, but I presume that there are other code changes required that would, e.g., whatever code processes "about:license".)

Gerv, your thoughts?

(In reply to comment #10)
> However I'm not sure that really solves anything. AFAIK there is a single
> about:license source file (actually two, but one's a copy of the other), and
> that source file explicitly mentions the Mozilla Corporation in the context of
> the EULA ("Official binaries of this product released by the Mozilla
> Corporation  are made available under the corresponding EULA."); see
> 
> http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/toolkit/content/license.html

There are 2, one in xpfe and one in toolkit:
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.8/source/xpfe/global/resources/content/license.html
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.8/source/toolkit/content/license.html

Assuming that Camino picks up the one in xpfe (which I think it does, but I'll check later), this will work nicely *for now*.  We fix the bad text/bad link in the xpfe version, and Camino and SeaMonkey both end up with non-MoCo about:license pages.  (The problem will re-appear in the reasonably near future on the trunk as xpfe disappears, so a real long-term solution is needed, but a quick hack should work here.)
Camino does pull the copy of license.html in xpfe; I filed bug 353917 on changing that copy, but we need 
1) some text that works for both SeaMonkey and Camino to replace the MoCo text, and
2) a new URL on Mozilla.org to point to for our EULA(s) (to work around the issues in comment 10/comment 11 with redirects/UA stuff)
before we actually do the changing.
One other issue:

In bug 353917 comment 13, Gerv notes Camino needs to be shipping the latest version of the EULA.  As far as I can tell (by inspection of the license.r files in the tree), only Firefox is using the v2.0 EULA.  Perhaps related to that fact, v2 of the EULA contains this apparently-Firefox-specific section 4:

"4.  PRIVACY POLICY.  You agree to the Mozilla Firefox Privacy Policy, made available online at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/privacy/, as that policy may be changed from time to time.  When Mozilla changes the policy in a material way a notice will be posted on the website at www.mozilla.com and when any change is made in the privacy policy, the updated policy will be posted at the above link.  It is your responsibility to ensure that you understand the terms of the privacy policy, so you should periodically check the current version of the policy for changes.\n"

Before we switch to a v2 EULA, it seems that section will need some sort of de-Firefoxification (and/or some sort of generic MoFo version of the privacy policy, or a MoFo version appropriate to Camino, which does not ship all of the features mentioned in the privacy policy).  Can we get the legal folks working on this?  

(Other than that, s/Firefox/Camino/ and s/Corporation/Foundation/ seems to work fine for EULA v2.0 as it did for v1.1))
OK. Forget that, then - go with EULA 1.1 for now, unless you can see any changes in it that you think Camino or Seamonkey needs.

I'm working with the MoCo on getting the EULA parameterised, so we can just define the Product and the Vendor at the top and have the rest the same; it seems that process will also need to include an "addendum" process for specific sections like section 4.

Gerv

Everything blocking this bug has been fixed for current code/www, so we can close it now.

Going forward, there's bug 368091 filed about getting the license.html into proper shape for the XULRunner world.  

Gerv, is there a bug to follow for comment 16, or is that all Mo*-internal?
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 17 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Smokey: no, I'm tracking that myself, thanks.

Gerv
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