ICECAT ICEWEASEL SOFTWARE
ICECAT ICEWEASEL LICENSE

The 'Iceweasel' name was revived in the Debian community as a possible name to give the rebranded version of Firefox. Under the revised guidelines, in order to use the Firefox name, approval from the Mozilla Corporation would have been required for all security patches, but the Debian project felt it could not put its security in the hands of an external corporation in that manner.

ICECAT ICEWEASEL SOFTWARE

Additionally, as Debian releases are frozen on a long-term basis, software in the frozen stable releases needs to be patched for any newly discovered security issue.

ICECAT ICEWEASEL LICENSE

The immediate problem caused by the new policy was Debian's inability to use the official Firefox logo due to its proprietary license failing to comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Further messages from Mike Connor clarified Mozilla's new trademark policies: usage of the Firefox name is not allowed unless the rest of the branding is used and all of the browser's changes are approved by Mozilla Corporation. Connor confirmed that the Mozilla Corporation was revoking the previous agreement which allowed Debian to use the Firefox name. In February 2006, Mike Connor, representing the Mozilla Corporation, wrote to the Debian bug tracker and informed the project that Mozilla did not consider the way in which Debian was using the Firefox name to be acceptable. However, because the artwork in Firefox had a proprietary copyright license which was not compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, the substituted logo had to remain. At night, the ice weasels come.' ĭebian was initially given permission to use the trademarks, and adopted the Firefox name. The term 'ice weasel' appeared earlier in a line which Matt Groening fictionally attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche: ' Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath.

By January 1, 2005, rebranding as a strategy was being referred to as the “Iceweasel route”. “Iceweasel” was subsequently used as the example name for a rebranded Firefox in the Mozilla Trademark Policy, and became the most commonly used name for a hypothetical rebranded version of Firefox. It was intended as a parody of “Firefox”.

The first known use of the name in this context is by Nathanael Nerode, in reply to Eric Dorland's suggestion of “Icerabbit”. During this debate, the name “Iceweasel” was coined to refer to rebranded versions of Firefox. This effect of the Mozilla trademark policy led to a long debate within the Debian Project in 20. As the logo did not meet these requirements, it could not be used by software which was to be included in Debian. The Debian Free Software Guidelines are used by the Debian project to determine whether a license is a free license, which in turn is used to determine whether something can be included in Debian. Mozilla Foundation owns the trademark “Firefox” and claims the right to deny the use of the name and other trademarks to unofficial builds. In July 2007, Iceowl, a rebranded version of Mozilla Sunbird, was added to the unstable branch of Debian. These changes were implemented in the subsequent version of Debian (Etch). The new names established by Debian were Iceweasel for Mozilla Firefox, Icedove for Mozilla Thunderbird, and Iceape for SeaMonkey. In 2006 the Debian Project subsequently rebranded the Mozilla Firefox program, and other software released by Mozilla, so that Debian could continue to distribute the software with modifications permitted, without being bound by the use of trademark requirements that the Mozilla Foundation had invoked. At issue were modifications not approved by the Mozilla Foundation, when the name for the software remained the same. The branding issue developed when Mike Connor, representing the Mozilla Corporation, requested that the Debian Project comply with Mozilla standards for use of the Thunderbird trademark when redistributing the Thunderbird software. Mozilla Corporation software rebranded by the Debian project deals with a 2006 software branding dispute and its resolution, between the Mozilla Corporation and the Debian Project.

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