[oi-dev] Would OI be interested in Pale Moon?

[Matt A. Tobin]

The Pale Moon redistribution license is very clear 
http://www.palemoon.org/redist.shtml . However, Jeremy Andrews 
approached us to facilitate (re)introduction of Modern Solaris (and 
flavors there of) support back into the Unified XUL Platform.

I understand how poor choice of words in the openbsd-wip github issue 
may sour you. However, as Jeremy has been in charge of this effort for a 
few months now and would be maintaining the packages in-line with our 
various project licenses. I do not see how a problem like the one at 
openbsd-wip would occur regardless of how things were phrased then. He 
has already committed to maintaining the support in UXP for Modern 
Solaris. So he would be responsible for continued maintenance of a Pale 
Moon or Interlink package for OpenIndiana.

He worked with us every step of the way to facilitate bringing support 
to release level. He did all this because he believed in both us and all 
of you. Then he was granted permission to use the Official trademarked 
branding from Moonchild Productions and Binary Outcast in order to bring 
Pale Moon and Interlink Mail & News (and when release, Borealis 
Navigator) to OpenIndiana users via your package system.

WE are not suggesting that we would be a sole replacement for your 
Mozilla packages that you offer (and are stalled on) but I believe some 
users may find us a good alternative. The person here that is committed 
to providing packages is also providing the code level support at the 
"upstream" projects for these applications. He also has our confidence 
and support to do so. So there would be quite a bit of coordination here.

BUT, that isn't what has happened this day. No, this day did not turn 
out as hoped for by the young programmer. Something very different 
happened. He, and by extension, all of us who work on the Unified XUL 
Platform and the projects, Pale Moon included, that build on it have 
been rejected out of hand. SIMPLY because of some trumped up encounter 
with those who did not bother to ask for permission, haven't spoken to 
us and outright reject intellectual property rights and software 
licenses aside from their particular chosen one. A situation I might add 
that isn't the same as this one AND was quite a while ago now. Yet it is 
being treated as such.

So here we are, I am writing to all of you because someone I have come 
to know and who worked very hard to bring his chosen software to his 
chosen OS for all to use and enjoy has been crushed. What does this say 
about the Open Source community and more importantly about people in 
general these days?

Thank you for your time,

Matt A. Tobin
Commanding Officer
Binary Outcast


On 12/11/2019 1:31 PM, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Dec 2019, Volker A. Brandt wrote:
>
>> Till Wegmüller writes:
>>> I concur. Some politeness goes a long way. This problem with the 
>>> license
>>> requirements however stems from firefox originally. Only that in
>>> firefox'es case they fought with the debian community and lost. It 
>>> seems
>>> like the Palemoon community needs to have the same experience. 
>>> Sadly....
>>
>> To me, the problem looks slightly different:  The Pale Moon devs insist
>> on having private copies of a huge number of libraries in their source
>> tree.  If a distro changes that to use the system version of those libs
>> instead, the PM people consider that a license violation.  IIRC the
>> original Debian ./. Firefox dispute was about logos and icons.
>
> I don't see a statement about that in the extensive license text. It 
> is clear that any modifications to executable and logo content 
> provided by Pale Moon are not allowed.  I don't think that this means 
> that code independently compiled under the Mozilla license is not 
> allowed to be modified and distributed.  Indeed, it must be modified 
> to use alternate branding and logos.
>
>> It is understandable that OpenBSD does not want apps to be using 
>> separate
>> non-audited and possibly outdated copies of system libraries.
>>
>> The arrogant and high-handed way in which the PM people phrased their
>> demands were no help either.  They have not realized that they are
>> driving users away, a very stupid thing to do.
>>
>> Not sure if Jeremy should continue calling his build "Pale Moon".  Maybe
>> "New Moon" would be better, just to avoid sudden abuse coming from the
>> PM people over some build flag.
>
> Obviously, every trace of Pale Moon and standard logos, as well as 
> HTML style sheets are required to be changed.  The name of the 
> distribution package can not include the phrase "Pale Moon".
>
> To me, it seems like the many requirements are rather onerous and it 
> is thus not surprising that this software is not going anywhere fast 
> even though it does appear to offer the experience that people used to 
> enjoy from the original Mozilla (and later Mozilla SeaMonkey after 
> FireFox emerged).
>
> Bob
>
>
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