Thunderbird bz 579023 still not fixed even though there is an upstream fix available
 

Hi,

we're patching mozilla packages only for really critical issues because
of mozilla trademarks. We can't put any patch we want to the mozilla
package and ship it as 'Firefox' or 'Thunderbird'.

I've asked for inclusion at upstream bug,
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550455, if you want to
speed up the process you can reply there too.

ma.

On 04/22/2010 08:39 PM, Felix Schwarz wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm concerned about bz 579023 [1] which is a Thunderbird crasher bug.
> This bug was fixed upstream [2] for about 3-4 weeks. I ran a thunderbird
> koji build version [3] with an adapted version of that patch since then
> without any problems. Other users confirmed that this patch fixes their
> problems as well.
>
> The Fedora bug has a number of duplicates with quite some number of cc'd
> users so I guess a lot of people experiencing these crashes.
>
> However it is still not fixed in Thunderbird F-12 CVS. Can you please
> push the fix to CVS and push builds to testing/stable?
>
> fs
>
> [1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=579023
> [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550455
> [3] http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=2092397

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Thunderbird bz 579023 still not fixed even though there is an upstream fix available
 

On 04/23/2010 09:03 AM, Martin Stransky wrote:
> Hi,
>
> we're patching mozilla packages only for really critical issues because
> of mozilla trademarks. We can't put any patch we want to the mozilla
> package and ship it as 'Firefox' or 'Thunderbird'.

Thanks for providing evidence of how trademarks are being applied to
void the benefits of "open source".

The obvious logical consequences of what you say would be
* either to remove the packages you are referring to from Fedora because
they are effectively unmaintainable.

* or to remove the trademarks and re-brand the packages.

/me ducks and hides for cover.

Ralf

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Thunderbird bz 579023 still not fixed even though there is an upstream fix available
 

On 04/23/2010 09:18 AM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On 04/23/2010 09:03 AM, Martin Stransky wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> we're patching mozilla packages only for really critical issues because
>> of mozilla trademarks. We can't put any patch we want to the mozilla
>> package and ship it as 'Firefox' or 'Thunderbird'.
>
> Thanks for providing evidence of how trademarks are being applied to
> void the benefits of "open source".
>
> The obvious logical consequences of what you say would be
> * either to remove the packages you are referring to from Fedora because
> they are effectively unmaintainable.
>
> * or to remove the trademarks and re-brand the packages.
>
> /me ducks and hides for cover.

No, you get it wrong. It's about cooperation, we work with upstream to
release one valid product. See the upstream bug, the fix may be included
in next security update.
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Thunderbird bz 579023 still not fixed even though there is an upstream fix available
 

On 04/23/2010 12:33 PM, Martin Stransky wrote:
> Hi,
>
> we're patching mozilla packages only for really critical issues because
> of mozilla trademarks. We can't put any patch we want to the mozilla
> package and ship it as 'Firefox' or 'Thunderbird'.
>
> I've asked for inclusion at upstream bug,
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550455, if you want to
> speed up the process you can reply there too.
>

What is the exact definition of "really critical issues" here. A
frequent crash seems a critical issue to me.

Rahul
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Thunderbird bz 579023 still not fixed even though there is an upstream fix available
 

On 04/23/2010 09:30 AM, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> On 04/23/2010 12:33 PM, Martin Stransky wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> we're patching mozilla packages only for really critical issues because
>> of mozilla trademarks. We can't put any patch we want to the mozilla
>> package and ship it as 'Firefox' or 'Thunderbird'.
>>
>> I've asked for inclusion at upstream bug,
>> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550455, if you want to
>> speed up the process you can reply there too.
>>
>
> What is the exact definition of "really critical issues" here. A
> frequent crash seems a critical issue to me.

- 0day vulnerabilities
- critical crashes (like app fails to start for *everyone*, app crashes
for *everyone* in five minutes after start)
- fedora customization (build fixes)

ma.
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Thunderbird bz 579023 still not fixed even though there is an upstream fix available
 

On 04/23/2010 01:12 PM, Martin Stransky wrote:
> On 04/23/2010 09:30 AM, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>> What is the exact definition of "really critical issues" here. A
>> frequent crash seems a critical issue to me.
>
> - 0day vulnerabilities
> - critical crashes (like app fails to start for *everyone*, app
> crashes for *everyone* in five minutes after start)
> - fedora customization (build fixes)

It is really annoying that Mozilla is restricting fixes for fairly
serious issues via their trademark guidelines. Their effort to protect
their brand has to balanced against downstream needs. It is
unacceptable for them to tie down our hands if they are not going to do
a release soon. It is very much possible that a bug might affect a
particular distribution only (even without patches) because of the rest
of the stack it is build against and Mozilla has to be responsive to all
that.

Rahul

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Thunderbird bz 579023 still not fixed even though there is an upstream fix available
 

On 04/23/2010 09:24 AM, Martin Stransky wrote:
> On 04/23/2010 09:18 AM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>> On 04/23/2010 09:03 AM, Martin Stransky wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> we're patching mozilla packages only for really critical issues because
>>> of mozilla trademarks. We can't put any patch we want to the mozilla
>>> package and ship it as 'Firefox' or 'Thunderbird'.
>>
>> Thanks for providing evidence of how trademarks are being applied to
>> void the benefits of "open source".
>>
>> The obvious logical consequences of what you say would be
>> * either to remove the packages you are referring to from Fedora because
>> they are effectively unmaintainable.
>>
>> * or to remove the trademarks and re-brand the packages.
>>
>> /me ducks and hides for cover.
>
> No, you get it wrong.

Well, c.f. freedom 3 on http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

You told us, you can't modify the sources and ship modified binaries
=> thunderbird and firefox are non-free, because of the trademarks
Mozilla apply.

=> These packages should not be part of Fedora.


> It's about cooperation, we work with upstream to
> release one valid product. See the upstream bug, the fix may be included
> in next security update.

You are confusing their product with yours: Your product is broken and
you are unable to maintain it because of legal reasons.

Ralf

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Thunderbird bz 579023 still not fixed even though there is an upstream fix available
 

Martin Stransky wrote:
> No, you get it wrong. It's about cooperation, we work with upstream to
> release one valid product. See the upstream bug, the fix may be included
> in next security update.

That's too late. It should have been applied weeks ago! That crash has been
known for 7 weeks, a quick&dirty fix which could have been applied at least
temporarily has been proposed only days later.

Kevin Kofler

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Thunderbird bz 579023 still not fixed even though there is an upstream fix available
 

Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> Well, c.f. freedom 3 on http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
>
> You told us, you can't modify the sources and ship modified binaries
> => thunderbird and firefox are non-free, because of the trademarks
> Mozilla apply.
>
> => These packages should not be part of Fedora.

+1

> You are confusing their product with yours: Your product is broken and
> you are unable to maintain it because of legal reasons.

+1 again.

Kevin Kofler

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Thunderbird bz 579023 still not fixed even though there is an upstream fix available
 

Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> Thanks for providing evidence of how trademarks are being applied to
> void the benefits of "open source".
>
> The obvious logical consequences of what you say would be
> * either to remove the packages you are referring to from Fedora because
> they are effectively unmaintainable.
>
> * or to remove the trademarks and re-brand the packages.
>
> /me ducks and hides for cover.

No need to hide. I couldn't agree more, and in fact I've been arguing for
this all this time.

I really don't see why we're putting up with this kind of stupidity when we
could just rebrand the packages like e.g. Debian is doing.

Firefox, Thunderbird and xulrunner are also exempt from provenpager commits
because of those trademark reasons. They're the ONLY packages for which an
exemption has been granted. I really don't see why those packages deserve
this kind of special treatment. They should be treated the same as all the
other software in Fedora! If upstream insists on enforcing their trademarks
in a fascist way, then the only option is to do what Debian did and rename
the software.

Those packages are also sometimes not compliant with Fedora policies such as
usage of system libraries because any patches to use a system library need
trademark approval. This is also just unacceptable. See e.g. the Hunspell
fiasco:
* In February 2008, xulrunner was set to build against the system hunspell.
* In May 2008, it was discovered that xulrunner is using an old private
hunspell header even when using the system hunspell, which causes crashes
due to an ABI mismatch. But since xulrunner was untouchable, hunspell was
hacked instead to make it work.
* In July 2008, it was noticed that the above hack made hunspell
incompatible with upstream and all other distros, so it was reverted. The
fix for xulrunner would have been trivial, but as xulrunner was still
untouchable, it was reverted to use the private copy instead, a blatant
violation of the Fedora Packaging Guidelines.
* Only in June 2009, xulrunner finally got fixed to use the system hunspell
again.
Another big issue is libpng: xulrunner is bundling a forked libpng for APNG
support (which isn't even available for anything else to build against, so
e.g. Konqueror can't support APNG). (APNG is a nonstandard extension to PNG
which Mozilla is arbitrarily pushing instead of the existing MNG format
which the PNG developers are supporting. They removed MNG support for very
unconvincing reasons and then decided to reinvent the wheel to help fragment
the web.) Debian is patching it to use the system libpng (which removes APNG
support, so it's unlikely to pass trademark approval, ever), we aren't. This
is a blatant violation of our own packaging guidelines. I'm really fed up of
Firefox and Thunderbird continually getting special treatment.

Kevin Kofler

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