Why Abrowser and not IceCat?
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Just something I've been curious about. Why in particular does Trisquel have its own Firefox fork, rather than just using IceCat (with certain modifications for Trisquel)? It seems that would ease some of the work it takes to maintain it.
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If I'm not mistaken it has to do with Debian's policy. IceCat links to the Mozilla plug-in "store" which includes non-free plug-ins. Trisquel's aligned with the free software foundation in that this is unacceptable. It is a matter of support or endorsement.
Le 2013-02-07 20:43, name at domain a écrit :
> If I'm not mistaken it has to do with Debian's policy. IceCat links to
> the Mozilla plug-in "store" which includes non-free plug-ins. Trisquel's
> aligned with the free software foundation in that this is unacceptable.
> It is a matter of support or endorsement.
I think this is Iceweasel, packaged by Debian, that you're describing.
IceCat is packaged by GNU and has the same kind of policy toward
non-free software that Trisquel has. I believe Ruben has already stated
on this forum some time ago why he'd rather not use IceCat (something
about it not being packaged 'the Debian way').
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:) thanks for the correction!
I'm amazed at how many different variations of this there are.
> I believe Ruben has already stated on this forum some time ago why he'd rather not use IceCat (something about it not being packaged 'the Debian way').
Yes, previously IceCat was not packaged for Debian-based systems, so users had to compile it. Now it is packaged for Ubuntu (and Trisquel) via a PPA:
https://launchpad.net/~gnuzilla-team/+archive/ppa
I had a quick look at the dependencies and there are a few differences. For example, Abrowser/Ubufox uses libatk (accessibility toolkit) whereas IceCat doesn't. Similar situation with Unity integration.
I personally use both IceCat and Abrowser on Trisquel (for different uses) and both work fine for me. :-)
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Hmm,
Based on this thread, my opinion is that if (big if) IceCat takes the same free software stance as Abrowser, i.e. refuses to recommend non-free addons, and is now available in a Debian-style package from that PPA, then it would make sense to use IceCat rather than maintaining Abrowser. Just seems like that would require less work from the Trisquel team, no?
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Maybe. If IceCat was as accessible as Ubufox is then I would be in favour. Ubuntu puts a lot of work into accessibility, and accessibility support was improved in Trisquel a few years ago AFAIK.
I tried using the Orca screenreader with both IceCat and Abrowser. Orca was capable of reading links and text from Abrowser but not IceCat. I'm not an expert on accessibility though (you might want to ask Dave Hunt).
I think is better if we have only IceCat on free distributions, only one name for all. Now we have Icecat for some, Abrowser for Trisquel... and about Thunderbird? The addon page from Mozilla have only free software?
Can you help IceCat merge Debian and Ubuntu Firefox patches? At least
three free distros use non-IceCat Firefox derivatives due to these
patches.
Thunderbird needs rebranding since it's modified (to not recommend
nonfree addons) and it has the same no-selling trademark issue as
Firefox.
Why Trisquel has Thunderbird?
The problem with Firefox is it recommends nonfree software. The trademark issue is the Firefox trademark is only allowed to be used on copies of Firefox that are unmodified. This is an appropriate use of the trademark; the whole point of trademarks is so that people can differentiate products, so I think this trademark policy is a good thing.
Thunderbird also has add-ons, and it's true that the Mozilla add-on service for Thunderbird includes nonfree software, just like for Firefox. I can't help but notice that the LibrePlanet wiki page about these types of issues suggests modifying Thunderbird to fix the issue and says nothing about trademarks. I don't have a firm understanding of the Mozilla trademark guidelines; is it allowed to modify Thunderbird as that wiki page suggests and still use the Thunderbird branding?
"This is an appropriate use of the trademark"
Actually, Mozilla's trademark policy goes too far:
http://jxself.org/mozilla_trademark.shtml
El 08/02/13 11:24, Jason Self escribió:
> "This is an appropriate use of the trademark"
>
> Actually, Mozilla's trademark policy goes too far:
> http://jxself.org/mozilla_trademark.shtml
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html
[...]
"In addition, if you compile a modified version, as discussed above,
*with branding enabled* (the default in our source code is branding
disabled), you will require Mozilla's prior written permission."
* emphasis is mine
So compiling a modified version is trivial without branding.
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> So compiling a modified version is trivial without branding.
Indeed, but to quote Brett:
"Unfortunately, such a restriction in a trademark license does make the
software nonfree. As we've said in the past, a requirement that you
rename the software when you modify it is fine -- but a requirement that
you rename it before you distribute it commercially goes too far."
So what you have is a situation where people can't make full use of
freedom #2 to redistribute *exact copies of the original*, either
gratis or for charging a fee, to anyone anywhere.
The problem with IceCat is that it always seems to be 1-2 releases behind the main Firefox release. That is really being optimistic too as I have seen IceCat in the PPAs not be updated for 6 months at a time.
IceCat got a new maintainer last year, so the project seems to be more active than previously. At the moment, there won't be a release based on FF18 for IceCat because work is being done on privacy add-ons.
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IMO we should see if we can submit the Abrowser accessibility improvements upstream to Firefox. Then, hopefully, GNU IceCat would pick them up next time they sync with upstream, and eventually we could switch to using IceCat as the default browser in Trisquel.
Would this work?
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There are some problems with Icecat with html5 for what I tested. At this moment is better staying with Abrowser.
That might just be LibreJS. Or maybe it's because it's an old version.
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Meh, just use ViewTube.
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you can test a clip on http://www.dailymotion.com/ in Abrowser and Icecat (17.0.1) (both with gnash plugin disabled) to see yourself. For me Abrowser recognize html5 videotag and Icecat does't.
I'm pretty sure Dailymotion requires some nonfree Javascript code for the HTML5 video player to work. YouTube is the same. Since IceCat includes LibreJS by default, this would be blocked.
Also, h.264 support in Firefox was only added recently; I don't know if it was there yet in version 17. Dailymotion only has its videos in MP4 format.
So the real problem isn't "HTML5" not working: it's Javascript code being blocked by LibreJS and perhaps a video format that Firefox 17 (which is what IceCat 17 is based on) didn't support.
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