Extracts From My Sent Mail (2)

Due to our tight deadlines the latest date we need a decision by is 21/JUN/05 (today unfortunately). If you do not reply by this date we cannot guarantee that your product will feature on the disc.

I apologise, but I am losing patience with <magazine company>. You appear to have a large number of magazines, all of which wish to feature Firefox on their cover CDs, and so I get bombarded with vaguely threatening short-deadline emails because you don’t appear to be able to communicate with one another and/or understand what Free software is.

I’ve requested “repeat permission information” a couple of times and heard nothing back. So here it is: Firefox is free software. As the FAQ on our site clearly states[0], you don’t need our explicit permission to redistribute our binaries. Ever. Period. I won’t say it again; I’ll just point all future enquirers to you and you can explain it to them.

So why not go away and revel in your new-found freedom, rather than assuming we operate like some petty, intellectual-property-hoarding software house who requires signatures in triplicate on a lawyer’s used toilet roll before you can hand a CD of the software to the guy sitting next to you? It’s free, darn it! Everything we ship is free! Freeeee! Take it and be happy!

If you have new or updated version of the product requested and would like it included instead please let us know.

Please read the website to find out about new versions of the software. That’s what it’s for. :-)

11 thoughts on “Extracts From My Sent Mail (2)

  1. When you say “Ever. Period”, you mean except when they want to add a bookmark to the magazine website to the default bookmarks toolbar, which requires either full writeoff from tptb on the trademark issue or a working build environment.

    – Chris

  2. Period? You are losing touch with your British roots young subject.

    And stop ranting about people not ‘getting’ Free Software. They probably have to play CYA for legal reasons.

  3. Chris: I said “our binaries” – i.e. the ones we distribute. Indeed, if they wanted to modify something and recompile, that would be different – but they then wouldn’t be “our binaries”, and they don’t want to do that anyway.

  4. Heh. Indeed. My bad.

    Your Majesty: British citizens have used the term “Period” in the idiomatic sense since it became common on TV. Few are even aware that it is a synonym for the also-commonly-used “Full stop” in the same sense, except for those whose schools were fortunate enough to own a single Macintosh, where they were introduced to the phrase “To cancel printing, hold down the Command Key (⌘) and type a period (.)”

    – Chris

  5. Ha! That was the best blog entry this year.

    I can imagine [mag company] director reading it and saying “I don’t get it, who do we pay? This guy? I can’t believe they aren’t more excited, don’t they know *how many people* read our mag?” Yeah, like twice as many as who use the internet? Pffff.

    heh!

    Today, in England, Cornwall, the sun is out, the temp is approx 30’C :-)

  6. “Today, in England, Cornwall, the sun is out, the temp is approx 30’C :-)”

    ha ha, yeah im in Essex and the temp is about 32’C – hot hot hot.

    (Sorry, completely off topic i know)

  7. You don’t need to recompile Mozilla to change the default bookmarks.

    They live in $MOZILLA_DIR/defaults/profile/bookmarks.html, which you just have to exchange to have your own default bookmarks for newly created profiles.

  8. daniel: whoosh. Which part of the 7-zip compressed binary blob installer does that directory structure relate to, again?

    – Chris

  9. Chris — you’re talking about Windows builds. Mac and Linux builds come as .dmg and .tgz which can easily be changed and re-packaged without recompiling.

  10. This is covered by the trademark policy. Modifying the bits you get in the installer in any way is “modification” as far as the trademark policy is concerned. Have you read it?

    – Chris

  11. Chris: No, but I was assuming something like this (despite the fact that the .tgz and .dmg builds come without installer). I was not referring to the trademark policy but to Gervs statement that everything that’s done without recompiling would be ok. It’s not that important anyway.