In 2006, a branding issue developed when Mike Connor, representing the

Mozilla Corporation The Mozilla Corporation (stylized as moz://a) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of ope ...

, requested that the Debian Project comply with Mozilla standards for use of the Thunderbird

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from othe ...

when redistributing the Thunderbird software. At issue were modifications not approved by the Mozilla Foundation, when the name for the software remained the same. The Debian Project subsequently

rebranded Rebranding is a marketing strategy in which a new name, term, symbol, design, concept or combination thereof is created for an established brand with the intention of developing a new, differentiated identity in the minds of consumers, investors ...

the Mozilla Firefox program, and other software released by Mozilla, so that Debian could distribute modified software without being bound by the trademark requirements that the Mozilla Foundation had invoked. The new names established by Debian were ''Iceweasel'' for Mozilla Firefox, ''Icedove'' for

Mozilla Thunderbird Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source cross-platform email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation and operated by subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation. The projec ...

, and ''Iceape'' for

SeaMonkey SeaMonkey is a free and open-source Internet suite. It is the continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite, based on the same source code, which itself grew out of Netscape Communicator and formed the base of Netscape 6 and Netscape ...

. These changes were implemented in the subsequent version of Debian (Etch). In July 2007, ''Iceowl'', a rebranded version of Mozilla Sunbird, was added to the unstable branch of Debian. In 2016, a number of Mozilla employees and Debian maintainers argued that the branding was no longer needed, and on 10 March 2016, Debian's unstable branch switched back to the Mozilla branding, with the stable branch planning to switch after Iceweasel's end of life. The decade-long branding issues between the Debian Project and Mozilla Corporation ended in 2017 when all Mozilla applications in Debian were reverted to their original names.

Applications

Debian's Iceweasel, Icedove, Iceowl, and Iceape were based on Mozilla's Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, and SeaMonkey, respectively. The rebranded products still used some Internet-based services from Mozilla, including the Mozilla plugin finder service, and Mozilla add-ons and their update notifications. There was also no change to how non- free components, such as Flash, were found or used.

Iceape

Iceape was a

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

Internet suite An Internet suite is an Internet-related software suite. Internet suites usually include a web browser, e-mail client (often with a news client and address book), download manager, HTML editor, and an IRC client. The diversity of Internet suite o ...

based on SeaMonkey. It was developed by the Debian Mozilla Team in unison with the SeaMonkey Council's work on their release, but in accordance with Debian's policy of only using free content,

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

ed artwork and

proprietary {{Short pages monitor

Rebranding

According to the ''Debian Package Tracking System'', Iceweasel, Icedove, and Iceape were first accepted into the Debian project's ''unstable'' repository on November 20, 2006, on October 14, 2006, and on December 1, 2006, respectively. Icedove migrated to Etch and Thunderbird was removed on November 11, 2006. Iceape migrated to Etch on January 11, 2007 (the old Mozilla suite having previously been removed on October 6, 2006). Iceweasel migrated (and Firefox was removed) on January 18, 2007. Debian's first stable release to include Iceweasel, Icedove, and Iceape was Debian 4.0 (Etch), released April 8, 2007. Soon after the renaming Debian also replaced Mozilla's unbranded logos with new logos designed to fit with the new names, drawn by Ricardo Fernandez Fuentes.

User agent sniffing

Some web sites do not recognize the browsers' user agent strings and refuse to work properly. As a workaround, Iceweasel 3.5.5 adds a "like

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current ...

x.x.x" string to the user agent.

Firefox issue resolution

Debian users who performed a in June 2016 received the following system message. According to Chris Hoffman of

PC World ''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online only publication. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tech ...

, "After a decade, Debian and Mozilla are burying the hatchet. Iceweasel is about to re-assume its proper name".

iceweasel (45.0esr-1) unstable; urgency=medium

  * The iceweasel package was replaced with the firefox-esr package.

  * Preferences under /etc/iceweasel/prefs will need to be copied manually
    to /etc/firefox-esr.
  * Other customizations under /etc/iceweasel will need additional manual
    steps, through CCK2 or addons.

The developers of

Parabola GNU/Linux-libre Parabola GNU/Linux-libre is an operating system for the i686, x86-64 and ARMv7 architectures. It is based on many of the packages from Arch Linux and Arch Linux ARM, but distinguishes from the former by offering only free software. It includes th ...

picked up the Iceweasel project and it continues to be maintained.

Licensing

The rebranded programs are available under Mozilla's standard MPL/

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

/ LGPL tri-license. Like Mozilla, the default icons are under the same tri-license, but unlike Mozilla, there are no trademark restrictions.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mozilla Corporation Software Rebranded By The Debian Project Free web browsers POSIX web browsers Web browsers based on Firefox Software forks Debian 2006 software Software that uses XUL