Obnoxious Firefox Licensing

Mozilla Firefox comes in many localized versions for many different languages, which is a good thing.

Mozilla Firefox has built-in spell-checking, which is also a good thing.

So, for example, if you download the installer for English (US) or for Lithuanian and install it and go write an email in GMail or edit a Wikipedia article in one of these languages, you’ll immediately see your spelling errors. This makes perfect sense.

But if you download an installer localized for English (UK), Catalan or Hebrew, you won’t see your spelling errors. The Firefox binary has spell-checking capabilities, but the installer doesn’t include the actual dictionary. Firefox-compatible dictionaries for these languages exist, and they are licensed as Free Software (GPL or LGPL), and you can add them manually after installing (right-click -> Languages -> Add Dictionaries), but here comes the ridiculous part: The guys behind getfirefox.com refuse to include those dictionaries in the installer. The reason, apparently, is that to be included in the installer, the dictionary must be 300% compatible with Firefox’s license, because Firefox is tri-licensed as GPL/LGPL/MPL, and a dictionary that is GPL-only is not good enough.

It is hard enough to convince people to install Firefox in the first place; convincing them to install additional dictionaries, plug-ins, add-ons etc. tends to frustrate them even more. Contrary to the belief which is popular among Firefox power users, most people are not add-on junkies and don’t right-click everywhere. So, even though Firefox users in London, Barcelona and Jerusalem can see Firefox menus in their respective languages, they have dead-weight spell-checking code on their hard drives, because they didn’t get a spelling dictionary in the installation, and many of them don’t even know that a Firefox-compatible spelling dictionary for their language exists.

Is this obnoxious licensing requirement really required? Isn’t Free Software licensing supposed to make distributing software easier?

When i told my wife Hadar about it, she said that it is as ridiculous as the stuff i tell her about DRM.

See also:

• Mozilla bug 487596 – Hebrew localized installer doesn’t include Hebrew spelling dictionary
• Dictionaries discussion at the Mozilla Developers Wiki

Market Share

At the infamous Bug #1 discussion, someone compared Microsoft developers’ priorities to Linux developers’ priorities. Although this discussion is very boring lately, i felt compelled to reply and said that Microsoft’s only priority has always been getting Microsoft products to all computer users in the world.

And today i read an interview by the Mozilla evangelist Christopher Blizzard, who says: “That might sound strange, but we are not that concerned about market share. [...] I’d like to make sure more fundamentally that the web is healthy.”

Free Software people are determined to make the world a better place and treat questions of market share in a “if you build it, they will come” manner.

Lliure

One of the places in which the Catalan presence is very strong is Free Software. Nearly every project and website related to Free Software has at least a partial version in Catalan – GNU.org, Wikipedia, WordPress, Mozilla, 7-zip and countless others. There’s a also version of free-culture.cc in Catalan – culturalliure.cat, where two hours of (pretty good) Catalan music can be downloaded under Free licences; that site is even somehow indirectly sponsored by the Generalitat – the government of Catalonia.

So i was very disappointed to find out that the website of Ramon Llull Institute doesn’t work in Mozilla. I tried to register for Catalan certification examination there, and it didn’t work; i’m almost sure that the website was programmed for Microsoft Internet Explorer only. I sent them a notice:

Hola,

Voldria inscriure’m a l’examen de català. Vaig anar a https://www.certificats.llull.com/Llull2/iniForm.jsp , vaig escriure meu número de identificació, vaig fer clic al continueu, i llavors va aparèixer pàgina buida amb res tret de títol “certificats de llengua catalana”. Potser aquest web no treballar bé en Mozilla Firefox, peró a meu ordinador tinc només Linux amb Mozilla Firefox i no puc provar-ho amb altres navegadors. Podeu ajudar-me? Gràcies.

I don’t think that a translation is really necessary. (And i’m sorry if i made any mistakes.)

Safari on Windows

Apple released a beta version of Safari for Windows.

Good points:

• It seems pretty fast, despite its stupid GUI (see below).
• It loads very quickly.
• It seems to use less memory – 25MB upon loading compared to Firefox’s 35MB and Internet Explorer’s 31MB (this was a very crude comparison, though).
• It stole a lot of icons from Firefox, but unlike the Internet Explorer folks, they didn’t take the RSS icon.
• It’s good for testing sites.
• It’s Free Software (although i haven’t look at the details of plugins etc.)
• Ctrl-T and middle-click open a new tab, which is very important (but see below).
• Hebrew in websites seems to work correctly (but see below).

Bad points:

• It has a very Mac-style GUI. All-gray tones, flat buttons. Despite this, the browser seems pretty fast (see above).
• The preferences dialog doesn’t have OK, Apply and Cancel; Closing the window means OK, although in the Windows world it usually means Cancel, which is very confusing.
• Mouse wheel doesn’t work.
• Middle click doesn’t close an open tab, which is standard in Firefox and Internet Explorer. It’s pretty annoying.
• Hebrew text appears in reverse in the GUI of the browser, although it appears correctly in the sites themselves.

The worst point is the mouse wheel. I use it a lot and i surely hope that it’s just a bug and not a stupid feature devised by Apple to make usage simpler (it’s all too easy to imagine Apple UI engineers say something like “Most users don’t understand how to use the mouse wheel anyway and Mac users do very well without it.”) So for me it’s a show-stopper and i’m sticking with Firefox, although it is useful for testing. Hey, i am loyal to Firefox even on Linux, where i can use Konqueror which is the origin of Safari.

Made Me Cry – Firefox Again

And more about Firefox – i keep reading about it and i can’t stop getting fascinated by it. It’s a proof that free software works and that it can be used by regular people. It’s a proof of Microsoft’s lies, dirty tricks and incompetence.

There are many astonishing things about Firefox. The dedication of the programmers who developed Firefox to do The Right Thing – to write a free browser which will support the best technical standards and will be not just usable, but cool too. The dedication of the user community, of which i am proud to be a part to using and promoting, even with the worthy alternatives around (Safari, Opera, Konqueror and well, IE). Even it’s logo makes me shed tears. Free software done right changes the world. It actually does.

Firefox has been downloaded 200 million times. This number probably includes previous versions. It means little about actual market share. But why not celebrate?

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My older Firefox-related entries:

• Now I Got Worry
• Sakhr
• Public Service – Smooth Transition to Firefox
• Beta Rant
• The Not-So-Fat Lady

Firefox Fun

Firefox fun:

• A real-life Firefox
• Firefox for prom-queen
• Firefox crop circles

More at Firefox tales.

I though about it – i see people promoting Firefox out of sheer love for it, which is well-deserved. Would there be anyone to love Internet Explorer so much? Probably not, ‘cuz unlike Firefox, IE is just there. But if someone would really want to show his admiration, what would they do?

The only thing i could come up with was calling one’s child Internet Explorer. I hope no-one does it though.