Well, I know the title of this post really sucks, but I can't do anything about it: everytime I think about the localization and trademark issues, this old Rolling Stone song takes over my mind and I end up whistling "Between a rock... and a hard place! Between a rock... and a hard place" until I go to bed. Let's see why this happens:
A few weeks ago, Peterv and I had a long discussion with Mitchell Baker (head of Mozilla Foundation) regarding localization and trademarks. I am now convinced that Firefox has to be a trademark. IANAL, but I do get that if we don't have that trademark and protect it accordingly, we will lose it and may see terrible things happen to our browser, such as someone naming their Web browser "Firefox Browser" even though it has nothing to do with the Mozilla technology. But protecting our Firefox trademark means not allowing everybody to use it freely.
On the other hand, we at Mozilla Europe know that localization teams are very important to our success outside the US. These teams were not always happy recently, because of changes in the way that product localization is done. (Some very significant progress has been made since then). Preventing localizers from using the Firefox trademark to identify their official builds would be unacceptable. So we (Mozilla Europe and Mozilla Foundation) stand there, caught between what the international community wants, and what the trademark lawyers want because the legal system imposes it. These guys are used to deal with corporations, paid licenses and stuff. It's about not trusting anyone until you have a written contract and see the money coming in, following a license agreement. But Mozilla Europe and Mozilla Foundation are non-profit entities and we live in the open-source/Free sofware world. In our world, it's about sharing, contributing, giving away, trusting other people you've never met and work with them... These two worlds share a common border, and this is what we discussed with Mitchell. So Mitchell, instead of imposing the lawyers' point of view on us (because we tend to represent the localization teams), started discussing and listening, and is already fighting the "lawyers bad habits" that tend not to trust anyone and lock down everything they can. Mitchell has posted a blog entry on this very topic. She will probably not blame the lawyers, having herself a lawyer background, but she uses her energy to find the best solution for the trademark and the community.
The results of this fight are now partly visible in the new version of the localization trademark policy draft, posted a few hours ago. I hope our joint effort has resulted in an acceptable result for the community. I also hope that from now on, every time I think about this whole story, I'll end up singing Come together. Yeah, I know, it's The Beatles this time.
