Licensing question about Pale Moon Browser binary distribution

Licensing question about Pale Moon Browser binary distribution

[ng0]

Hello licensing team of Pale Moon,

a long time ago I packaged Pale Moon in the Newmoon flavor (or
"brand") for GNU Guix.
I have maintained it in my local set of repositories for some
time now, simply because of your redistribution policies
(http://www.palemoon.org/redist.shtml). It is building from
source locally on the machines of the people who might use it,
effectively like Gentoo. With Guix we have the possibility to
either build from source or to use so called "binary
substitutes" from binary substitutes servers (which can be
compared to what users of binary-only distributions use).

I'm not a lawyer. I'm a volunteer and activist, interested in
providing secure, safe and reproducible builds across the
whole variety of hardware and Operating Systems GNU Guix can run
on.
What's bothering me is the default landing page. No matter the
good intentions, it exposes users to a landing page with
trackers, at least last time I checked it.

I want to bring Pale Moon into Guix, so that more people can make
use of it. Here are my questions:
If we would substitute ("patch out") the landing page, defaulting
to a branded one (for example "gnu.org") or anything else
including "about:blank", could we still distribute it with the
New Moon theme/branding?
From re-reading item 12:

> Unofficial branding ("New Moon") as supplied in the source code
> may be used for unendorsed binaries at all times. Thusly
> branded binaries with the New Moon logo and product name are
> not subject to the endorsement and exception rules as set out
> in previous points of this license and may be freely
> distributed in altered or unaltered form, subject to the
> Mozilla Public License as regards source code changes and
> availability. This permission does, however, not include any
> rights or license to the Pale Moon name and logo that may still
> be present in the resulting unofficially branded binaries.

in the above mentioned policy I understand that we will be
allowed to distribute the resulting binaries. Is my understanding
of your policy exception correct or did I miss anything?

Regards,
ng0
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ng0 :: https://ea.n0.is
A88C8ADD129828D7EAC02E52E22F9BBFEE348588 :: https://ea.n0.is/keys/

Re: Licensing question about Pale Moon Browser binary distribution

[Moonchild]

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Hi!

You've read the exception point correctly:

Using New Moon (=unofficial) branding, you are allowed to do whatever
you wish with your distribution, including reconfiguration, different
home page, etc. Go right ahead!
If you make source code changes, you should also supply your modified
source code to stay within the requirements of the MPL source code license.

Moonchild.

On 04/02/2018 12:58, ng0@n0.is wrote:

>From re-reading item 12:
> 
>> Unofficial branding ("New Moon") as supplied in the source code
>> may be used for unendorsed binaries at all times. Thusly
>> branded binaries with the New Moon logo and product name are
>> not subject to the endorsement and exception rules as set out
>> in previous points of this license and may be freely
>> distributed in altered or unaltered form, subject to the
>> Mozilla Public License as regards source code changes and
>> availability. This permission does, however, not include any
>> rights or license to the Pale Moon name and logo that may still
>> be present in the resulting unofficially branded binaries.
> 
> in the above mentioned policy I understand that we will be
> allowed to distribute the resulting binaries. Is my understanding
> of your policy exception correct or did I miss anything?
> 
> Regards,
> ng0
> 


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Re: Licensing question about Pale Moon Browser binary distribution

[ng0]

Hi,

On Sun, 04 Feb 2018, Moonchild <moonchild@palemoon.org> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> You've read the exception point correctly:
>
> Using New Moon (=unofficial) branding, you are allowed to do whatever
> you wish with your distribution, including reconfiguration, different
> home page, etc. Go right ahead!
> If you make source code changes, you should also supply your modified
> source code to stay within the requirements of the MPL source code license.
>
> Moonchild.

Alright then. I should've asked this question earlier. Better
late than never.

Thanks for your reply!

> On 04/02/2018 12:58, ng0@n0.is wrote:
>
>>From re-reading item 12:
>> 
>>> Unofficial branding ("New Moon") as supplied in the source code
>>> may be used for unendorsed binaries at all times. Thusly
>>> branded binaries with the New Moon logo and product name are
>>> not subject to the endorsement and exception rules as set out
>>> in previous points of this license and may be freely
>>> distributed in altered or unaltered form, subject to the
>>> Mozilla Public License as regards source code changes and
>>> availability. This permission does, however, not include any
>>> rights or license to the Pale Moon name and logo that may still
>>> be present in the resulting unofficially branded binaries.
>> 
>> in the above mentioned policy I understand that we will be
>> allowed to distribute the resulting binaries. Is my understanding
>> of your policy exception correct or did I miss anything?
>> 
>> Regards,
>> ng0
>> 
>
>

-- 
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