Packaging a free Firefox

["Clément Lassieur" <clement@lassieur.org>]

Hi,

I find Icecat very buggy, even if I compare it to a home-made Firefox
package that inherits Icecat (and thus is very close to Icecat).  For
example I can't even pay with my credit card with icecat-52-guix,
whereas I can with firefox-home-52-guix.  (It looks like a javascript
issue.)  Also, lots of videos don't work, and it's difficult to know
whether it's because of technical issues or because of DRM.

This may discourage people from using GuixSD.

My understanding is that Icecat exists because of two reasons:
  1. a trademark/logo issue,
  2. the need to remove non-free code from Firefox.

But it does more:
  3. it only packages the stables versions of Firefox,
  4. it adds add-ons,
  5. it prevents the installation of non-free plugins,
  6. probably other things that I'm not aware of.

It seems to me that the trademark/logo issue and the non-free code
removal could be dealt with at the Guix packaging level.  It's probably
just a huge bunch of substitutes to do.  The package would be huge, but
at least we would have control on it.

That would remove a layer of complexity, and probably reduce bugs (that
come from that layer).  That would also allow us to have a recent
version of Firefox.

And it would be way better than everyone (I exaggerate a bit) having his
home-made non-maintened full-of-security-issues Firefox.

What do you think?
Clément