Few days back while going through an article about new Knoppix 5.3.0 I came upon the two familiar but unheard tools i.e. Iceweasel and Icedove, both followed by the names Firefox & Thunderbird 2.0 in brackets respectively. For a moment I began to muse about when did these two names came into existence for the two most popular open source internet tools. After a little googling and going through wikipedia I got my answer.
Mozilla corporation holds trademark for name Firefox and its logo. Unofficial releases of Firefox can’t use the same unless they use the binaries supplied by Mozilla or have special permission. If none of the two conditions satisfies then one must compile the source with an option that gives the generated binaries code-name of the release version of the Firefox on which it is based, and which doesn’t use the official logo or any other artwork.
Iceweasel and Icedove are the re-branded version of Firefox and Thunderbird maintained by Debian. Debian guidelines, commonly known as Debian Free Software Guidelines, states that all parts of Debian distribution should be modifiable by those who use it. This conflicts with the licensing and strict guidelines of Mozilla Trademark Policy. As a result Debian forked the development of Firefox & Thunderbird projects with new names together with some extra features and a logo which is freely licensed.
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