MediaGoblin Recommends Non-Free Software

[Jason Self]

If someone visits a page with a browser that can't play the video they're shown this message:

    <div class="no_html5">Sorry, this video will not work because
      your web browser does not support HTML5 
      video.<br/>You can get a modern web browser that 
      can play this video at <a href="http://getfirefox.com">
      http://getfirefox.com</a>!</div>}}}

However, the browser called "Firefox" (as well as other Mozilla-branded software) is not free software as explained near the bottom of this page: http://www.gnu.org/software/for-windows.html in which not all four freedoms are fully available in "Firefox."

Can you please change the suggestion to avoid recommending a non-free browser?

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Oy. :\

So I'm not a fan of Mozilla's trademark policies either. I run IceWeasel over here. But I wasn't aware that the FSF considers, on that ground, that FireFox is nonfree software. That's a bit surprising to me. Looking at the trademark policies page:

"The default logos in CVS which are built into Firefox and Thunderbird 
by default (i.e. the globe without the fox, and the original blue bird)
are explicitly notprotected as Mozilla trademarks. The files themselves
are available under the mozilla.org tri-license; you can do anything   
you like with them under those terms."                          

That and from ​Stallman's own statements:

"Free software means you're free to run it, study it, change it, redistribute it, and distribute modified versions -- the way cooks do with recipes. What names you're allowed to call a program is a side issue."

Furthermore, there's good reason behind the decision as we have it: not including flash, not including h.264... this is an uphill battle for MediaGoblin. The whole point of that text is to teach visitors of MediaGoblin sites that there are totally reasonable free software browser alternatives to this one you're using which seemingly doesn't support <video> and/or WebM, and what's more, you've already heard of them. By replacing that with recommending something the user's probably never heard of, we kill that strategy. So aside from the fact that I'm not convinced that the FireFox is nonfree thing is true or not, that sets us back drastically in a battle we're losing... and I'm not convinced that the reasoning is actually true. We're going to lose a teachable moment here, and I think we'll actually lose the ability to help people move to something that's free software (I still think it is) and advancing free codecs.

As an aside from that, QupZilla (nice site, though it's the first time I've heard of it) as shown on that page doesn't seem to be a reasonable suggestion to offer for Windows users; it ​seems to require Microsoft Visual Studio to compile on Windows; surely that's most certainly losing in free software qualifications.

I'm not convinced that FireFox isn't free software. I am convinced the trademark issues are annoying. I'm not closing this ticket just yet but I'm not convinced that what we have is a problem, and I feel that as is, we'd be closing one door open towards advancing free software and free codecs and not advancing another one.