robert’s rant room

If you are like me and have a lot of good friends that use Debian-based GNU/Linux systems, you were probably envious that their Firefox uses a much nicer icon set, and a different name: Iceweasel. The reason lies within the fact that Debian removes unfree parts (like binary plug-ins) and was therefore forced by Mozilla to use another name and logo, as Firefox’ trademark policy forbids distributing patched versions under that name.

In Gentoo, if you compiled Firefox from source, you could either choose between official branding with the risk of trademark issues if you distribute binary packages, or Firefox’ default theme, “Bon Echo”. Thanks to our Mozilla grandmaster Raúl Porcel (armin76), we now also have the Iceweasel branding available, the USE flag is called “iceweasel”. It does not remove any parts of Firefox except icons and names, that is still your job to do. Thanks, Raúl. I don’t have to envy anymore!