The Swiftfox forum is quite interesting
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tracyanne Apr 10, 2007 4:40 AM EDT |
Jason blocks and locks any post that discusses the fact that he has released the Binaries under a proprietary license, effectively stifling any discussion on the subject. One wonders what it is that his he hiding. here's my post on the swiftfox forum: Quoting:tracyanne Guest Another post http://67.18.35.242/-forums.getswiftfox.com/viewtopic.php?t=... attempts to discuss the closed nature of Jason's version of Firefox. It was closed and locked by Jason stopping any further discussion. |
| helios Apr 10, 2007 5:09 AM EDT |
Tue Apr 10, 2007 7:26 am
Jason
Site Admin
Joined: 20 Jul 2006
Posts: 167
Location: New York Reply with quote Post This topic is closed That was enough to urge me into purging every bit of Swiftfox from my machine...silly me for assuming the Licensing was GPL based. I disappoint me sometimes. h |
| tracyanne Apr 10, 2007 5:19 AM EDT |
BTW I have been blocked at the IP address level from accessing the Swiftfox forums, indeed the entire Swiftfox server. The only reason I was able to access my post above, was because I used anonymous access. |
| DarrenR114 Apr 10, 2007 5:47 AM EDT |
I wonder if there would be any traction to a trademark infringement suit - since Swiftfox is obviously so closely related to "firefox" and both are web browsers. |
| bigg Apr 10, 2007 6:33 AM EDT |
This is something I have known for a long time (ie, that it is kept a secret). You have to find out about the binary-only thing from other places. There could be keystroke loggers, security holes, phoning home, or anything else going on. I'm always suspicious when I see freeware. > I wonder if there would be any traction to a trademark infringement suit - since Swiftfox is obviously so closely related to "firefox" and both are web browsers. That thought went through my mind when Debian changed to Iceweasel. It is sold as an optimized version of Firefox. That seems to be a much better reason for enforcing the Firefox trademark than the use of a different icon. The front page even says "Optimized Mozilla Firefox Build for Linux". Either it's Firefox or it's not. |
| devnet Apr 10, 2007 8:11 AM EDT |
If that's the case where you don't know what is inside the binaries, that should be enough for Mozilla to NOT HAVE IT LISTED as an extension on their add-ons site. I'm writing an email now with this thread as reference to mozilla. |
| SFN Apr 10, 2007 11:54 AM EDT |
Well, if Jason doesn't want it discussed on the Swiftfox forums, there are lots of other places where it can be discussed. Places with much higher visibility. Of course, the closed-source story would probably less interesting to most people than the fact that he blocks anybody who brings it up. People love a good cover-up. |
| bigg Apr 10, 2007 11:57 AM EDT |
> People love a good cover-up. There's no reason to cover up something unless you have done something wrong. I found out from the Ubuntu forums and immediately got it off my system. I got enough of the spyware-infested binary-only freeware garbage when I used Windows. |
| tracyanne Apr 10, 2007 1:39 PM EDT |
There is also the possibility that he breaks some clause of the MPL, see this quote (by someone call jcarroll) from that blocked thread on Jason's forumQuoting:Furthermore, while it is within his legal rights to be so hostile and utterly disrespectful to the free software community (though he currently has overstepped), Mr. Halme does not have the right to keep his modifications under a similarly restrictive situation. If you look at the patch [2] for Swiftfox 2.0.0, you will see that the changes amount to processor-specific compilation, which probably doesn't cause any noticeable gains, and some settings changes which can be achieved just as easily in Firefox. I would encourage you to try changing those settings, and also to try to vanilla version of Firefox from mozilla.org - there have been problems with internationalisation taking priority over performance in Ubuntu's version in the past, especially with Pango support.. |
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