The Open Sourcerer

Indicator Applet & libnotify support for Thunderbird

This looks great!

I’ve never really got on with Gnome’s Evolution (the default mail client in Ubuntu) and so always install Thunderbird, Lightning and other great extensions for the Mozilla family of products on my Ubuntu desktops and laptops. Since the new notification tool (9.04?) and then the Indicator Applet (9.10) were introduced however, Thunderbird hasn’t been able to avail itself of these useful tools. Until now.

Ruben Verweij has created a small Thunderbird extension that seems to fix this limitation. Simply follow the very clear and easy instructions on his blog post to create the .xpi package and then install it in the usual manner. I had to install the Ubuntu package libnotify-bin to get the notifications working but that was easy: sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin.

You can then turn off Thunderbird’s internal notification tool as shown here. This stops the old-fashioned opaque pop ups that usually appear in the bottom right of the screen.

As Ruben is clear to point out this is still experimental so all the usual rules apply and YMMV.

It has worked for me so far and was easy to install and set-up. In fact, I only just noticed, whilst I was writing this, that there is a “preferences” dialogue for the extension. Short and sweet:

Thanks Ruben, this is a great addition.

How to run Firefox 3.5 on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 was released yesterday. It isn’t (at the time of writing this) available for install through the repos on Ubuntu Jaunty. I guess it will be backported at some stage but should you want to play about with it, here is how I did it so as not to (hopefully) break anything else… [Note: you should probably back up your profile directory before going any further. Something like this should do it: cp -a ~/.mozilla ~/firefox-3.0-backup]

I downloaded the Linux tarball and unpacked it. I moved this directory (called firefox) to my local bin dir:

mv firefox ~/bin/firefox-3.5

This command assumes you are in the same directory as the tarball you just extracted and have a local bin directory. If not just do mkdir ~/bin first.

Then I started the current Firefox Profile Manager and created a new profile just for 3.5 to test (I didn’t want any conflicts or updates to my existing firefox 3 add-ons). To check that you are using the right path for the existing installed Firefox you can do a command like which -a firefox which will give you the full path to any firefox executables on your system and in your path.:

/usr/bin/firefox -no-remote -ProfileManager

Follow the Profile Manager dialogues to create a new profile – I called mine 3.5 amazingly. Exit the profile manager (don’t start firefox or else you’ll end up with the existing firefox also using the 3.5 profile).

Now you can run the 3.5 version of Firefox by typing the following command:

~/bin/firefox-3.5/firefox -no-remote -P 3.5

The -no-remote switch ensures that we start a clean instance of FF from these commands. If you already have an instance of FF running and you do not use this switch, you’ll get another window tied to the same, already running, firefox process. This also affects trying to start firefox remotely over X as I discovered quite some time ago.

I have since created a launcher on the top panel to start FF3.5.

It seems to work OK and feels incredibly fast at loading pages, but trying to run anything that needs flash causes it to die horribly.

So although this isn’t perfect, it was a reasonably safe way to test and just try it out. YMMV of course and I really think we’d all probably be better just waiting for one of the MOTU “Gods” to deliver a 3.5 backport for Jaunty.

Songbird 1.2 Released

My favourite music player has just been updated and version 1.2 released.

I picked up the story from The H where they’ve done a great job of describing most of the new features in a single paragraph.

One of the biggest new features is the ability to automatically organise library files across multiple folders based on track metadata, such as artist and album information. In addition to several performance improvements to features like search, Songbird 1.2 now supports 2-way syncing with iTunes, which is especially useful for users who purchase songs in the iTunes Music Store. Songs added to Songbird can also be synced back into iTunes for syncing with iPods and iPhones. Last.fm support has been included in Songbird for some time now, however, users can now access even more artist, track, album and tag information. A new 10-band equalizer has been added to Songbird to let audiophiles tweak the frequency response of audio playback.

With the ever expanding feature set and the superb extensibility thanks to their Mozilla platform pedigree we have a really good alternative to the “other” much touted music player based on Mono. I know which one I prefer.

Songbird, incidentally, was the only music player I found on Ubuntu that would sync with my iPod Nano 4th Gen. And that was the previous release of Songbird too. With iTunes synchronisation I think I have just found the last piece of the puzzle to get my wife off Windows once and for all.

Thanks to all the community and developers behind Songbird. I can’t wait to get this new release installed and give it a work out.

Jaunty, Thunderbird 3 and Lightning

First a sort of apology I guess. Things have been really busy recently so I am not finding as much time to blog as I would really like.

Having said that, I took the opportunity yesterday to migrate my main desktop PC from Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid to the soon-to-be-released 9.04 Jaunty Jakalope and I also upgraded my email client from Thunderbird 2 to a recent nightly build of the nearly-ready Thunderbird 3 release along with the excellent calendar extension Lightning.

Because of the way I partitioned the disk originally, this was a fairly trivial exercise but I thought some might find this information useful.

I already had a Jaunty build installed on one of the three 15GB partitions I created for Operating Systems (see here for how I originally partitioned the drive). The only thing I needed to do was to alter my fstab to add a mount point for the /home partition.

Ubuntu uses a UUID descriptor for disks as opposed to the more easily understandable /dev/sda[x] nomenclature. So how do you find out the UUID of a partition?

sudo vol_id /dev/sda8 will return various useful bits of info as in my case here:

ID_FS_USAGE=filesystem
ID_FS_TYPE=xfs
ID_FS_VERSION=
ID_FS_UUID=5a2ecbcf-ab2d-4696-ae87-a3a15c559f70
ID_FS_UUID_ENC=5a2ecbcf-ab2d-4696-ae87-a3a15c559f70
ID_FS_LABEL=
ID_FS_LABEL_ENC=

sda8 is the large (250GB) xfs partition I created for /home. My Intrepid installation lives in /dev/sda5 with a separate mount for /home and /boot. So When I installed Jaunty a few weeks ago to start testing it I installed that in /dev/sda6 and let it have it’s own /home directory.

I was happy with Jaunty’s stability so I decided to move across. After backing up my home directory first (using rdiff-backup) I then only needed to add a couple of lines to the /etc/fstab file of the Jaunty build.

# /dev/sda8
UUID=5a2ecbcf-ab2d-4696-ae87-a3a15c559f70 /home xfs relatime 0 2

Before I rebooted, I ran a sudo mount -a command which mounts everything according to fstab and checked that /home was mounted to /dev/sda8 as I wanted. I logged in and checked the home dir was as I had left it. I then unmounted /home and removed my “alord” directory from the Jaunty partition after copying any files I needed of course. This step isn’t really necessary but I like to clean up after myself

Finally I swapped the default start-up item in the /boot/grub/menu.lst to be my Jaunty build and rebooted to check everything works. It did.

Installing Thunderbird 3 (Shredder) was simple. I downloaded the nightly tarball from here along with the nightly Lightning build from here. The Thunderbird tarball is already compiled so I simple extracted into my home bin directory and set up a menu item for it. Upon starting TB3 it picked up my existing .thunderbird directory and all my accounts and mail settings. It did rightly so complain that the lightning extension was not the right version and disabled it. I uninstalled the old 0.9 version and then installed the new lightning.xpi nightly I had downloaded. After restarting shredder all my calendars were loaded as I would have expected.

The reason for me using this potentially fragile version of Thunderbird is because there is an annoying bug in the Lightning 0.9 extension when working with the Cosmo Calendar server. The bug has been fixed, but only in the recent versions which are tied to TB3 and that probably won’t get backported. The Mozilla calendar folks are having a hard time right now – the Sunbird standalone calendar app is not going to be maintained or developed further by the calendar developers as they don’t have the bandwidth to support that and Lightning. TB 3 has moved onto the newer 1.9 Gecko engine and hence the new Lightning not working with TB2 which is built on the older 1.8 Gecko.

The good news is that Shredder and Lightning seem to be fine for me (Disclaimer: Of course YMMV). TB3 uses the tabbed pane concept so my calendars/tasks and mails now live on tabs hat are easy to switch between. The overall UI of TB3 has been extensively reworked and there are some great new features some of which are covered in this article.

Here’s a screenshot of Shredder where you can see some of the UI changes etc.

Did Microsoft make Firefox?

This post by Matt Assay discussing how we got to a competitive browser market got me thinking. (Dangerous I know, but bear with me.)

… I suppose the truly intriguing thing is not that we have a competitive market for Web browsers again, but how it happened. Baker told me recently that Firefox is “an anomaly” because it managed to beat back overwhelming Microsoft market share. Can we do it again?

What was the tipping point when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team finally had to start paying attention to Mozilla’s Firefox browser? And when did Google decide that it couldn’t subsist on Firefox’s roadmap and instead had to forge its own browser, Chrome?

My own take on this is it was all Microsoft’s own doing. Think about it. Their browser, Internet Explorer [and more specifically IE6], was locked into the operating system that ran an almost every PC sold. So for Mozilla’s Firefox browser to take more than a 20% market share is pretty staggering. If you use Windows (as certainly a few years ago almost everyone did) you already have a browser on that Windows PC so why go and download another one? It isn’t quite the same for OpenOffice.org or Gimp for example. You are having to make a decision about acquiring an Office Application Suite or an Image Editor; whether you pay for commercial code or use FOSS is your choice. But with the browser, you already have one.

My conclusion to Matt’s question is that it comes down to just how bad IE6 really was. If it had been a half decent browser with acceptable support for the standards it was supposed to support then I don’t think Firefox, and possibly the entire FOSS ecosystem, would be as strong as it is today.

Presumably Microsoft could have patched and updated IE6 during the course of it’s life but they chose not to, and instead stuck to delivering a half-baked, non-compliant browser full of leaks and security holes and proprietary features that lead many unfortunate souls to build sites that only worked with Microsoft’s browser.

I think that it was the web development community that started this movement. Being professionally involved in helping Graphic Designers make websites work across browsers, I know just how BAD IE6 really is when it comes to supporting standards. If it hadn’t been so terrible, or even got fixed, I don’t think the web developer community would have started using Firefox in the numbers that they did and then espousing it’s virtues with quite the same level of gusto.

Of course, as well as being a decent browser, there were many new and innovative ideas and features in Firefox, a huge extension and plug-in library and cross platform support too. But as “most” users of a browser are simply surfing, then if IE wasn’t such a pile of steaming poo in the first place I don’t think many consumers would have been inclined to change at all.

What do you think?

Migrating from Windows

The last Windows computer in our house is very shortly going to be history

I have been threatening my wife’s PC for quite some time now, but there has been no real motivation to move until today… Our bank called and told her a credit card has been fraudulently used in the last few days. Fortunately they appear to have correctly and swiftly identified the misuse and are dealing with the problem.

However, this experience has obviously caused my beloved (Helen) to start wondering how her details were captured in the first place. She is pretty scrupulous with the shredder, and this particular card is almost only ever used for on-line transactions; so her PC was a possible, if not likely, route for the thieves. The ClamWin AV scan threw up a few nasty sounding files, including some IE.IFrame trojan thing, although they had all been quarantined already.  But the fact that Windows is so vulnerable to attack and subsequent compromise when compared to Linux, this saga has just tipped the scales. We now have a good reason to start the final migration of the Lord household.

This evening, I have installed Thunderbird on Helen’s Windows PC and imported everything from her Outlook email client. The import was basically flawless and after changing a few settings she’s now up and running with TB. (Interestingly, her first few comments were very positive: “This looks nice”, “It’s much faster”, “I like the address book layout” and so forth.) I added Lightning and connected her up to our caldav Calendar Server (Cosmo) which is an added bonus for Helen. We all use this for work, family and personal scheduling and Helen had been limited to using web access (simply because Outlook doesn’t support the Caldav standard) which is not the optimum interface to this calendar.

Helen was already using Firefox most of the time but now I’ve asked her to stop using IE altogether.

Helen also has OpenOfice.org (OOo) installed already but has not been using it much as the Windows defaults are [were] set for MSO 2003. This will probably be the area where there will be some new learning as she stops using MSO and starts using OOo but it isn’t that painful to be frank.

I think within a month, I will install Ubuntu 8.10 as a dual boot for a short period just in case she finds there are things that don’t work and then we’ll turn off the malware-that-pretends-to-be-an-OS Windows within a few weeks from then.

She does use iTunes for her work and pleasure so I am thinking we’ll need to have a VM (VirtualBox) running her copy of XP to support that, unless someone would like to offer advice on alternatives. She runs music therapy classes and her material is ripped onto her iPod using Apple’s lossless codec IIRC that iTunes seems to default to. Never having used it myself, nor do I own an iPod I am not the best source of advice on this one so if anyone can help here I’d be grateful.

I can’t think there is much else that will bite us though; she doesn’t have any other proprietary apps I can see that are going to prove troublesome to replace.

One thing that is really important in this story is this ability to run the main applications: Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org, on both Windows and Linux platforms. It will make the transition, for a non-technical user, much less painful than having to switch wholesale over to new apps and a new OS all at the same time. Thanks Mozilla and OOo.

As we go through this migration I’ll write a little more (I might even ask Helen to document her experiences and thoughts). Hopefully it will help others doing, or wanting to do, the same thing.

Wolfie get’s his Glorious Day

Fantastic. Mozilla have clearly been listening…

These are just mock-ups but I doubt that they’d be showing something far from what will transpire. It looks nice, requires no consent, and certainly wouldn’t aggravate me.

Update, now you can also see some mock-ups of how the license gets shown too.

And here is the Website Services Agreement:

No SHOUTING, and they look to have removed most of the cruft which made it utterly pointless. I’m not convinced it is still necessary to actually do all this, and I would prefer if the “services” which cause all this grief (the anti-phishing and scam detection) were disabled by default.

But, this is definitely a massive improvement over where we were a couple of days ago…

Power to the People! [on Mozilla's Firefox EULA]

Is anyone reading this old enough to remember that line from the BBC TV Sitcom “Citizen Smith“? I think I have just seen it in action.

In just a couple of short days there has been a massive expression of discontent with the imposition of an EULA on Ubuntu’s users of the Mozilla Firefox web browser. And it seems that the voice of the community is being listened to:

We’ve come to understand that anything EULA-like is disturbing, even if the content is FLOSS based.  So we’re eliminating that.

Mitchell Baker, the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation,  has just posted an update on her blog “The Lizard Wrangler”. The main thrust of her comments make it sound like Mozilla has listened carefully to the concerns so fervently expressed. Although the proof will be in the pudding so to speak:

We still feel that something about the web services integrated into the browser is needed; these services can be turned off and not interrupt the flow of using the browser. We also want to tell people about the FLOSS license — as a notice, not as as EULA or use restriction.  Again, this won’t block the flow or provide the unwelcoming feeling that one comment to my previous post described so eloquently.

Apart from a few rather vitriolic comments towards individuals, the majority of the comments made on “that bug report” (which will probably become quite infamous in it’s own right and get it’s own page on Wikipedia) were lucid and expressed a deep concern about the direction this might lead FOSS in general. A snowball effect of pop-ups and EULAs appearing for Free Software applications would be our a nightmare for the FOSS movement and lead to many people simply saying “so what’s the difference between this an Windows then?”. The snowball that is FOSS would probably melt rather spectacularly.

A user’s ability to choose to install a product from a massive software library without being told how they must use it is one of the great and liberating freedoms of using FOSS. Take that away and you are simply creating a carbon copy of the proprietary software experience.

If it becomes clear after Mozilla release their updated plans that there is still some requirement for the user to positively acknowledge (or accept) some form of usage restriction, then unfortunately Firefox can no longer be classed as Free Software and undoubtedly removes itself from compliance with Freedom 0 “The freedom to run the program, for any purpose“.

If this transpires to be the case, then I personally think that Ubuntu must move Firefox from the “main” repository and replace their default browser with, either the unbranded (and Free) version of Firefox, or another alternative. Firefox can and almost certainly should still be available, but it surely must be moved to the “multiverse” repository which contains: Software restricted by copyright or legal issues.

If I understand the core problem correctly, it seems to me that the best solution is to, by default, disable the phising detection and other services which require end user consent, and to make the positive user acknowledgement simply part of the process of enabling these features, e.g. when you click the check box to turn on phising protection you must acknowledge the use terms at that stage. Not when you just start browsing the web. And, of course, for Linux users these “protection services” are of little or no benefit anyway.

Just perhaps; Wolfie’s goal of “The Glorious Day” is about to make a comeback…

Is Mozilla losing the plot? [Updated x2]

The creators and owners of the Open Source Firefox web browser seem to have ignited a bit of a war in the last few days.

In Ubuntu’s next development version (Intrepid Ibex) due for release next Month, Mozilla have demanded that for Ubuntu to continue to distribute Firefox, they must display an EULA.

This is the ONLY EULA I believe that is currently present in the “main” repository of Ubuntu and certainly the only one that a user would be required to accept in the default Ubuntu Desktop configuration as is currently supplied.

I like Firefox. It is a good browser. But I do not like having to accept an EULA that potentially restricts what I decide to do with this Free and Open Source software. And, if I am not mistaken, I think that this is actually a violation of the terms of the GPL under which most of the main Ubuntu distribution is supplied.

Ubuntu/Canonical does have a choice. It can compile it’s own version of Firefox and simply turn off the ac_add_options --enable-official-branding option. OK, it won’t be called Firefox any more but I suggest that users will either know and not care or not know and not care about the name change.

There is a rather long [and growing] set of comments associated to a BUG report on Launchpad. I’d recommend any and all Ubuntu Users to read and have their say – whatever that may be.

My personal opinion is that Ubuntu Ibex should ship with the Debian branded version of Firefox (called Iceweasel) for now and then take stock for future releases. They can always include true “Firefox” in their restricted repositories – but there is NO-WAY a peice of software requiring an EULA should be included in the default main repo.

Here is the EULA in all it’s gory detail [coloured emphasis mine]:

MOZILLA FIREFOX END-USER SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT

July 2008

A SOURCE CODE VERSION OF CERTAIN FIREFOX BROWSER FUNCTIONALITY THAT YOU MAY USE, MODIFY AND DISTRIBUTE IS AVAILABLE TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE FROM WWW.MOZILLA.ORG UNDER THE MOZILLA PUBLIC LICENSE and other open source software licenses.

The accompanying executable code version of Mozilla Firefox and related documentation (the “Product”) is made available to you under the terms of this MOZILLA FIREFOX END-USER SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT (THE “AGREEMENT”). BY USING THE MOZILLA FIREFOX BROWSER, YOU ARE CONSENTING TO BE BOUND BY THE AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS AGREEMENT, DO NOT USE THE MOZILLA FIREFOX BROWSER.

DURING THE MOZILLA FIREFOX INSTALLATION PROCESS, AND AT LATER TIMES, YOU MAY BE GIVEN THE OPTION OF INSTALLING ADDITIONAL COMPONENTS FROM THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE PROVIDERS. THE INSTALLATION AND USE OF THOSE THIRD-PARTY COMPONENTS MAY BE GOVERNED BY ADDITIONAL LICENSE AGREEMENTS.

1. LICENSE GRANT. The Mozilla Corporation grants you a non-exclusive license to use the executable code version of the Product. This Agreement will also govern any software upgrades provided by Mozilla that replace and/or supplement the original Product, unless such upgrades are accompanied by a separate license, in which case the terms of that license will govern.

2. TERMINATION. If you breach this Agreement your right to use the Product will terminate immediately and without notice, but all provisions of this Agreement except the License Grant (Paragraph 1) will survive termination and continue in effect.

3. PROPRIETARY RIGHTS. Portions of the Product are available in source code form under the terms of the Mozilla Public License and other open source licenses (collectively, “Open Source Licenses”) at http://www.mozilla.org/MPL. Nothing in this Agreement will be construed to limit any rights granted under the Open Source Licenses. Subject to the foregoing, Mozilla, for itself and on behalf of its licensors, hereby reserves all intellectual property rights in the Product, except for the rights expressly granted in this Agreement. You may not remove or alter any trademark, logo, copyright or other proprietary notice in or on the Product. This license does not grant you any right to use the trademarks, service marks or logos of Mozilla or its licensors.

4. PRIVACY POLICY. The Mozilla Firefox Privacy Policy is made available online at http://www.mozilla.com/legal/privacy/, as that policy may be changed from time to time. When Mozilla changes the policy in a material way a notice will be posted on the website at www.mozilla.com and the updated policy will be posted at the above link.

5. WEBSITE INFORMATION SERVICES. Mozilla and its contributors, licensors and partners work to provide the most accurate and up-to-date phishing and malware information. However, they cannot guarantee that this information is comprehensive and error-free: some risky sites may not be identified, and some safe sites may be identified in error.

6. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY. THE PRODUCT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITH ALL FAULTS. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, MOZILLA AND MOZILLA’S DISTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSORS HEREBY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES THAT THE PRODUCT IS FREE OF DEFECTS, MERCHANTABLE, FIT FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGING. YOU BEAR THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO SELECTING THE PRODUCT FOR YOUR PURPOSES AND AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PRODUCT. THIS LIMITATION WILL APPLY NOTWITHSTANDING THE FAILURE OF ESSENTIAL PURPOSE OF ANY REMEDY. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES, SO THIS DISCLAIMER MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

7. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. EXCEPT AS REQUIRED BY LAW, MOZILLA AND ITS DISTRIBUTORS, DIRECTORS, LICENSORS, CONTRIBUTORS AND AGENTS (COLLECTIVELY, THE “MOZILLA GROUP”) WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY RELATING TO THIS AGREEMENT OR THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE PRODUCT, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF GOODWILL, WORK STOPPAGE, LOST PROFITS, LOSS OF DATA, AND COMPUTER FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES AND REGARDLESS OF THE THEORY (CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE) UPON WHICH SUCH CLAIM IS BASED. THE MOZILLA GROUP’S COLLECTIVE LIABILITY UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF $500 (FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS) AND THE FEES PAID BY YOU UNDER THE LICENSE (IF ANY). SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR SPECIAL DAMAGES, SO THIS EXCLUSION AND LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

8. EXPORT CONTROLS. This license is subject to all applicable export restrictions. You must comply with all export and import laws and restrictions and regulations of any United States or foreign agency or authority relating to the Product and its use.

9. U.S. GOVERNMENT END-USERS. This Product is a “commercial item,” as that term is defined in 48 C.F.R. 2.101, consisting of “commercial computer software” and “commercial computer software documentation,” as such terms are used in 48 C.F.R. 12.212 (Sept. 1995) and 48 C.F.R. 227.7202 (June 1995). Consistent with 48 C.F.R. 12.212, 48 C.F.R. 27.405(b)(2) (June 1998) and 48 C.F.R. 227.7202, all U.S. Government End Users acquire the Product with only those rights as set forth therein.

10. MISCELLANEOUS. (a)This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between Mozilla and you concerning the subject matter hereof, and it may only be modified by a written amendment signed by an authorized executive of Mozilla. (b) Except to the extent applicable law, if any, provides otherwise, this Agreement will be governed by the laws of the state of California, U.S.A., excluding its conflict of law provisions. (c) This Agreement will not be governed by the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. (d) If any part of this Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable, that part will be construed to reflect the parties’ original intent, and the remaining portions will remain in full force and effect. (e) A waiver by either party of any term or condition of this Agreement or any breach thereof, in any one instance, will not waive such term or condition or any subsequent breach thereof. (f) Except as required by law, the controlling language of this Agreement is English. (g) You may assign your rights under this Agreement to any party that consents to, and agrees to be bound by, its terms; the Mozilla Corporation may assign its rights under this Agreement without condition. (h) This Agreement will be binding upon and inure to the benefit of the parties, their successors and permitted assigns.

What a mouthful. I’m sure that even the legal team at Microshaft would be proud of it!

I highlighted a couple of areas that I think I understand…

BY USING THE MOZILLA FIREFOX BROWSER, YOU ARE CONSENTING TO BE BOUND BY THE AGREEMENT.

When I read this EULA after a routine update to Ibex on Saturday, it just appeared to me in a tab of Firefox next time I restarted. If you are using Ibex and you missed it last time round, just start Firefox from a terminal thus: firefox -ProfileManager, create a new profile, and you should get it again. My understanding of the quote above is that as I am now reading the contents of the EULA in Firefox I have, without my express consent, actually agreed to this garbage.

You must comply with all export and import laws and restrictions and regulations of any United States or foreign agency or authority relating to the Product and its use.

Hang on. I’m an end user. WTF have export and import laws got to do with me? And how on earth am I supposed to be aware of and understand “all export and import laws and restrictions and regulations of any United States or foreign agency or authority“. That’s a pretty bloody tall order by my understanding.

I’m sorry Mozilla, but this just stinks!
And OH YES. WHY DO YOU HAVE TO SHOUT IT ALL TOO?

Update 2: Mitch Baker has just posted a blog entry. Basically it sounds like they fscked up but haven’t worked out a fix – yet.

Firefox 3 Download Day: World Record?

Well, it looks like Mozilla have got their record…

Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, we got more than 8 million Firefox 3 downloads in 24 hours. That’s more Firefox downloads than we’ve ever had in a single day — an impressive feat indeed!

Please be patient while the good people of Guinness review our World Record attempt. This might take a few days so please check back here. And, a huge thanks for all of your support!

Looking on the map; France, Spain and the UK managed around 300,000 downloads each, Germany nearly 700,000, China came in with just 175k somewhat surprisingly and Russia even less at 110k (more copies were downloaded from Holland). Amazingly Iran recorded 260,000 (what gives there then? Anyone got any clues?) along with Italy at a similar figure and the USA dwarfed all others with a massive total of over 2.5million.

I guess the counts are indicative rather than completely accurate but it’s an interesting map and think it’s pretty awesome that more than 8million copies of Firefox 3 got delivered, for free, in just 24hrs. Congratulation to Mozilla and to the Open Source community. Now we should all go and get hammered on Wine which, after approx. 15 years, was finally released as a 1.0 product on the 17th June.

PS – The Mozilla counter is still counting BTW so I wonder how long before it reaches 10m? Tomorrow morning perhaps…

[Update: Yep. It's 06:18 here in the UK and their counter is already over 10m by a hundred thousand or so]