Re: GNOME Foundation and Mozilla Foundation join forces

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

In working with the Mozilla Foundation, we need to keep in mind that
the Firefox binaries released by the Mozilla foundation are non-free.
Originally this was true for two different reasons:

1. These binaries included the Talkback module for which
source was not released at all.  (Mozilla does not have the source
for this.)

2. The binaries carry an EULA which is rather unpleasant.

I heard that work was under way developing a free replacement for
Talkback.  I do not know where this work stands now.  In any case, we
need to be careful not to recommend the non-free Firefox binaries,
unless both problems have been solved.

This is why some GNU/Linux distros use IceWeasel, BurningDog or
IceCat instead of Firefox.  Since they build from sources
and do not include Talkback, they cannot call it Firefox.