Re: GNU IceCat 3.0

[Yavor Doganov]

On Tue, Jul 01, 2008 at 04:01:12PM -0500, Reed Loden wrote:
> If you do create such a patch, why just keep it only for IceCat?

I didn't mean to keep it only for IceCat.

> Please refrain from making such absurd comments

I fail to see what's absurd.  It is an exaggeration, no doubt, but OTOH
it is a well known fact that the majority of Firefox's users are Windows
users.

> It's stuff like this that makes people outside of GNU

Well, GNU users are not obedient sheep like the users of proprietary
systems and programs, so sometimes they express frustration.  Programs
should behave in a sane, expected ways, and having no possibility to
uninstall a program just makes it an arrogant one.  I don't recall a
case like this, so it's a shock for me.

And no, it is not "free software" in my book.  That is why the gnuzilla
project exists in the first place.  If Mozilla decides that it must be
entirely free software (+free plugins), then I bet this project would be
happily decommissioned.

> I personally never "install" firefox globally, considering I run
> nightly builds that change daily. I just run it directly from the
> dist directory. I think a lot of people this same exact thing, too.

This only proves my point; developers and firefox fanboys use the
nightly builds and others use `aptitude purge' or the equivalent. 
Those building and installing from source are left out in the cold.

> I looked through a lot of bug reports to see if I could find
> somebody reporting this issue, but I couldn't find anything, 

Thanks, this saves me a lot as I was planning to make this search in the
hope that someone already made "uninstall" work.

> so it's possible nobody ever told Mozilla this was a problem, and
> therefore, Mozilla wouldn't know that it needs to be fixed.

You don't get the point: The thing which is insulting for the mortal
user is that Mozilla never ever considered that the removal of the
application is an absolutely valid use case.

> Please don't assume Mozilla hates all free software people

I never assumed such a thing.  But I know for sure they care more about
popularity than the free software people.

> Mozilla takes problems from all three major platforms (Windows, Mac,
> and Linux) 

Our platform is GNU/Linux; Linux is just a bare kernel.