GNU IceCat
Encyclopedia
GNU IceCat, formerly known as GNU IceWeasel, is a free software
rebranding of the Mozilla Firefox
web browser
distributed by the GNU Project
. It is compatible with both the GNU/Linux and Mac OS X
(10.4 and 10.5) operating system
s.
The GNU Project keeps IceCat in synchronization with upstream development of Firefox while removing all trademark
ed artwork. It also maintains a large list of free software plugins and add-ons. In addition, it features a few security features not found in the mainline Firefox browser.
, also known as web bugs (This feature is available in Firefox 1.0, 1.5, and 3.0, but the UI option was absent on 2.0). GNU IceCat also provides warnings for URL redirection
.
In version 3.0.2-g1, the certificate of CAcert.org
, a certificate authority
, has been added to the list of trusted root certificates. Concern about that decision has been raised in a discussion on the savannah-hackers-public mailing list.
s supplied by Mozilla, fall within the stated guidelines, or else have special permission, they must compile
the Firefox source with a compile-time option enabled that creates binaries without the official branding of Firefox and related artwork, using either the built-in free artwork, or artwork provided at compile time.
This policy led to a long debate within the Debian Project in 2004 and 2005. During this debate, the name "Iceweasel" was coined to refer to rebranded versions of Firefox. The first known use of the name in this context is by Nathanael Nerode, in reply to Eric Dorland's suggestion of "Icerabbit". It was intended as a parody of "Firefox." Iceweasel was subsequently used as the example name for a rebranded Firefox in the Mozilla Trademark Policy, and became the most commonly used name for a hypothetical rebranded version of Firefox. By January 1, 2005, rebranding was being referred to as the "Iceweasel route".
The term "ice weasel" appeared earlier in a line which Matt Groening
fictionally attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche
: "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
Debian was originally given permission to use the trademarks, and adopted the Firefox name. However, because the artwork in Firefox has a proprietary copyright license which is not compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines
, the substituted logo had to remain. In 2006, Mozilla withdrew their permission for Debian to use the Firefox name due to significant changes to the browser that Mozilla deemed outside the boundaries of its policy, changes which Debian felt were important enough to keep, and Iceweasel was revived in its place.
On 23 September 2007, one of the developers announced that the name would be changed to GNU IceCat from IceWeasel (which a year earlier before Debian's own fork was just Iceweasel, note different capitalisation) in the next release. This was to avoid confusion with Debian
's separately maintained, unrelated rebranding of Firefox. The name change took place as planned and IceCat is the current name.
for 2008 to improve GNU IceCat.
These included:
The proposal to port IceCat to the Firefox 3 codebase was accepted and completed by Giuseppe Scrivano.
project adopted the GNU IceWeasel name for a rebranded distribution of Firefox that made no references to nonfree plugins.
The first known Gnuzilla Iceweasel release (then with a lower-case w) was based on the 1.5.0.4 version of Firefox. There was no release based on Firefox 1.5.0.5 or 1.5.0.6.
Releases usually keep up to date with the Mozilla Firefox source code.
and PowerPC
architectures. Both binaries and source are available, though the current build is available only for GNU/Linux.
IceCat is also available for Mac OS X 10.4 & 10.5. Any Mac user with these versions of Mac OS X can install IceCat through Fink
.
For the Mac, it is available for both IA-32
& PowerPC
architectures.
/GPL
/LGPL
tri-license that Mozilla uses for source code. Unlike Mozilla, IceCat's default icons are under the same tri-license.
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
rebranding of the Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
distributed by the GNU Project
GNU Project
The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27, 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated GNU operating system development in January, 1984...
. It is compatible with both the GNU/Linux and Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
(10.4 and 10.5) operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s.
The GNU Project keeps IceCat in synchronization with upstream development of Firefox while removing all trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
ed artwork. It also maintains a large list of free software plugins and add-ons. In addition, it features a few security features not found in the mainline Firefox browser.
Additional privacy and security features
IceCat includes additional privacy and security features, such as the option to block third party zero-length image files resulting in third party cookieHTTP cookie
A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is used for an origin website to send state information to a user's browser and for the browser to return the state information to the origin site...
, also known as web bugs (This feature is available in Firefox 1.0, 1.5, and 3.0, but the UI option was absent on 2.0). GNU IceCat also provides warnings for URL redirection
URL redirection
URL redirection, also called URL forwarding and the very similar technique domain redirection also called domain forwarding, are techniques on the World Wide Web for making a web page available under many URLs.- Similar domain names :...
.
In version 3.0.2-g1, the certificate of CAcert.org
CAcert.org
CAcert.org is a community-driven certificate authority that issues free public key certificates to the public...
, a certificate authority
Certificate authority
In cryptography, a certificate authority, or certification authority, is an entity that issues digital certificates. The digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate...
, has been added to the list of trusted root certificates. Concern about that decision has been raised in a discussion on the savannah-hackers-public mailing list.
Origins of the name
The Mozilla Corporation owns trademark to the Firefox name and denies the use of the name "Firefox" to unofficial builds that fall outside certain guidelines. Unless distributions use the binary fileBinary file
A binary file is a computer file which may contain any type of data, encoded in binary form for computer storage and processing purposes; for example, computer document files containing formatted text...
s supplied by Mozilla, fall within the stated guidelines, or else have special permission, they must compile
Compiler
A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
the Firefox source with a compile-time option enabled that creates binaries without the official branding of Firefox and related artwork, using either the built-in free artwork, or artwork provided at compile time.
This policy led to a long debate within the Debian Project in 2004 and 2005. During this debate, the name "Iceweasel" was coined to refer to rebranded versions of Firefox. The first known use of the name in this context is by Nathanael Nerode, in reply to Eric Dorland's suggestion of "Icerabbit". It was intended as a parody of "Firefox." Iceweasel was subsequently used as the example name for a rebranded Firefox in the Mozilla Trademark Policy, and became the most commonly used name for a hypothetical rebranded version of Firefox. By January 1, 2005, rebranding was being referred to as the "Iceweasel route".
The term "ice weasel" appeared earlier in a line which Matt Groening
Matt Groening
Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....
fictionally attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
: "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
Debian was originally given permission to use the trademarks, and adopted the Firefox name. However, because the artwork in Firefox has a proprietary copyright license which is not compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines
Debian Free Software Guidelines
The Debian Free Software Guidelines is a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is a free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in Debian...
, the substituted logo had to remain. In 2006, Mozilla withdrew their permission for Debian to use the Firefox name due to significant changes to the browser that Mozilla deemed outside the boundaries of its policy, changes which Debian felt were important enough to keep, and Iceweasel was revived in its place.
On 23 September 2007, one of the developers announced that the name would be changed to GNU IceCat from IceWeasel (which a year earlier before Debian's own fork was just Iceweasel, note different capitalisation) in the next release. This was to avoid confusion with Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
's separately maintained, unrelated rebranding of Firefox. The name change took place as planned and IceCat is the current name.
Google Summer of Code 2008
There were some suggestions made for the Google Summer of CodeGoogle Summer of Code
The Google Summer of Code is an annual program, first held from May to August 2005, in which Google awards stipends to hundreds of students who successfully complete a requested free or open-source software coding project during the summer...
for 2008 to improve GNU IceCat.
These included:
- Porting IceCat to the Firefox 3Mozilla Firefox 3Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is a version of the Firefox web browser released on June 17, 2008 by the Mozilla Corporation.Firefox 3.0 uses version 1.9 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. This version fixes many bugs, improves standard compliance, and implements many new web APIs compared to...
codebase - More support for free plugins such as GnashGnashGnash is a media player for playing SWF files. Gnash is available both as a standalone player for desktop computers and embedded device, as well as a plugin for several browsers. It is part of the GNU Project and is a Free and open-source alternative to Adobe Flash Player...
- Privacy features changes
The proposal to port IceCat to the Firefox 3 codebase was accepted and completed by Giuseppe Scrivano.
Releases
In August 2005, the GnuzillaGnuzilla
Gnuzilla, or GNUzilla, is a derivative of the Mozilla Application Suite created by the GNU Project as an attempt to be entirely free software. The reasons being that while the Mozilla project produces free and open software, the binaries released included additional non-free software in the form of...
project adopted the GNU IceWeasel name for a rebranded distribution of Firefox that made no references to nonfree plugins.
The first known Gnuzilla Iceweasel release (then with a lower-case w) was based on the 1.5.0.4 version of Firefox. There was no release based on Firefox 1.5.0.5 or 1.5.0.6.
- GNU IceCat 2 (Version was 2.0.0.11-g1, released January 12 2008)
- GNU IceCat 3 (July 23, 2008)
- GNU IceCat 4 (April 10, 2011)
- GNU IceCat 5 (June 27, 2011)
- GNU IceCat 6 (August 18, 2011)
- GNU IceCat 7 (October 2, 2011)
Releases usually keep up to date with the Mozilla Firefox source code.
Distribution
GNU IceCat is available as a free download for the IA-32IA-32
IA-32 , also known as x86-32, i386 or x86, is the CISC instruction-set architecture of Intel's most commercially successful microprocessors, and was first implemented in the Intel 80386 as a 32-bit extension of x86 architecture...
and PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
architectures. Both binaries and source are available, though the current build is available only for GNU/Linux.
IceCat is also available for Mac OS X 10.4 & 10.5. Any Mac user with these versions of Mac OS X can install IceCat through Fink
Fink
The Fink project is an effort to port and package open-source Unix programs to Mac OS X. Fink uses dpkg and APT , as well as its own frontend program, fink ....
.
For the Mac, it is available for both IA-32
IA-32
IA-32 , also known as x86-32, i386 or x86, is the CISC instruction-set architecture of Intel's most commercially successful microprocessors, and was first implemented in the Intel 80386 as a 32-bit extension of x86 architecture...
& PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
architectures.
Licensing
Gnuzilla is available under the MPLMozilla Public License
The Mozilla Public License is a free and open source software license. Version 1.0 was developed by Mitchell Baker when she worked as a lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation and version 1.1 at the Mozilla Foundation...
/GPL
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
/LGPL
GNU Lesser General Public License
The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
tri-license that Mozilla uses for source code. Unlike Mozilla, IceCat's default icons are under the same tri-license.
See also
- Comparison of web browsersComparison of web browsersThe following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browsers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information.-Historical web browsers:...
- GNUzillaGnuzillaGnuzilla, or GNUzilla, is a derivative of the Mozilla Application Suite created by the GNU Project as an attempt to be entirely free software. The reasons being that while the Mozilla project produces free and open software, the binaries released included additional non-free software in the form of...
- History of Mozilla FirefoxHistory of Mozilla FirefoxThe Mozilla Firefox project was created by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project. Firefox 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004. Firefox 1.5 was released on November 29, 2005. Version 2.0 was released on October 24, 2006...
- Mozilla FirefoxMozilla FirefoxMozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
- Mozilla Corporation software rebranded by the Debian project
External links
- GNU.org, Homepage of Gnuzilla and IceCat
- GNUzilla-watcher.blogspot.com, GNUzilla Watcher - GNUzilla and IceCat blog
- PDB.Finkproject.org, IceCat in Fink Package Database