Mozilla Community Edition Policy
Version 0.8 (DRAFT)
Policy
A Community Edition is a version of Mozilla software that has some set of customizations beyond those normally allowed under the Mozilla Trademark Policy.
If an individual or organization is creating a Community Edition of Mozilla Firefox or Thunderbird, it must use the names "Firefox Community Edition" or "Thunderbird Community Edition" to identify this software. These names may be further qualified to identify the software (e.g. "Firefox Community Edition, French", "Thunderbird Community Edition, Joe's optimized AMD Opteron build", etc.). Localizers may also translate the words "Community Edition".
You may not prefix the name product with "Mozilla" (e.g. "Mozilla Firefox Community Edition" is not allowed.) nor use the official Firefox or Thunderbird logos to identify the software. You can, of course, still use the unofficial ones.
The following changes are permitted within Community Editions:
- Change certain preference settings
- Change the default start page
- Change both the structure and the contents of the default bookmarks and personal toolbar
- Change the default search engine and other search engines in the search engine pulldown box
- Include extensions that are also available through updates.mozilla.org
- Include plugins, provided they can legally do so
- Porting the software to different operating systems
- Custom builds created using options to configure
It is very important that Community Editions of Firefox and Thunderbird meet (or exceed) the quality level people have come to associate with Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. We need to ensure this, but we don't want to get in people's way. So, we are taking an optimistic approach.
Community members and organizations can start using the "Firefox Community Edition" and "Thunderbird Community Edition" trademarks from day one, but the Mozilla Foundation may require individuals or teams to stop doing so in the future if they are redistributing software with low quality and efforts to remedy the situation have not succeeded. Doing things this way allows us to give as much freedom to people as possible, while maintaining our trademarks as a mark of quality-- which we are required to do in order to keep them.
In particular, when making changes to preferences or adding in extensions or plug-ins, we recommend that localization teams contact the Mozilla Foundation in advance to discuss any quality concerns that may arise. Rigorous testing of the effects of these extensions and plug-ins is generally necessary to ensure high quality.
Please see the Mozilla Trademark Policy for more information and specifics on our policies.