Saw two things while reading about Netscape on the web today. The first gem is from CNET:
Netscape lets the user customize his settings for individual pages–telling the browser, for example, to remember that he trusts a particular site. The user can also select Firefox or Internet Explorer as a backup browser, in case the site doesn’t render properly in Netscape.
It looks like CNET is a tad confused about how many rendering engines Netscape supports, and how Netscape uses them only as rendering engines, rather than full browsers. More interesting is the screenshot that they show, which gives users the option to render the page in “Firefox”, and also uses Firefox’s trademarked icon. Furthermore, Netscape’s release notes say:
The Netscape Browser
Version 8.0 - based on Firefox
The Mozilla Foundation’s trademark policy has this to say about the usage of its trademarks:
Those taking full advantage of the open-source nature of Mozilla’s products and making significant functional changes may not redistribute the fruits of their labor under any Mozilla trademark. For example, it would be inappropriate for them to say “based on Mozilla Firefox”.
It would seem that unless the Mozilla Foundation has granted express permission to Netscape for using the Firefox trademark in its software, Netscape is in violation of Mozilla’s trademark policy.
