It was reported yesterday that Dell is charging £16.25 for Mozilla Firefox Web Browser Installation Service, something that many have claimed is in violation of Mozilla’s trademark policy. Dell and Mozilla have come face to face on this and neither of the parties is willing to back out.
Mozilla cited texts in its trademark policy (reproduced here) said that there has been no agreement of this sort with Dell that would allow the PC maker to charge for the browser and that they are investigating the matter.
“If you are using the Mozilla Mark(s) for the unaltered binaries you are distributing, you may not charge for that product. By not charging, we mean the Mozilla product must be without cost and its distribution (whether by download or other media) may not be subject to a fee, or tied to subscribing to or purchasing a service, or the collection of personal information.”
“If you want to sell the product, you may do so, but you must call that product by another name—one unrelated to Mozilla or any of the Mozilla Marks. Remember that we do not want the public to be confused.”
Mozilla said in a statement: “Our trademark policy makes clear that this is not permitted and we are investigating this specific report.”
Dell on the other hand is claiming that it is not charging for the Firefox browser, but is charging a fee for the “time and labour involved for factory personnel to load a different image than is provided on the system’s standard configuration.”
The demand for £16.25 is still active on Dell site as of press time.
