A friend of mine has bougth ASPack and is allowing me to use it for my Programs and such. anyway, it can compress the Firefox Bins 50-60% more! i am thinking about releasing them, is this fine with your guys
New: Kanri (Oct 9, '24), Platform 29.5.3 (Jun 27, '24)
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I was Able to shave off some 5 megs from Firefox!
WARNING: computers with low amounts of ram (eg: 64megs) should not run this
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Please note that it is a violation of copyright/trademark law to distribute modified Mozilla Firefox binaries without the permission of Mozilla.
It is also a violation of the Mozilla Public License to combine MPL-licensed code with commercial code (as happens when you use ASPack to compress it). This would also apply to GPL-licensed programs.
I used to UPX compress Firefox (like I do with OpenOffice.org) but stopped due to the trademark policies and because it breaks partial updates. It takes Portable Firefox from 15.2MB to 7.4MB, shaving off nearly 8MB.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Now I'm just getting technical here, but there's no copyright issues involved, only trademark issues. The MPL, GPL, and LGPL all say you're free to distribute modified versions of covered programs. It's Mozilla's ridiculous trademark policies that get in the way.
Remember, copyright and trademark are two very different things. Don't let the shared "intellectual property" heading fool you. Cats, dogs, and humans are all mammals, but nobody mixes them up.
And yes, Mozilla's trademark policy is ridiculous. Unless they have no brain whatsoever, nobody is going to distribute a modified version of Firefox and claim Mozilla made it. Everybody wants credit for their work, so they're going to make it very clear that they modified it, anyway. The trademark policy is, therefore, redundant.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
You're combining the commercial wrapper code (the stubs and decompression routines ASPack uses) along with the MPLed code (Firefox.exe) into a single executable file. I'm not as familiar with the MPL but according to the GPL, that isn't kosher, and is a violation of the license. So, you couldn't use ASPack on a GPL or LGPL-licensed EXE or DLL and redistribute it.
With UPX, however, you can. UPX is GPLed and there is an exception for commercial software in their software license agreement: "As a special exception we grant the free usage of UPX for all executables, including commercial programs. See below for details and restrictions."
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
...that such an exception is redundant. You're free to do anything you want with your own copies of commercial software (even if you stick GPL code into a commercial binary, like with UPX) so long as you don't distribute it--that's free use, after all. However, try to distribute it (modified or not) and you're in violation of most, if not all, commercial EULAs. What's the point of such an exception?
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
If I'm a software publisher making a portable app, for instance, and using a commercial license, I can freely use UPX and not have to worry about opening up my app. It allows UPX to be used with software under just about any software license (within the terms of said license)... something ASPack, being closed source, can't do.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!