[gsnedders]

Note that having patches from upstream doesn't stop Mozilla from being willing to license the "Firefox" trademark — they will still license it provided they are happy with all the patches. The bigger issue in the Debian case is that while they could distribute a modified version as "Firefox" (under license), some downstream couldn't then take that, modify it, and still call it "Firefox".

[YokoZar]

Ubuntu, meanwhile, was willing to accept this tradeoff and distribute blessed Firefox, as Ubuntu also has trademarks that downstream modifiers (like Mint) need to remove.

It would be nice if it was easy to remove said trademarks by something as simple as uninstalling a package, however unfortunately most marks are spread throughout the archive.

[nitrogen]

I thought there used to be such a package called firefox-branding that would turn Firefox into IceWeasel if removed?

[YokoZar]

At some point, yes, but the Ubuntu marks are still spread throughout dozens of different packages.