Yes, they just decided to protect their brand through a trademark, something completely uncovered by free/open-source software licenses afaik (ianal).

They should have done what Google did with Chrome: have an open source version with a different name (Chromium). This way they could enforce their Firefox trademark and allow anyone to distribute software based on the same code with a similar yet unencumbered name.

For what its worth, “Iceweasel” is perhaps the *least* appealing name in software history. “Puss Filled Blister Browser” is almost as appealing.

I wonder if the maintainers behind Iceweasel had picked a better name distros would have used it and we could forget these ridiculous accusations of non-freeness.