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An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#61

Post by hajile »

mod50ack wrote: post #58
hajile wrote: post #26

In what countries is this FAQ (removed in their PR) not seen as a legally-binding contract with all current Firefox users? It seems like a very clear contractual obligation in the US. { "@type": "Question", "name": "Does Firefox sell your personal data?", 1 "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designe…

Contracts in the US require consideration. A promise made in exchange for nothing is not a contract because there's no consideration.

That contract is made in exchange for your willingness to use their product and your willingness to use Mozilla is what gets them big contracts from companies like Google.

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#62

Post by Silhouette »

ranger_danger wrote: post #29
Silhouette wrote: post #23

I'm sad and disappointed that simply charging a fair price in return for offering something of value - with no other strings attached - has become so out of fashion in tech world. Almost everyone running tech businesses seems to assume that subscriptions or data capitalism are the only way to make any money these days. But I have paid for good software in the past and I know plenty of indie developers who still sell…

I think if they believed there would be enough people to justify charging for the software to make that model work, they would do it. But I don't think it's actually viable, I think the number of people that would pay for firefox is much lower than you think. Consider how many other similarly popular software programs charge small fees for their app... I can't even think of a single one. And you can only really charg…

I don't expect a high proportion of people would pay for a browser. My point is that if you're starting at 200M users you don't need a high proportion. You just need a loyal core of fans who see enough value to play the "whale" role and prop up the rest. Given the kind of people that Firefox has traditionally appealed to in the first place I don't think that's an entirely unrealistic scenario.

As for other apps - for my own small development businesses we have spent a lot more than $10/user on all-day-every-day development tools like text editors and diff tools. Also on several other areas like graphics, business admin and communications. For a browser and related resources that we also use on a daily basis whenever we're working on web projects it would be a very quick decision.

I don't accept your premise about only charging for the binaries. You're not going after the people who would rip you off anyway with this model. You're going after the people who genuinely value your product and want to support its continued development. They're going to pay a modest amount without much thought just as we do for several of the software packages we use - despite almost all of them having free (but not necessarily as good in our opinion) competitors available.

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#63

Post by wtallis »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #54
WD-42 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually laughed out loud at this. “We can’t say we don’t sell your data because some places have definitions of “sell” that are legally difficult to interpret, for example”:

That was in California. Presumably, it's worded somewhat differently, and with different intent, elsewhere. 50 states, plus Federal laws, and all the other countries of the world and internal jurisdictions is how many possible variations? And before you say "Yeah, but they all mean mostly the same thing", remember it's lawyers we're dealing with, who will happily charge large sums of money arguing over misplaced punc…

California was the example they chose to provide. From this, we can reasonably infer that Mozilla does not have a better example handy to illustrate what's wrong with legal definitions around selling user's data. If their best example is completely unconvincing, we should remain unconvinced.

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#65

Post by wtallis »

eipi10_hn wrote: post #33
Shank wrote: post #14

> It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. I really struggle to understand what legal team believes this language is necessary in downloaded software. There is a lot of precedent for this kind of language in online hosted services, but not downloaded software. > This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that conte…

> not downloaded software Tbf, any softwares that send your input to an external (like browsers...) should disclose like this too. The thing that sends those data is your software, not you. Otherwise, after you click on the button "Purchase" with your credit card information, the only way to not grant your software the rights to send that information is you driving to the stores and give them your credit card by your…

The problem here is that Mozilla has used language that is what you'd expect if the browser is sending data to Mozilla; there's no need for such language if the browser is acting purely as a user agent and sending data to the address you put in the URL bar.

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#66

Post by ajdude »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44

Hard uninstall. Can’t believe I’m mainling Kagi’s Orion browser. Yet here we are.

I made the same decision earlier today. Migrating to Orion as we speak... It's frustrating because I've used Firefox since 2006 and have stuck by them and defended their decisions for decades. I still won't touch anything chrome-based, but Mozilla has sold out their customers and I cannot deal with that.

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#67

Post by diggernet »

> You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox.

You don't need a license for data you never see. When I use Firefox to type a comment on HN, that comment goes from me to HN. It doesn't go to Mozilla. Mozilla does not need a license. (And no, Firefox doesn't need a license either, because licenses are granted to people and organizations, not software.)

The only possible reason for Mozilla to need a license to the data I type into Firefox is if Mozilla intends to have Firefox send that data to them.

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#68

Post by inetknght »

Uvix wrote: post #31
Silhouette wrote: post #23

I'm sad and disappointed that simply charging a fair price in return for offering something of value - with no other strings attached - has become so out of fashion in tech world. Almost everyone running tech businesses seems to assume that subscriptions or data capitalism are the only way to make any money these days. But I have paid for good software in the past and I know plenty of indie developers who still sell…

Selling browsers was tried, back in the 90s. They lost to free, when the audience was much more limited. Trying to sell a browser now is an even weaker proposition to most users. I also think you're overselling how many devs would pay for their resources. Individual contractors? Sure. But anybody salaried? My employer's response wouldn't be "sure, we'll pay for MDN & Firefox dev tools for all our devs"; it'll be "go…

> Selling browsers was tried, back in the 90s. They lost to free, when the audience was much more limited. Trying to sell a browser now is an even weaker proposition to most users.

So was search.

Look at Kagi now.

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#69

Post by teovall »

nativeit wrote: post #48
MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really struggle to understand what legal team believes this language is necessary in downloaded software. Exactly. Even if nothing is changing at Mozilla, their legal team has invented a new interpretation of copyright law. That’s a huge deal from a legal perspective—Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc need to be rushing to add corresponding terms to their applications. Mozilla PR is dropping the ball completely by try…

Not for nothing, it is standard legal boilerplate. I just checked two randomly selected terms of service--one for ReadAI, the other for Google--and they both include a very similar clause with those exact parameters. That said, I'm not suggesting Mozilla isn't also being wildly hypocritical in their behavior, and hamfisted in their PR.

Both of your examples are cloud services, not software run locally on users' own hardware. If they intend the license to be limited to cloud services like Firefox Sync, then they should say so.

Re: An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox

#70

Post by chrismorgan »

tomxor wrote: post #43
move-on-by wrote: post #4

> The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or othe…

If they would simply tell us what part of Firefox is affected by the CCPA's definition of "selling user data", there would be no room for misinterpretation and this would be over. If it's as innocent as "Firefox has to send HTTP packets to arbitrary web servers to achieve the fundamental function of loading a page" and that web server is considered 3rd party by CCPA, then everyone would understand... this is either p…

From the article:

> In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar.

And remember, they’re citing CCPA’s definition as meaning “… in exchange for ‘monetary’ or ‘other valuable considerations’”. This is exactly what people mean by “selling”.

It’s not the innocent thing you’re contemplating, about a browser doing its job. It’s specifically about things like serving ads, making that browser “commercially viable”.

Mozilla is stopping claiming they’re never selling your data because they’ve been selling your data for the last few years.

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