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Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#161

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

kevingadd wrote: post #140
kazinator wrote: post #134

> Mozilla can suspend or end anyone’s access to Firefox at any time for any reason, including if Mozilla decides not to offer Firefox anymore. On what planet is that free, open source? Can you imagine: "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) can suspend anyone's access to GNU Emacs at any time for any reason, including if the FSF decides not to offer GNU Emacs any more".

This likely refers to Firefox-the-product, not Firefox-the-open-source-project since there's no functional way to revoke your access to a mercurial checkout on your PC. It's not unprecedented to have an open source license with revocation or termination clauses, either. I recall seeing ones that basically say "If you file a patent suit around this open software, your rights to use it are gone".

> It's not unprecedented to have an open source license with revocation or termination clauses, either. I recall seeing ones that basically say "If you file a patent suit around this open software, your rights to use it are gone".

Trying to take back the license based on use of the software, however, would make it not "open source", since that would be use restriction.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#162

Post by kennysoona »

0x2a wrote: post #118
hellcow wrote: post #38

Since Mozilla removed all mention of not selling my data in a recent PR and seems hellbent on an ad-based future, I've deleted my Firefox account and moved to Librewolf across my devices, and I'll encourage everyone I know to do the same. It's a sad end to my literal decades of support for them.

I use a Firefox fork too, but do you think it would continue to be around without Mozilla? It's sad to see them squander an opportunity to do good work. Mozilla should have gone all-in on ethics/privacy in contrast to tech giants and made an offering like Proton. Or gone with the Wikipedia donate model like another commenter said. Any compromise on their values is insane mismanagement, that was their whole brand.

> I use a Firefox fork too

If not LibreWolf then what? The rest seem out of date or worse than Firefox in some way.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#163

Post by laszlokorte »

jcranmer wrote: post #154
userbinator wrote: post #151

The other WTF is here: Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations. Acceptable Use Policy links to https://www.mozilla.org/about/legal/acceptable-use/ which says "You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to[...]Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that…

> It's against the Terms of Use to use Firefox to... watch porn? Firefox isn't a Mozilla service. The Mozilla services are things like account sync, or the review tool they use.

So what about synced bookmarks?

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#164

Post by manquer »

jcranmer wrote: post #154
userbinator wrote: post #151

The other WTF is here: Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations. Acceptable Use Policy links to https://www.mozilla.org/about/legal/acceptable-use/ which says "You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to[...]Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that…

> It's against the Terms of Use to use Firefox to... watch porn? Firefox isn't a Mozilla service. The Mozilla services are things like account sync, or the review tool they use.

Mozilla VPN is a service Mozilla provides though. White-labelled Mullvad or not, it a contract between Mozilla and the user and therefore presumably covered by this terms of use.

I would say porn is probably in the top 3 if not number 1 use for VPNs

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#165

Post by anvuong »

Firefox performance has been trash for years, for many reasons. I still stick with it because it was included in my Ubuntu 8.04, which was the first OS I installed by myself, and more recently because of its stand regarding privacy. Now I might as well bite the bullet and move to Chrome or Edge, performance is much much better.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#166

Post by kbenson »

jcranmer wrote: post #152
kazinator wrote: post #134

> Mozilla can suspend or end anyone’s access to Firefox at any time for any reason, including if Mozilla decides not to offer Firefox anymore. On what planet is that free, open source? Can you imagine: "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) can suspend anyone's access to GNU Emacs at any time for any reason, including if the FSF decides not to offer GNU Emacs any more".

Judging from nearby wording, this is primarily geared towards the Firefox account stuff as opposed to the Firefox browser. (I'm not happy with Mozilla's decision to name everything Firefox, it makes things like this confusing.)

Yes, it seems like Mozilla has long had a problem of marketing getting in the way of communication. This keeps happening over and over gain. They make changes for marketing reasons, and then people are confused when they make policy changes because they've solidified their naming so much in the pursuit of brand recognition that their audience (rightly) is confused about what they're actually saying when they use that brand name to refer to a singular component of their offerings.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#168

Post by kennysoona »

noirscape wrote: post #92
zefalt wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Floorp may be what you're looking for. Pretty similar to native Firefox. https://floorp.app/

Oh interesting, I'll check it out. Searching around a bit, this fork does seem to meet the criteria I was looking for (plus a few hidden ones like project age; it's a couple years old and still being updated, which means the dev is willing to put the work in as opposed to abandoning it when they get bored). The blocker on widevine being Googles fault (while still supporting L3 out of the box) rather than deliberate "…

> The blocker on widevine being Googles fault (while still supporting L3 out of the box) rather than deliberate "we're not even going to try" is much more acceptable than the Librewolf one.

I don't know, I think not caving in to support some proprietary BS is pretty justifiable.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#169

Post by kevingadd »

userbinator wrote: post #151

The other WTF is here: Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations. Acceptable Use Policy links to https://www.mozilla.org/about/legal/acceptable-use/ which says "You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to[...]Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that…

Firefox-the-browser isn't a service, it's a product. Their services are things like profile syncing. It makes sense to me that they wouldn't want content on their servers that they could get in legal trouble for hosting.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#170

Post by chmod775 »

Title is a complete lie/misleading. They get a license, not ownership.

Let's dissect what it actually says, and we do it backwards, because given the discussion around this subject it seems like people space out or have their mind clouded by outrage before they get to the end of the sentence:

> help you [do things] as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

So this already only covers things that you indicate you want to do with your use of Firefox. Meaning that if you hit some button, Mozilla now has a license to process the data they need to make that button work and nothing more. That means unless you give them additional permission somewhere, they can't, for example, also store and process that information to train some AI model or whatever. All they're allowed to use it for is making whatever you interacted with work. Seems pretty reasonable.

> to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content

This further narrows the scope to websites and such you interact with (online content). It also says that license only covers "helping" you with these things. The part we looked at previously narrows this to your intent.

> you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license

So just a license. No transfer of ownership is happening.

> When you upload or input information through Firefox

Note that this says "through". They're clearly only trying to cover their butt as an intermediary by obtaining a license to process your information to act as such an intermediary. Explicitly nothing more.

Putting it back together we get:

> When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

Important part in cursive.

So broadly what is the license for?

> license [..] to help you [..] as you indicate

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