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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

#201

Post by gunian »

Spivak wrote: post #181
Mistletoe wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are under an attack by Puritanism that is quite astounding actually. And no one is doing anything. Everyone just keeps bending the knee. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1hqqpbt/newest_ver... Some of the things that are happening are just from the threat of “something bad might come down from the new administration”. It’s so ridiculous.

It's gonna be a weird few years that's for sure. I'll leave it to the historians to decide when the actual tipping point was but the shift in the GOP from being run by Republicans with a few bones thrown to Conservatives every now and again when it's time to drum up votes to the show now being run by Conservatives is going to be the point between two political eras. It's by far not the first time this has happened bu…

wait till you unlock 1984 esque reality they are beta testing on us rn

when you see slavery is still very alive im sure this will seem like just a playful moment

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

#202

Post by jltsiren »

Spivak wrote: post #181
Mistletoe wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are under an attack by Puritanism that is quite astounding actually. And no one is doing anything. Everyone just keeps bending the knee. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1hqqpbt/newest_ver... Some of the things that are happening are just from the threat of “something bad might come down from the new administration”. It’s so ridiculous.

It's gonna be a weird few years that's for sure. I'll leave it to the historians to decide when the actual tipping point was but the shift in the GOP from being run by Republicans with a few bones thrown to Conservatives every now and again when it's time to drum up votes to the show now being run by Conservatives is going to be the point between two political eras. It's by far not the first time this has happened bu…

I'd say it was the decline and fall of the Soviet block. Without the external pressure to remain competitive, the balance shifted from realism towards ideology.

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

#203

Post by anonym29 »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #174
anvuong wrote: post #165

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.

There's Chromium

There's chromium, and then, for those who take their privacy more seriously than the average VPN customer that just wants to do piracy, there's ungoogled-chromium.

It's like chromium, just without feeding heaps of your personally-identifying metadata directly to Google, who give it directly to the NSA, who give it directly to Elon Musk and DOGE.

Remember, ALL mass surveillance by ALL intelligence agencies is ALWAYS a threat to your freedom, because you don't get to revoke it. You weren't consenting to sharing your information with the Obama administration, you were consenting to sharing your information with all future administrations, no matter how far removed from your own worldview those future administrations may be.

There is one solution. We the people demand an end to ALL government surveillance as well as severe legal consequences for all US government employees who ever helped build such systems, even if they were "just following orders", because neither following orders nor ignorance of the larger picture is an excuse for facilitating moral atrocities.

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

#204

Post by themaninthedark »

czk wrote: post #144

Is there a “brave” browser that uses Firefox?

IceCat, maybe?

I too am looking for alternatives.

Official site: https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/

Binary build available here but not official:

https://icecatbrowser.org/index.html

edit:

I linked to a non-official site first, added the official site and made clear that the site offering binarys is non-official.

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

#205

Post by fc417fc802 »

GrantMoyer wrote: post #75

Firefox's own about:license page (reachable through the about firefox dialog) says the sources are available under a wide variety of open source licenses. Does that mean only Mozilla distributed binaries are governed by the "Firefox Terms of Use"? If I download Firefox through my distro package manager, and the distro infrastructure compiled and distributed it undet the terms of the open source licenses, presumably I…

> Does that mean only Mozilla distributed binaries are governed by the "Firefox Terms of Use"?

It means that usage of binaries is governed by the terms set by whoever produces and distributes them.

If your distro leaves the "Firefox Terms of Use" notice intact then I imagine it would be in force. The only exception that immediately comes to mind would be if the distro explicitly relicensed Firefox under the GPL (I'm not clear if this is permitted or not) in which case the GPL explicitly invalidates any such additional restrictions.

If your distro provides a binary that includes inaccurate, conflicting, or otherwise problematic terms, such as (ex) on the about:license page, then that would be on them, not on Mozilla.

If your distro removes or modifies the license terms permitting Mozilla to collect data but forgets to modify the data collection code itself, I'm not sure who is at fault. Presumably the distro maintainers. However, given that the entire thing is very clearly without warranty I doubt that you'd have any recourse. In any case I don't think Mozilla would be breaking any rules since they neither compiled nor distributed the binary in question.

Off topic, but one minor issue I noticed is that the about:license page doesn't seem to include either a link to or a copy of the GPLv3 despite the fact that the LGPLv3 states:

> c) For a Combined Work that displays copyright notices during execution, include the copyright notice for the Library among these notices, as well as a reference directing the user to the copies of the GNU GPL and this license document.

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

#206

Post by mmooss »

chmod775 wrote: post #170

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…

Do you have expertise, for example as an IP attorney? I don't meant to disqualify what you say; at the same time people would benefit from knowing what your analysis comes from.

I am not an expert in this field, and I think the meaning is ambiguous. It could be interpreted as you say; it could be interpreted otherwise.

Mozilla's current intent isn't relevant to what they do later or its legality or enforceablility.

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

#207

Post by wongarsu »

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.)

If that was the intention, the correct term would have been "Mozilla's services". The very first sentence of that document defines Firefox: "Firefox is free and open source web browser software".

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

#208

Post by jcranmer »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #197
chmod775 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they cannot. You're replying to a comment where I've broken the sentence down into smaller parts. It's the best I can do.

How is "to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content" different from "to do anything we want with it"?

My guess is the first phrase is lawyer-brain for "we send the words you typed in the search bar to the search engine for you."

(Yes, they need your express permission to do that, because copyright law is really fucking dumb and makes absolutely no sense if you're approaching it from engineer-brain.)

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

#210

Post by mmooss »

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.

> Firefox isn't a Mozilla service.

They might clarify that in the agreement. I doubt many people are intimately familiar with Mozilla, Firefox, 'services', etc. to distinguish. I am and I didn't think of it in a brief reading (which is all I have time for).

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