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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

#481

Post by closewith »

drusepth wrote: post #457
rich_sasha wrote: post #382

It's all so strange. I would happily buy Firefox, either as a one off, or as an annual license, and be done with all the weird license nonsense - presumably they want to sell data to pay the bills. But instead the choice, realistically, seems to be between giving all my browsing data to Google and to Mozilla. And Chrome works marginally better... :/

I would wager most people that offer to buy software "one off" typically underestimate their lifetime worth earned through other means like ads and data sales. Would you pay a one-time $10 for a lifetime Firefox license? $100? $1,000? $10,000?

Last time I checked, Mozilla's ARPU was less than $5 pa. I think many of us would pay a multiple of that per annum _iff_ it went towards Firefox and not whatever project/cause of the week that Mozilla has undertaken.

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

#482

Post by walrus01 »

nico42 wrote: post #437

To Mozilla: if your intentions are indeed good as you claim in your post[1], then update the ToS accordingly. Chrome is removing µBlock origin, I and probably a lot of other users saw this as a good moment to promote Firefox to our relatives, you are missing a chance and alienating your user base here. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/fi...

Based on this, Firefox has a 2.54% market share of browsers worldwide, so if their goal here is to shoot themselves in the foot and get that number under 2%, mission accomplished.

Firefox is still the lesser of two evils when compared to Chrome with all of its telemetry turned on. And at least it supports a proper implementation of uBlock origin, which Google just broke in Chrome.

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

previous discussion from mid 2023 on low firefox market share: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36759162

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

#483

Post by BSDobelix »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #193
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…

> 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. So basically they can track everything I upload or type on my keyboard while in Firefox?

Yes they can and will, they are a add company now, the money from google will stop flowing so they do everything to make money with your data.

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

#485

Post by Propelloni »

ac130kz wrote: post #458
KoftaBob wrote: post #447

Time to switch: https://librewolf.net/

They made too many decisions on their own to be a 1:1 replacement. I think there needs to be a new fork, which would just remove all of the spyware bits.

If you think Librewolf is too opinionated, try Waterfox [1]

[1] https://github.com/BrowserWorks/Waterfox

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

#487

Post by jchw »

MrAlex94 wrote: post #450

I might have differed with Brendan Eich on a few matters, but he was a good steward of Firefox in my book. When Mitchell Baker took the reins, Mozilla became rather more heavy-handed towards us - the irony being that Waterfox was once proudly displayed on the Mozilla website under their "Powered By" banner. I appreciate the constant existential wobble Firefox faces, but they've made some peculiar decisions as of late…

Most of the other "forks" (e.g. Librewolf) are just patches on top of vanilla Firefox sources, so it's really not a whole lot to scrutinize by hand. I've skimmed at least most of the patch files personally just out of curiosity. In my distro of choice, NixOS, the sources are built by Hydra or my local machine, so I'm not trusting that their binaries match the source either.

That makes it a bit easier to trust, but it does run into the issue that it stops working if Mozilla hits a certain level of untrustworthiness.

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

#490

Post by mafuy »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #438
c0l0 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No better place to leave for" seems an apt way to put it. I think/fear that in the long run, there will be fewer and fewer ways to participate in activities and communities on the web on your own terms, as only a vetted, allowlisted set of client builds (that may be "open source" on the tin, but by that point it is effectively meaningless) will be able to pass CDN "anti-abuse" restrictions. It will not be a better w…

> No better place to leave for This is an amazingly common psychological trap. You wouldn't believe the number of people, men as well as women, who end up in the therapy chair, at the police station or at the hospital A&E, because they are "stuck" with a violent and abusive partner. The modern tech landscape is all about abuse. People use fancy names for it like "enshitification" or "rot economy" - but at the end of…

This is a poor analogy. There are thousands of people to meet and bond with, so you do have a choice. But there are less than a handful of fundamentally different browsers.

Derivative browsers don't really count here, as they depend on the upstream to not hurt them. For instance, if the parent project completely removes something essential for privacy, it it a lot of work to keep it in your code. The Manifest v2 removal is an example. Over time, when other changes are built on the removal, this creates an increasingly high burden. Eventually, the child project is starved. You simply do not want to be in this position.

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