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While I think the anger surrounding this is slightly overstated, is there any Desktop fork of Firefox that can essentially just act as a "we prevent Mozilla from doing anything harmful to it's users", while compromising on as little functionality as possible? There's only so many stories of Mozilla deliberately trying to reduce it's browser market share to zero you can put up with before you start looking elsewhere.…
There are valid criticisms to make of these ToS. However, if someone is going to stop using Firefox because of these new terms, I would assume that person is already not using any products or services from Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, etc. Seems pretty hypocritical otherwise.
The type of product/service matters here. We're talking about a browser here, with the name "User Agent" being popularized by Mozilla,for fuck's sake. I don't use Google or meta services. I do use apple's and Microsoft's OS, but last time I checked, neither of those required me to give a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to Microsoft or Apple for all the data that I input into their OS - even when it goes…
Mozilla was operating under a different set of expectations up to this point - they always made a big deal of protecting the user from bad actors, put privacy pretty front and center (in the sense of not selling your shit to data brokers/using it for advertising) and in general were fairly reliable on that. This dynamic seems to be shifting in a new direction that's closer to the other four mentioned companies and that's violating the trust they've build up over the years. It makes you wonder what Mozillas word is now worth and what it'll be worth in the future.
Hence why people are considering leaving; trust is a pretty major factor in that sort of decision. It arrives by foot (is hard to gain) but leaves by horse (is easy to lose).
Mozilla needs to learn that when you're an operation running honestly as a non-profit and no one's getting rich (comfortable != rich, btw), there's nothing wrong with the donate nag in a blank new tab. Wikipedia figured that out long ago. They probably wouldn't be around without that nag box asking for donations.
mozilla use paid labor, engineer who are very expensive. wikipedia it's mostly hosting a html page and a few media.
Yet wikipedia has much more user to whom it can show the donation nag when mozilla has a much more limited userbase.
i think that mozilla taking google money to put them as default search engine is fine, people who care about privacy are allowed to change it whenever they want.
Mozilla needs to learn that when you're an operation running honestly as a non-profit and no one's getting rich (comfortable != rich, btw), there's nothing wrong with the donate nag in a blank new tab. Wikipedia figured that out long ago. They probably wouldn't be around without that nag box asking for donations.
I would considering donating except I can't donate to support what I would like to support.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growt...
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/06/mozilla_foundation_la...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The terms do not mention being limited to uploading stuff to Mozilla.
Exactly, I agree. In fact they declare : "You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox, including processing data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice, as well as acting on your behalf to help you navigate the internet. 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,…
It does not mean that.
It means some lawyer is concerned that Mozilla is in possession of some kind of data that is subject to other regulatory claims in some country.
This could easily be trivial, benign, or wrong.
I'll be shocked if a clarification/correction is not issued within 24 hours.
And I'll be shocked if some portion of HN doesn't argue that the clarification is a coverup and now that we've seen the real Mozilla we can never trust them again and we should all use Chrome because if we're going to get eaten we should all be eaten by the same monster.
> You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox Wait, now Mozilla operates Firefox for me and I can just lean back while they do the browsing? https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/ > When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license Really the whole document looks like it was copy-pasted from some SaaS template. Does…
Sounds like a license to train on your data.
You see that here. Mozilla chose to use legalese and not plain language, despite there being a movement afoot to try to push (and in some cases legally require) for plain language in legal documents. This one isn't so bad, since they mostly avoid passive voice and don't needlessly capitalize much. Maybe the low frequency jargon is necessary but look at those center embeddings...
- you upload or input information through Firefox with your use of Firefox
- When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license with your use of Firefox
- When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information with your use of Firefox.
- 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 with your use of Firefox.
- 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.
First sentence establishes you input data into firefox when you use firefox (obviously, but maybe not to everyone!). Second clause establishes that when you input that data you give firefox a license to that data which you otherwise own (this could be more clear in a separate sentence). Third clause establishes that the license is to use the information (not to sell it). Fourth clause establishes that they will use it to help you navigate, experience and interact with online content. Fifth clause (as you indicate) establishes that it is your use of firefox that indicates your intention and how they should use your input to help you. As five separate sentences they could make it seem much more reasonable. The embeddings are instead ineffective because they aren't referring to a common category but instead modify an aspect of the former clause.
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001002772...
> UPDATE: We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox…
Uh, yeah, that's exactly the problem. Mozilla shouldn't be allowed to use all the information I type into Firefox at all. Mozilla doesn't need any rights for Firefox to process my data locally on my behalf, or even for Firefox to send my data to third parties on my behalf (ex. instant search suggestions). Those aren't Mozilla using my information; those are me using my information using Firefox.
They would only "need" extra rights to collect data and process it on their servers for unspecified purposes. They do legitimately process some data on their servers, such as Firefox Sync data, but that's already covered under the Mozilla account terms of service. There's no need for a broad license for all data going through Firefox.
[1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/fi...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is really unfortunate. My Firefox install lately added links to what could be considered not so nice sites for grandmas like amazon.com and hotels.com to the start screen. It is quite clear they see it as their program not mine program. I dunno for how long I will stick to using the least worst alternative. To go for custom builds would be giving up on Mozilla. edit: Toned down language
> scam sites like amazon.com Since when is Amazon a scam site ? I don't like em' either, but hyperbole doesn't help. For what it's worth, it can be removed in about 4 seconds.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is really unfortunate. My Firefox install lately added links to what could be considered not so nice sites for grandmas like amazon.com and hotels.com to the start screen. It is quite clear they see it as their program not mine program. I dunno for how long I will stick to using the least worst alternative. To go for custom builds would be giving up on Mozilla. edit: Toned down language
Yeah, it's annoying, but also nothing particularly new I believe. There seem to be two types of garbage links added by default: 1. "Sponsored shortcuts" that can be "easily" turned off in `about:preferences#home` 2. I guess "non-sponsored" shortcuts? I believe they pointed to Facebook, eBay, and something else (Pinterest maybe). Those have to be removed/"blocked" individually. I think they end up in `browser.newtabpa…
I have like 6 Firefox installs I need to do this on. And then they add the next thing to block in 2 years.
I think the old premade bookmarks are as far as you can go with these kind of things. Takes like 2s to remove and you know how instinctivly.