Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

931–940 of 1001 posts

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

#931

Post by spacechild1 »

spacechild1 wrote: post #802
bad_user wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments such as yours are missing the point. Mozilla's ToS applies for Firefox's use, and this is literally written by Mozilla themselves: “Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy” There's no distinction between the browser and Mozilla's online services here. --- And even if it were referring only to features such as “profile syncing” (and it doesn't refer only to that), does this mean that p…

How do you square this with the following: > Mozilla software is made available to you under the terms of the Mozilla Public License 2, a free software license, which gives you the right to run the program for any purpose, to study how it works, to give copies to your friends and to modify it to meet your needs better. There is no separate End User License Agreement (EULA). https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/e…

Ok, turns out there are separate ToS for the official binaries: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/

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

#932

Post by odo1242 »

TylerE wrote: post #919
thayne wrote: post #914

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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[ So the text of the policy itself limits its scope to Mozilla Services. But the purpose of that section is unclear to me. If it just means you have to comply with that policy when using features that use Mozilla services, why is that section necessary, since the license for the…

Is bookmark sync, say, a “Mozilla service”?

Yes

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

#933

Post by odo1242 »

perihelions wrote: post #349
kevingadd wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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," Yes, but aside from jokes[0] it's unprecedented for an OSS license to attempt to restrain the purposes for which end-users use software. That's incompatible with the definition of free software ("free", as in "freedom"). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSLint#License - "Before that, the JSLint license[4] was a derivati…

This is in the definition of open-source too. Software that restricts the purposes for which people use it isn’t free or open source.

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

#934

Post by odo1242 »

Digit-Al wrote: post #849
Zak wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the legal situation is different somewhere, but I would think the browser isn't acting at all. It has no agency; it's just software running on my computer, following instructions I give it. Mozilla has no agency in that situation either; the software is running on my computer, not theirs. The new terms grant Mozilla , the corporation a license to do things with my data.

My comments above are based on precedence when sites like Facebook added these clauses and people got all panicked thinking the company was going to start selling their content (rather than selling their souls /s). The mundane truth was that they needed the wording to make sure they were legally given the right to publish the content onto the web in the way they did. So people were assuming nefarious reasons when the…

I mean, Facebook did this so they could run research studies and AI on the data, not so they could publish it. You can give yourself the rights to publish something online for the purpose of running the service and give others the right to view it for personal use without giving yourself a full copyright license to do whatever you want with it.

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

#935

Post by odo1242 »

alt227 wrote: post #501
pmontra wrote: post #400

> When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information, Taken literally it means that when I use Firefox to upload a file to a customer's web site Mozilla is getting that file too, which does not seem likely. They could get a copy of the text I'm typing right now in Firefox or it means that the browser could do some local pro…

As the browser runs locally on our machine, surely its possible to just block firefox phoning home by DNS black holes or even hosts file or something?

If you’re planning this, just use a fork of Firefox that does those things. Less setup and you don’t need to update that file whenever they change the domains used for telemetry.

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

#936

Post by araes »

mariusmg wrote: post #596
sph wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my question: in light of what Mozilla is doing, why don't other forks like Waterfox or Librewolf write a manifesto/contract saying they'll never sell your user data and won't turn "evil" (until they do, of course), and then decide to offer a paid version of their browser. Two possible outcomes: 1. No one cares. No one pays for it. Nothing changes and nobody loses anything. 2. Enough people pay for it to keep t…

>So why isn't anyone trying to replace Mozilla yet, Because writing manifestos is easy and making a browser is proper hard work ?

And making a browser that's actually financially viable enough to pay for your time and effort without pissing off your user base because of paid features is even worse.

Especially in a crowded market, where we're arguing extensively about a browser that has 2.54% of the market share. Chrome (67%), Safari (18%), Edge (5.2%) [1]

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

Most of those also have a browser mostly as add-ons, bundling, ecosystem value, or trademark / brand name trojans.

Admittedly, if you're looking to make a browser, there's a lot of various prior attempts that remain in existence, yet have never really received that much attention. [2]

[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline...

Personal preference is that somebody would implement a scripting language alternative other than Javascript. Anybody heard of TCL lately? It's supposed to be a browser scripting language alternative according to the w3.org specification [3] Really, almost anything other than Javascript as an alternative. Just for some variety.

[3] https://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/scripts.html

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

#937

Post by immibis »

Aeolun wrote: post #537

It’s just sad that everything eventually comes to this. Is it an inevitable law that everything eventually enshittifies? Firefox has had a good run, but it still pisses me off.

Yes. Even biological cells do this. It is called cancer.

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

#938

Post by immibis »

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.

But it says "Your use of Firefox must follow [the terms of use for Mozilla services]"

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

#939

Post by err4nt »

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... :/

Personally I don't think it's about the money, I think it's about what they actually want to do. I think they like their plan and are happy with it.
Post reply on HN