Does it? How much other OSS has a Terms of Use? I can understand it for firefox services like accounts, but for just using the browser I don't see how this makes sense.
There is no need for a ToS unless your software has privacy issues because you are spying on users without their 100% informed consent. There is a lot of software that does though.
>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, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.
Genuinely asking : Who is behind librewolf and why should i trust them? They don't seem to be available in any official repos yet other than ones they self-published
They also have links to join other community spaces so you can probably ask them yourself.
> They don't seem to be available in any official repos yet other than ones they self-published
The only official repos are the ones which the community decides are so. https://codeberg.org/librewolf They've been around long enough that if they're not on github (for example), it's probably intentional. (One can imagine why this particular community might prefer to avoid directing people to Microsoft-owned github.)
I'm not sure what you think of as "official", but it's been in nixpkgs for years at least. You can also take a look at what it's doing. The librewolf repo itself is basically a collection of generally small patches. Mostly you've got patches to change branding and remove antifeatures, plus fixes like preventing pages from detecting you've opened devtools and enabling JXL support.
I'll admit to being utterly confused by literally the first part, even before the emphasis. What follows is nitpicky, but I'd imagine every word is there for a reason. What does "operate" really mean in this context?
Mozilla(the corporate entity) is operating(=controlling?) Firefox(the software) on my machine?
Mozilla(the corporate entity) is operating Firefox(whatever corporate subdivision on their side) to further my interests as a user (gather telemetry, error reports, "privacy preserving" data about me)? In that case, does "acting on your behalf" mean that the corporate entity is browsing on my behalf? Can I download all the Metallica mp3s using Firefox and forward all happiness letters to Mozilla since they were acting on my behalf? (I know, I know, "You Are Responsible..." section disagrees with my take)
And that's before approaching the can of worms of granting a license which I may or may not be able to do depending on the original license.
> Mozilla collects certain data, like technical and settings data, to provide the core functionality of the Firefox browser and associated services, distinguish your device from others [...]
So we are granting them worldwide royalty-free licence to identify us uniquely and transfer that info to others.
Not the best privacy protection or control, and yet they claim "At Mozilla, we believe that privacy is fundamental"
This is bonkers, utter insanity. Read defensively (which is the only safe way to read legal text), this renders Firefox unsuitable for any sensitive communication: prima facie, accepting this means I violate FERPA when I talk to my students via email through Firefox. Most likely health professionals would violate HIPAA by using Firefox in a similar manner. Furthermore, this has to violate at least the spirit of GDPR in the EU where I am located.
What is this absolute clusterfuck? No, I do not consent to any of that. Which, if any, update, informed me of this change in policy? And how on earth do my data, and which data, pass through Mozilla's servers?
Have to see what other people (serious people) make of it, but that looks like a deal breaker. That's 100% spying on everything I do, because FF has a copy of it.
"Input information" on the face of it can be taken to mean moving the pointer, clicking, scrolling.
Can someone please explain why they'd need that? Sure, if Firefox sends the data to Mozilla, I can see why they'd might need that type of language. It's just that Firefox is a desktop application, why would it need to send my input to anyone besides the site I'm using?
> 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.
I'm no expert, but this seems to imply that if your government bans accessing the internet (for you, for a subset of people, or for everyone), using Firefox through a VPN is unacceptable to Mozilla? Why would Mozilla proactively side with autocrats?
The "acceptable use" policy they are talking about ( https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/ ) lists heinous actions such as to "send unsolicited communication" and to "display ... content that includes graphic depictions of ... violence". Is Mozilla targeting journalists here?
I sometimes suspect that there is a strong correlation between the effortlessness with which an organisation receives funding and how out of touch it is with reality.
> Firefox also shares information with our marketing partners to measure and improve these campaigns; what information is specifically shared varies (depending on how you discovered Firefox and your operating system) but generally includes how you were referred to our download page and whether you actively use Firefox. Where Firefox is pre-installed on your device, technical and interaction data (your device type and whether Firefox is used) will be sent to our marketing partners, and shared with Mozilla. Learn more about what is collected and shared, and how to opt out.
This is new (There's no link or further reference for that "learn more" in context)
> We may also be required to process your personal data to comply with applicable laws and protection purposes, such as:
> (...)
> Identifying, investigating and addressing potential fraudulent activities, or other harmful activities such as illegal activities, cyberattacks or intellectual property infringement (including filing or defending legal claims).
> Performing internal compliance and security activities, such as audits and enterprise security management.
---
Being US, how far stretch is it to imagine PII being under scope for some anti-DEI (aka anti-terror) audit? Also you better switch browsers if you'll ever be in a lawsuit with Mozilla I guess...
The problem with Firefox is it almost impossible to sell today (compared to 10 or 20 years ago).
- It doesn't have better performance or security.
- If you want better privacy and ad-blocking out of the box, Brave is the way to go.
- The "supporting an independent implementation" argument doesn't really resonate anymore.
I am wondering if the small market share it has left on desktop (especially in Europe and Germany) might be due to governments and corporations installing it on their computers.
Only very few people are aware or care about the drama between Mozilla and Brave.
Most people will only trust the Data safety / Data Privacy section on the Play / App store (as they should):
- Firefox on Android: This app may share these data types with third parties: Location, Personal info and 3 others [0]
- Firefox on iOS: The following data may be collected and linked to your identity: Contact Info.
Data Not Linked to You. The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity: Location, Identifiers, Usage Data, Diagnostics [1]
- Brave on Android: No data shared with third parties, No data collected [2]
- Brave on iOS: No data shared with third parties, No data collected [3]
Data Not Linked to You. The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity: Identifiers, Usage Data [4]
It's evident, Brave collect way less data than Firefox on those platforms.
Maybe the problem of Mozilla is they feel entitled to the trust they gained when they were the open source browser against IE. But that trust erodes over time.
The sketchy guy was the CEO of Mozilla and created JavaScript. If you don't trust him then why did you trust Mozilla when he was in charge?
I'm not sold on their crypto, but one thing is clear. Browsers need to stop getting the majority of their funding from big tech, especially Google. Maybe crypto is not the right way, but at least they are doing something.
Why do you trust the business practices of Mozilla who gets most of their funding from Google?
I tried using Brave ages ago. I wanted to like it, but it crashed even more often than Firefox (which is a feat unto itself) and didn't have the option to tag bookmarks.
> but it crashed even more often than Firefox (which is a feat unto itself)
Er, you maybe should check your RAM and GPU. I've run Firefox on a lot of different systems, with everything from vanilla profiles and no saved tabs to loads of extensions and literally thousands of tabs, and it basically never crashes. Well, the beta version can be a little less stable, but... beta version. Could just be that I'm lucky or you're unlucky, but I'd strongly suggest checking your hardware and maybe GPU drivers.
> Mozilla grants you a personal, non-exclusive license to install and use the “Executable Code" version of the Firefox web browser, which is the ready-to-run version of Firefox from an authorized source that you can open and use right away.
Does this mean these Terms of Use apply only to precompiled binaries downloaded from Mozilla, and not to copies built from source code by linux distributions?
> 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.
Does this mean they're allowed to collect data that we transmit through Firefox to the sites we visit, so long as they can come up with some justification that they're using it to "help" us?
> Every once in a while, Mozilla may decide to update these Terms. We will post the updated Terms online. We will take your continued use of Firefox as acceptance of such changes.
This kind of one-sided nonsense is something I have come to expect from the likes of Google or Facebook.
I don't know how all this will shake out, but my initial impression leaves me with waning respect for Mozilla.
> Does this mean these Terms of Use apply only to precompiled binaries downloaded from Mozilla, and not to copies built from source code by linux distributions?
I think it applies if the browser is "Firefox" in name and branding. So the Debian rebuilds count for example.
So recompile and remove the Firefox branding and the ToU should definitely no longer cover you.
Notably, this was deleted from the Firefox FAQ on 2025-02-25:
> Does Firefox sell your personal data?
> Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise.
> Does this mean these Terms of Use apply only to precompiled binaries downloaded from Mozilla, and not to copies built from source code by linux distributions?
Yes. They couldn’t legally enforce anything for the second, except when it pertains to using Mozilla online services. Many of the Linux packages have all telemetry disabled though
[...] 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.
> Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy
> [you may not] Violate the copyright, trademark, patent, or other intellectual property rights of others
In the near future they'll upload a blacklist to everyone that prevents us from accessing bad sites such as TPB. It's way worse than what we've seen before.
ELI5: how is any of this legal? Let’s say my distro receives Firefox source code under the terms of MPL, builds it and distributes it to me under the same terms. At no point any of us agreed to any additional terms. Does this apply only to Mozilla-built binaries?
An interesting implication of this is that it would point to Firefox being considered a service from Mozilla (hence why they need a license to facilitate your use of the program).
If we now look at their "Acceptable Use Policy", we can find this:
> You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to [...] Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that includes graphic depictions of sexuality or violence, [...]
So one could interpret this all to say that you're not allowed to view or download porn via Firefox. Additionally, "graphic depictions of violence" could extend to things like the sort of bodycam footage and reporting from war zones frequently seen in news reports.
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.newtabpage.blocked` after doing so.
I don't like that this is a thing I have to do whenever I set up a new Firefox install. It's not often, to be fair, but it still sucks nonetheless.
But Firefox also needs to generate money somehow, right? A small advert to amazon/hotels/whatever that can be removed basically permanently with a small change in the settings is about the best balance I can think of.
If you donate to Mozilla, I have more sympathy for you. Perhaps they could make it so that if you have a Firefox account linked to a donation that they remove this, or something.
I'm fairly sure that's for donating to Mozilla, where the funds go who knows where (kidding, it goes to the executives and marketing).
Is there anywhere I can donate to Firefox, specifically the development and the maintenance of the browser itself, and only the browser? Maybe donating directly to developers working on Firefox would be the best approach here.
Nope! In fact, last I heard, donations to the Mozilla Foundation could not be used at all for the browser, which is developed by the Mozilla Corporation.
That's for donations to the Mozilla foundation, they aren't used to fund development of Firefox. Mozilla corporation and Mozilla foundation are distinct entities.
> But Firefox also needs to generate money somehow, right?
WHY? They get hundreds of millions a year to place Google as the default search engine. That’s a shit ton of money. At that level they could even put some away every year for an endowment. Why does a nonprofit need to generate even more money by violating its users?
Money is drying up because Google is being ordered to terminate the deal, and they refused to save it and rather spend it on flights to Zambia to make a festival session about "feminist AI alliance for climate justice" "centering on LGBTQIA+ individuals". Their words, not mine.
Never hear of that person before, but before listening to anyone, I like to go through their material to see if they at least give the impression of a balanced and impartial person.
> The company made popular by making modular laptops now makes a desktop with soldered-on RAM. Bonus: They appear to support targeting children with Trans cartoons.
> Leftist Extremists Leave Linux Kernel, Demand Conservatives Be Banned
> Leftist Linux developers demand those with wrong politics "be removed". "Right-wing people are not welcomed," says one. "You can [CENSORED] right off from my projects," the other.
In this case, it seems they are neither balanced nor impartial, so beware people who chose to engage with that. It seems Lunduke is yet another culture-warrior masquerading like "The last bastion of truly independent Tech Journalism". I'm sure they get lots of traffic from it, but it's not really a reliable source for facts.
Why shoot the messenger? Not a rhetorical question, answer it if you are able to.
diggan, your way of thinking needs to face strong criticism. It brings you into the realm of make-belief and delusion and turns you away from the truth. Dealing with the trappings instead of the essence of things is no way to live in this world. Be level-headed and apply rationality, otherwise I predict you will see supposed enemies hiding behind every stone and then it will end badly for you.
FWIW, anyone can follow to the sources in order to come to the same summary, or through interpretation to the same conclusions. It only takes half a minute with a Web search and see that B.L. indeed is a reliable transmitter of facts. It took you longer to sow the FUD than to simply do the verification! *smh*
It is not "sowing FUD" to mention that someone has a history of posting ridiculously emotionally charged headlines/content, and point out that that habit might also color the truthfulness of their reporting.
Yes, it is. I have shown the sources, and thus quite demonstrably refuted diggan's claim of Uncertainty at the end of his post. The other parts of his post are very much emotional appeal, trying to get a HN reader to feel Fear and Doubt.
You seem to want to join in into same self-deception and denial of reality. Don't do this any more, it just brings suffering.
It is a good thing that we all have the freedom to check the veracity, and do not have trust gatekeepers and do not have to short-circuit by taking anyone's word.
>You seem to want to join in into same self-deception and denial of reality.
No, I just avoid "journalism" from people who only post with wildly emotionally charged language. If the reporting speaks for itself, you don't need to prime my feelings with your headlines or interpretations.
>Don't do this any more, it just brings suffering.
fine, but applying that method to journalism will essentially run you out of trustworthy sources to gather news and information from the very same day.
Second, for topics I care about, I look at multiple outlets and/or their reported sources so that I can hopefully isolate the facts and form my own opinion.
And yes, for each outlet I weigh their reporting by how much emotionally charged language they use. Or in this case, whether they shoehorn something about trans people into an article about RAM in addition to the other emotionally charged language.
Outside of all this culture war stuff, on a much more tangible subject, I guarantee you that for the money they sank in their flashy Paris headquarters[1,2] (thousands of m² in one of the fanciest areas), they could have paid for hundreds of man-years in very decent French engineers wages.
Let's be honest, they just spent the Google money like if there was no tomorrow, and an individual that won't even see from afar that much money in my whole life, I won't be donating to save them from their pitiful financial choices.
Sure, I agree with Mozilla not being the greatest steward (as written minutes before the comment you responded to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43195286), I'd much more like Firefox split off from Firefox.
But regardless of our feelings for Mozilla being one way or another, listening to authors who clearly are over-emotional about subjects isn't a way to learn more.
There is no such thing as balanced as that implies a natural neutral point. It's like saying you want to hear arguments both for and agains murdering children. All you're doing is filtering for people that conform to YOUR pre-conceived notions.
> There is no such thing as balanced as that implies a natural neutral point
It does not, professional journalists are able to provide two different points of views in their articles, granted they work for a professional publication. I'm not sure where you're from, but seemingly it isn't very popular in the US, but in other countries it does exist.
> All you're doing is filtering for people that conform to YOUR pre-conceived notions.
I'm trying to filter away people using overly emotional language, regardless of their political or moral leanings. I don't care if you're up, right, down or left, using clickbait language gives me reservations about even listening to the author.
Are those “professional journalists” in the room with us right now? … because the media has made a conscious effort to fire anyone unbiased for the last 20 years
Firefox is supposedly owned by a nonprofit organization that's expected to act in the user's interest.
Nonprofits are supposed to raise funds from donations and grants, not via enshittification for the primary subject of their mission.
The problem is that besides being a supposed nonprofit (Mozilla foundation), the same people also want to larp as a sillicon valley tech business (Mozzilla corp which largely shares leadership with the org) with insanely high saleries funded anti-user bullshit.
Inventory commingling ruined any respect I had for them. They've done that for a long time but I still am beyond pissed by the trend they started of being a front for third party sellers, all French retailers copied them (darty, fnac, cdiscount etc) and searching for products sold by trustworthy entities on the internet is now a nightmare.
Everyone imitates the market leader so it really feels as if competition doesn't exist as an alternative to amazon here. They're all as bad, and sometimes worse.
I’m not clear on how this solves the problem. Counterfeits can be hard to detect. Counterfeit food, toiletries, and electronics can poison you or start a fire. And my redress is a generous return policy?
That is debatable if that is hyperbole but I might be moving the discussion a bit too much off topic so ye maybe more neutral language would have been preferable.
Amazon doesn't even particularly care whether the items they sell are even legal in the country where they sell them.
FRS radios for example. Fine in the USA, not fine in Australia where those frequencies are used for public safety radio systems, and where they are illegal to possess because they don't comply with the applicable EMC standards.
It's a bit off topic I guess, but I actually see that as a fringe benefit as opposed to a drawback. Other than some exceptional edge cases I'm opposed to item possession itself being illegal - it all comes down to usage. (To be clear, I'm not opposed to strict ID recording requirements in some not-quite-as-exceptional edge cases.)
Causing a mess for legitimate users of the radiofrequency spectrum, and exposing unwitting customers to prosecution is a plus?
To be clear, you can buy equivalent products on UHF CB frequencies locally, that you can use without interfering with ambulance services for the same price.
This is legislation that exists for a very good reason.
Because Amazon has a legal duty under consumer law to only sell goods which are fit for purpose, be of acceptable quality etc. It would be hard to describe a thing that is unlawful to use in the market it was sold as being fit for purpose.
> I don't think their AUP considers the browser software a service.
One would think so, right? But why does Mozilla want me to "license" to them everything I "upload or input [...] through Firefox"[1]. Where do the "facilitated services" start and where do they end? It sure would be nice if they could draw that distinction, without it, the cautious interpretation would be that that everything is a facilitated service.
> I don't think their AUP considers the browser software a service.
It is not just about their services! They clarify it by writing: "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." Src.: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
I don't read it the way you say. The more restrictive terms are for use of services. If you use firefox, you have to agree not to use the Mozilla services for the prohibited categories, but there are many uses of the browser that are not using Mozilla services.
If you accessed graphic content using the browser, you are not violating the terms unless you put that content up on a mozilla service somewhere. The obvious issue would be some type of bookmark sync. If you bookmarked a graphic url you might violate the terms when it syncs to mozilla, but even then it would be hard to argue that you are granting access to your future self, so unless you used a bookmark sharing service provided by mozilla, I would say its a gray area. So disable bookmark sync. I typically disable all external services in my browser so this would not be relevant.
But my point is that even though you have to agree to the use policy when downloading the browser, it doesn't mean it governs all use of the browser.
I hate it when people get angry about this exact term of phrase. This is the legal definition of how user generated content works. What they're really saying is "if you upload anything to us, we're allowed to distribute it either back to you, or to other people". Yet another case of false panic.
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, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."
They reserve the right to use every bit of information we type into the browser, which is pretty scary.
It means they read and collect every bit of information we input in the browser ... think for example the text we input in a webmail app or in a home banking app ...
> It means they read and collect every bit of information we input in the browser
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.
"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."
Why should I give them the right to read the input I type or the upload I submit through Firefox (for example to a private web application) and use it to help me to do what exactly ?
They want collect the data we insert (private and personal) and sell them to the advertisers or to AI engines.
> 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.
Well ... they posses our data indeed ? And what ? The passwords should be encrypted and not available to them, Pocket is only a collection of links ... our bookmarks ? If they posses some other data it means they act as a middle man between the keyboard and the site we are visiting ...
If people are misinterpreting mozilla's legalese, that is mozilla's fault for making these terms vague, broad and easy to misinterpret. Also i am not convinced your interpretation is correct.
Mozilla Firefox didn't have a 'Terms of Use' for 20 years. Why now?
Its quite clear they're seeking to expand their rights over their users data with their new privacy policy while simultaneously reducing user rights with this new 'Terms of Use'. i.e. Enshitification
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.
The phrase "we don’t sell access to your data" has been removed, gated behind a feature flag connected to this TOS change. Their FAQ was updated to remove the "Does Firefox sell your personal data? Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise" as well. [0]
Combined with their blog posts from the CEO saying "we also need to take steps to diversify: investing in privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term." [1]
I'm curious whether it changed in the last two hours, but now it sounds a lot less clear. Also, it sheds some light of how people at Mozilla currently think about it (so much so that I'm guessing the text will change again):
> Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“), and we don’t buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of “sale of data“ is extremely broad in some places, we’ve had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love. We still put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).
I'd be mildly surprised if the current version remains unchanged for a long time. It raises the question of "how do I determine whether I'm one of the 'most people' who wouldn't think of you as selling my data", and I doubt they'll want to answer that.
I wish there was a way to tell the Wayback Machine to do a snapshot for historical preservation.
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 don’t know. I’m hoping that after their attempts at building an ad network fail, they pivot back to developing a browser by focusing on features their users actually want. Or maybe by the time Mozilla fails another alternative springs up, like Ladybird.
To your point, cloning Proton is such an obvious path forward to generate revenue while staying true to their values. Even selling a Firefox Pro with an annual fee offering some developer-specific or power-user features would be great.
They tried that with Mozilla VPN. It used Mullvad under the hood (a very good Swedish VPN provider), was tailored towards USA, and I could not use a config manually. Which meant I paid a year for nothing. Not the same as donation, but still.
Together with certain other services, like Password manager and Firefox Accounts, they could indeed go with your suggestion. However, I really do not want my EU data under a US business or non-profit. I want my data under EU laws, or European at least (Norway, Switzerland are also OK).
IMO, Mozilla should team up with Kagi. They have the numbers of users, and Kagi has the excellent product.
Zen Browser, it's still beta software imo but tab grouping and vertical tabs have become must-have features for me (another thing Mozilla should be working on).
Does librewolf maintain their own browser engine? I thought it was just a repackaged Firefox fork?
As for your Firefox account, you could consider hosting your own sync server. The documentation for it is of varying quality, but you can keep your data off Mozilla's servers without sacrificing some pretty useful functionality.
Disabled auto-update until this is clarified or alternatives can be found.
I for one don't agree to these 'terms of use'. If people are failing to understand Mozilla's legalese, it is Mozilla's fault for making them ambiguous and difficult to understand. They earned 650 million dollars last year. Surely they have the resources for the task.
> Remember that to display, edit, transform (underline, italicize, fonts) the documents you write in MacWrite necessarily requires copying your document data from disk to memory to cpu to memory to display – lots of copying. Did Claris need the rights to your copyright to allow you to edit your documents in its software?
This analogy doesn't hold water in the context of giving the coparty access to your intellectual property and detracts from the point the author is trying to make. The answer is no, obviously, because Claris never had the information. The only place that information existed was in some software that lived on and only on your machine did that processing at your request.
Couldn't you add a privacy policy that states just that? "This application doesn't send/save/process/use any user data" for example, should be a valid privacy policy if that's true.
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 through the TCP stack. Yet this is what Mozilla has in their own license. (and yes, before you ask, I did review the macOS TOS. You can find them here if you're interested: https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOSSequoia.pdf)
For all their problems, MS/Apple TOS are usually for things that interact with their services. Here, firefox's new TOS is ridiculously wide and touches things that do not interact with Mozilla's services, for no reason.
There's also a matter of trust; Google, Apple, Microsoft and Meta are trustworthy in the sense that I have an expectation of them that's already fairly negative insofar as user privacy is concerned. The correct response to "Google tracks you" isn't one of shock, it's one of acknowledgement because it's to be expected at this point. Google hasn't ever pretended that they aren't selling your profile to the highest bidder, so while I have issues with that, they're more in the sense of "it should be illegal to do this in general" rather than "I could never have foreseen this outcome". Same with Microsoft, Meta and especially Apple.
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).
Those companies are known to be privacy hostile companies. Mozilla/Firefox, not. In fact, Mozilla claims the reverse!
For them to abandon privacy, is a betrayal, it's backstabbing behaviour. Feeling betrayed and wanting nothing to do with said software, as a result, seems normal to me.
Or in slightly different terms: If I wasn't using Chrome because of privacy issues, then Firefox losing the privacy advantage means they just ditched the only reason I was still using their product.
If Mozilla is abandoning their pro-privacy stance, they still have at least one thing (in my opinion) going for them over Chrome: Manifest V2 extensions. For now, at least.
> Wait, now Mozilla operates Firefox for me and I can just lean back while they do the browsing?
Yea, this is the root "shitty attitude:" This idea that programs 1. running on my computer, 2. loaded from my hard drive, 3. into my RAM, 4. outputting to my monitor, are, in reality "Operated by [COMPANY]." Fuck that. Just because you wrote the software, doesn't mean you're "operating" it. I don't want an ongoing relationship with my products' vendors. Their role is to make it and distribute it to me, from that point on, butt out!
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.
I'm thinking something in the same vein as Iceraven, which is a fork of the Android version of Firefox that aims to make the browser more usable for humans instead of servicing the overly restrictive mobile environment/tracking that's bog-standard in most mobile platforms.
I considered Librewolf, but it's willingness to break pages in the name of excessive anti-fingerprinting (the RFP mode breaks a lot of interactables) and ideology (blocking DRM) makes it kind of unacceptable for this purpose. I guess I'm not looking for a privacy fork, just a fork that protects me as a user from anti-features (with widevine in specific not being an anti-feature; I don't like widevine either, but it's kind of necessary for using a browser these days.)
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 "we're not even going to try" is much more acceptable than the Librewolf one.
> 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.
Proprietary or non-proprietary isn't something I particularly care for (maybe 10 years ago I'd have cared, but I'm just a good deal more cynical these days I suppose). I just want a browser that works and doesn't actively try to screw me over.
There's nothing stopping Mozilla's current descent into stupidity just because Firefox is non-proprietary free software; they have enough engineers and manpower on their end to overtake any forks in development speed (which limits any forks to trying to stay in sync with either upstream or ESR.) Chromium is as a browser non-proprietary too, but that didn't stop Google from getting rid of declarativeNetRequest, leaving the forks mostly powerless to do anything about it because they can't hard fork Chromium.
Blocking DRM is the only sane stance. And if you are using a free OS it doesn't change much anyway as DRMed content is only available in resolutions that might have been acceptable decades ago. If you must consume that kind of content just use a dedicated device but better would be to ignore it or acquire copies with the DRM stripped.
DRM is absolutely not necessary for using a browser.
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.
however are the cost of developing a web browser and hosting an internet encyclopedia ran by volunteer comparable ?
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.
There is something deeply wrong with the donate nag: The money goes to funding Mozilla-branded nonsense (e.g. misguided adventures into the VPN space), overpaid executives and bloated administration (as they actively shed developers [1][2]), and not the browser.
I would considering donating except I can't donate to support what I would like to support.
Firefox needs to be its own thing. At this point all the "Mozilla Foundation" and "Mozilla Corporation" stuff and all the side quest software everyone seems to be rat-holing on, have nothing to do with making a great alternative browser.
That was great, except everyone just installed chrome because the website google told them to and put them right back in the exact monopoly position that allowed IE6 to stagnate.
If you use chrome still, you are literally part of the problem. I still think Mozilla, just barely treading into the advertising waters, is probably a better option than the literal advertising panopticon that owns our world and data.
> everyone just installed chrome because the website google told them to
I believe we actually went this way because all the techies adopted it first, not because it was some evil overlord that told everyone to. As a teenager, I installed it for some of my family because it had fewer knobs to push than Firefox at the time and it was faster at the time so that was cool as well (especially because they usually had older devices). Can't install toolbars in there etc. Then came Google's cross-site tracking by tricking users into logging into the browser and such. I kept using Firefox myself because I was used to the dev tools, theme customizability, and powerful add-ons, but it's not like I didn't contribute to the problem
That said, I also still wonder how (as you hint at) them advertising a product of theirs on the search engine homepage, a legal monopoly afaik, is not abuse of market power to illegally create a second monopoly. Firefox and any legit browser vendor who asks should be able to get the same ad on there for the same duration (years iirc, perhaps on and off), prominence, freedom of wording, etc. There is certainly an advertising aspect to get the last bit of the market, create a real brand name ("oh yeah I know that icon" when it's shown in the ads, not just know that button on your screen as "the internet"), but the first >50%... I don't know
> That was great, except everyone just installed chrome [...]
Just to note the Acid 2 test was released April 2005 [1], and Google Chrome from December 2008 [2]. That's about 3,5 years.
At some point (around these mentioned years), Mozilla Firefox had a very good market share since MSIE's was dwindling, Safari's was minor (no iOS yet), and Google Chrome did not yet exist. Those were the days ;)
Also, Safari only exists due to Konqueror (and its dependencies), and Chrome only exists due to Safari, and Konqueror.
Safari exists because Apple wanted a Browser they control. They absolutely would have had the capability to create a rendering engine from scratch - KHTML already existing was just a minor convenience.
"If you choose the slightly less evil browser you are literally part of the problem".
Yeah no, both are shit. Mozilla is also literally an advertising company now besides being almost exclusively funded by one.
If Mozilla wants people to choose Firefox over other browsers based on principles they first need to stick to principles themselves. Why are you asking people to give up anything (even if it's just a small amount of convenience) for a company that is run pretty much the same way as the alternatives, run by a CEO whining about a salary of millions per year not being enough. They made their bed.
1,216 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 409 ms ] threadhttps://wiki.debian.org/PrivacyIssues
Firefox Sync needs a ToS. Firefox Relay (the email masking thing) needs a ToS. Firefox web browser does not.
Emphasis added.
https://librewolf.net/
https://librewolf.net/#core-contributors
They also have links to join other community spaces so you can probably ask them yourself.
> They don't seem to be available in any official repos yet other than ones they self-published
The only official repos are the ones which the community decides are so. https://codeberg.org/librewolf They've been around long enough that if they're not on github (for example), it's probably intentional. (One can imagine why this particular community might prefer to avoid directing people to Microsoft-owned github.)
[1] - https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/total
edit : By official i meant something backed by and guaranteed by a reputed org, like Debian's official repo, RedHat or Arch's Core Repo.
Mozilla does not need a world wide royalty free licence to use anyone's content if the browser is just a pipe through which connect to the web.
So what exactly are they going to use that licence to your content for and how long are they going to retain it?
Mozilla does a lot of talking about creepy behaviour. Maybe it's just the wording of this but so far it feels a bit off to me.
Mozilla(the corporate entity) is operating(=controlling?) Firefox(the software) on my machine?
Mozilla(the corporate entity) is operating Firefox(whatever corporate subdivision on their side) to further my interests as a user (gather telemetry, error reports, "privacy preserving" data about me)? In that case, does "acting on your behalf" mean that the corporate entity is browsing on my behalf? Can I download all the Metallica mp3s using Firefox and forward all happiness letters to Mozilla since they were acting on my behalf? (I know, I know, "You Are Responsible..." section disagrees with my take)
And that's before approaching the can of worms of granting a license which I may or may not be able to do depending on the original license.
So we are granting them worldwide royalty-free licence to identify us uniquely and transfer that info to others.
Not the best privacy protection or control, and yet they claim "At Mozilla, we believe that privacy is fundamental"
What is this absolute clusterfuck? No, I do not consent to any of that. Which, if any, update, informed me of this change in policy? And how on earth do my data, and which data, pass through Mozilla's servers?
Have to see what other people (serious people) make of it, but that looks like a deal breaker. That's 100% spying on everything I do, because FF has a copy of it.
"Input information" on the face of it can be taken to mean moving the pointer, clicking, scrolling.
Mozilla is totally out of touch with their users. Going to give LibreWolf a try for a while I guess.
I'm no expert, but this seems to imply that if your government bans accessing the internet (for you, for a subset of people, or for everyone), using Firefox through a VPN is unacceptable to Mozilla? Why would Mozilla proactively side with autocrats?
The "acceptable use" policy they are talking about ( https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/ ) lists heinous actions such as to "send unsolicited communication" and to "display ... content that includes graphic depictions of ... violence". Is Mozilla targeting journalists here?
I sometimes suspect that there is a strong correlation between the effortlessness with which an organisation receives funding and how out of touch it is with reality.
New version: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/
> Firefox also shares information with our marketing partners to measure and improve these campaigns; what information is specifically shared varies (depending on how you discovered Firefox and your operating system) but generally includes how you were referred to our download page and whether you actively use Firefox. Where Firefox is pre-installed on your device, technical and interaction data (your device type and whether Firefox is used) will be sent to our marketing partners, and shared with Mozilla. Learn more about what is collected and shared, and how to opt out.
This is new (There's no link or further reference for that "learn more" in context)
> We may also be required to process your personal data to comply with applicable laws and protection purposes, such as:
> (...)
> Identifying, investigating and addressing potential fraudulent activities, or other harmful activities such as illegal activities, cyberattacks or intellectual property infringement (including filing or defending legal claims).
> Performing internal compliance and security activities, such as audits and enterprise security management.
---
Being US, how far stretch is it to imagine PII being under scope for some anti-DEI (aka anti-terror) audit? Also you better switch browsers if you'll ever be in a lawsuit with Mozilla I guess...
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#lawful-bases
- It doesn't have better performance or security.
- If you want better privacy and ad-blocking out of the box, Brave is the way to go.
- The "supporting an independent implementation" argument doesn't really resonate anymore.
I am wondering if the small market share it has left on desktop (especially in Europe and Germany) might be due to governments and corporations installing it on their computers.
I am appalled by this change, but I am not switching to Brave. Mozilla is loosing trust, Brave started with zero.
Most people will only trust the Data safety / Data Privacy section on the Play / App store (as they should):
- Firefox on Android: This app may share these data types with third parties: Location, Personal info and 3 others [0]
- Firefox on iOS: The following data may be collected and linked to your identity: Contact Info.
Data Not Linked to You. The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity: Location, Identifiers, Usage Data, Diagnostics [1]
- Brave on Android: No data shared with third parties, No data collected [2]
- Brave on iOS: No data shared with third parties, No data collected [3]
Data Not Linked to You. The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity: Identifiers, Usage Data [4]
It's evident, Brave collect way less data than Firefox on those platforms.
Maybe the problem of Mozilla is they feel entitled to the trust they gained when they were the open source browser against IE. But that trust erodes over time.
- [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fi...
- [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-private-safe-browser/
- [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brave.brow...
- [3] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brave-browser-search-engine/
Also, Brave has already broken trust multiple times..
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2020/06/08/brave-browsers-...
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/brave-browser-under-fire...
https://www.xda-developers.com/brave-browser-installs-vpn-wi...
https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/
I do not trust Brave in a million years and would never replace Firefox with it..
Also, i bet that most people do not even know or look at those privacy information at the store.. although i agree they should..
I do not trust their relationship with crypto
I do not trust their business model
You mean Brandon Eich, the author of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla? Why?
The other two points I 100% agree with.
I'm not sold on their crypto, but one thing is clear. Browsers need to stop getting the majority of their funding from big tech, especially Google. Maybe crypto is not the right way, but at least they are doing something.
Why do you trust the business practices of Mozilla who gets most of their funding from Google?
Er, you maybe should check your RAM and GPU. I've run Firefox on a lot of different systems, with everything from vanilla profiles and no saved tabs to loads of extensions and literally thousands of tabs, and it basically never crashes. Well, the beta version can be a little less stable, but... beta version. Could just be that I'm lucky or you're unlucky, but I'd strongly suggest checking your hardware and maybe GPU drivers.
Does this mean these Terms of Use apply only to precompiled binaries downloaded from Mozilla, and not to copies built from source code by linux distributions?
> 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.
Does this mean they're allowed to collect data that we transmit through Firefox to the sites we visit, so long as they can come up with some justification that they're using it to "help" us?
> Every once in a while, Mozilla may decide to update these Terms. We will post the updated Terms online. We will take your continued use of Firefox as acceptance of such changes.
This kind of one-sided nonsense is something I have come to expect from the likes of Google or Facebook.
I don't know how all this will shake out, but my initial impression leaves me with waning respect for Mozilla.
I think it applies if the browser is "Firefox" in name and branding. So the Debian rebuilds count for example.
So recompile and remove the Firefox branding and the ToU should definitely no longer cover you.
https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...
Notably, this was deleted from the Firefox FAQ on 2025-02-25:
> Does Firefox sell your personal data?
> Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise.
Yes. They couldn’t legally enforce anything for the second, except when it pertains to using Mozilla online services. Many of the Linux packages have all telemetry disabled though
> [you may not] Violate the copyright, trademark, patent, or other intellectual property rights of others
In the near future they'll upload a blacklist to everyone that prevents us from accessing bad sites such as TPB. It's way worse than what we've seen before.
If we now look at their "Acceptable Use Policy", we can find this:
> You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to [...] Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that includes graphic depictions of sexuality or violence, [...]
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/
And to corroborate the applicability of the Acceptable Use Policy to the Firefox browser:
> Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, [...]
("Acceptable Use Policy" is hyperlinked to the aforementioned page)
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
So one could interpret this all to say that you're not allowed to view or download porn via Firefox. Additionally, "graphic depictions of violence" could extend to things like the sort of bodycam footage and reporting from war zones frequently seen in news reports.
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
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.newtabpage.blocked` after doing so.
I don't like that this is a thing I have to do whenever I set up a new Firefox install. It's not often, to be fair, but it still sucks nonetheless.
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.
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.
Sure, but why should anyone have to?
But Firefox also needs to generate money somehow, right? A small advert to amazon/hotels/whatever that can be removed basically permanently with a small change in the settings is about the best balance I can think of.
If you donate to Mozilla, I have more sympathy for you. Perhaps they could make it so that if you have a Firefox account linked to a donation that they remove this, or something.
Is there anywhere I can donate to Firefox, specifically the development and the maintenance of the browser itself, and only the browser? Maybe donating directly to developers working on Firefox would be the best approach here.
They should have offered us monthly services that made sense. Long long ago.
WHY? They get hundreds of millions a year to place Google as the default search engine. That’s a shit ton of money. At that level they could even put some away every year for an endowment. Why does a nonprofit need to generate even more money by violating its users?
See videos 4 months old or younger: https://www.youtube.com/@Lunduke/search?query=mozilla
> The company made popular by making modular laptops now makes a desktop with soldered-on RAM. Bonus: They appear to support targeting children with Trans cartoons.
https://lunduke.substack.com/p/framework-unveils-2000-non-up...
> Leftist Extremists Leave Linux Kernel, Demand Conservatives Be Banned
> Leftist Linux developers demand those with wrong politics "be removed". "Right-wing people are not welcomed," says one. "You can [CENSORED] right off from my projects," the other.
https://lunduke.substack.com/p/leftist-extremists-leave-linu...
In this case, it seems they are neither balanced nor impartial, so beware people who chose to engage with that. It seems Lunduke is yet another culture-warrior masquerading like "The last bastion of truly independent Tech Journalism". I'm sure they get lots of traffic from it, but it's not really a reliable source for facts.
diggan, your way of thinking needs to face strong criticism. It brings you into the realm of make-belief and delusion and turns you away from the truth. Dealing with the trappings instead of the essence of things is no way to live in this world. Be level-headed and apply rationality, otherwise I predict you will see supposed enemies hiding behind every stone and then it will end badly for you.
FWIW, anyone can follow to the sources in order to come to the same summary, or through interpretation to the same conclusions. It only takes half a minute with a Web search and see that B.L. indeed is a reliable transmitter of facts. It took you longer to sow the FUD than to simply do the verification! *smh*
Here are the sources:
* https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/TKUXAQ-1
* https://xcancel.com/bazzite_gg/status/1887913668182163478
* https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/nouveau/2025-February...
* https://chaos.social/@karolherbst#:~:text=not%20welcomed
* https://web.archive.org/web/20240619223519/https://social.tr...
You seem to want to join in into same self-deception and denial of reality. Don't do this any more, it just brings suffering.
It is a good thing that we all have the freedom to check the veracity, and do not have trust gatekeepers and do not have to short-circuit by taking anyone's word.
No, I just avoid "journalism" from people who only post with wildly emotionally charged language. If the reporting speaks for itself, you don't need to prime my feelings with your headlines or interpretations.
>Don't do this any more, it just brings suffering.
Your moralizing is tiring to read.
No it isn’t
For one, it's a continuum, not a binary thing.
Second, for topics I care about, I look at multiple outlets and/or their reported sources so that I can hopefully isolate the facts and form my own opinion.
And yes, for each outlet I weigh their reporting by how much emotionally charged language they use. Or in this case, whether they shoehorn something about trans people into an article about RAM in addition to the other emotionally charged language.
Let's be honest, they just spent the Google money like if there was no tomorrow, and an individual that won't even see from afar that much money in my whole life, I won't be donating to save them from their pitiful financial choices.
[1] https://www.mellett-architects.com/en/portfolio/mozilla/ [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/places/2013/03/27/mozilla-paris-fin...
But regardless of our feelings for Mozilla being one way or another, listening to authors who clearly are over-emotional about subjects isn't a way to learn more.
Independently of the guy's own politics (I only know his “Linux Sucks” videos), he is directly citing an official Mozilla[1] document.
[1] https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/schedule?isRecorded=tru...
It does not, professional journalists are able to provide two different points of views in their articles, granted they work for a professional publication. I'm not sure where you're from, but seemingly it isn't very popular in the US, but in other countries it does exist.
> All you're doing is filtering for people that conform to YOUR pre-conceived notions.
I'm trying to filter away people using overly emotional language, regardless of their political or moral leanings. I don't care if you're up, right, down or left, using clickbait language gives me reservations about even listening to the author.
Nonprofits are supposed to raise funds from donations and grants, not via enshittification for the primary subject of their mission.
The problem is that besides being a supposed nonprofit (Mozilla foundation), the same people also want to larp as a sillicon valley tech business (Mozzilla corp which largely shares leadership with the org) with insanely high saleries funded anti-user bullshit.
Everyone imitates the market leader so it really feels as if competition doesn't exist as an alternative to amazon here. They're all as bad, and sometimes worse.
Same reason you’re not likely going to find counterfeit goods on the shelves of a Target or Costco
Counterfeit products sold by Amazon.
Most reviews are purchased.
Stolen product pages.
Product pages where the reviews are for totally different products
If you report any of these things to Amazon, they do nothing about it.
They have enshittified, and they don't have a quality anti-abuse team so many items, while not directly fraudulent are fraud-u-lish.
Commingled inventory means you can't expect the item you get to be the item you ordered because there is no supply chain integrity.
Honestly, after typing that out, I don't think scam was as wrong as it first seemed. I frequently feel deceived when using amazon.
FRS radios for example. Fine in the USA, not fine in Australia where those frequencies are used for public safety radio systems, and where they are illegal to possess because they don't comply with the applicable EMC standards.
To be clear, you can buy equivalent products on UHF CB frequencies locally, that you can use without interfering with ambulance services for the same price.
This is legislation that exists for a very good reason.
abusing the thing in the wrong region does.
question : why isn't this a matter of national import/export control? Why is that duty falling onto Amazon?
if Amazon was selling black-tar heroin I would have more questions than "Why is Amazon selling this? How dare they."
- Letting sellers replace listings with completely different products while keeping the ratings.
- Not providing any way to filter dodgy chinese sellers that spam search results with duplicates of the same cheap shit.
- Comingling inventory so that even if you take care to select a trustworthy seller you might get stuff from a dodgy one.
And no, being able to remove the scam ads is not good enough.
I don't think their AUP considers the browser software a service.
One would think so, right? But why does Mozilla want me to "license" to them everything I "upload or input [...] through Firefox"[1]. Where do the "facilitated services" start and where do they end? It sure would be nice if they could draw that distinction, without it, the cautious interpretation would be that that everything is a facilitated service.
[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
It is not just about their services! They clarify it by writing: "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." Src.: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
If you accessed graphic content using the browser, you are not violating the terms unless you put that content up on a mozilla service somewhere. The obvious issue would be some type of bookmark sync. If you bookmarked a graphic url you might violate the terms when it syncs to mozilla, but even then it would be hard to argue that you are granting access to your future self, so unless you used a bookmark sharing service provided by mozilla, I would say its a gray area. So disable bookmark sync. I typically disable all external services in my browser so this would not be relevant.
But my point is that even though you have to agree to the use policy when downloading the browser, it doesn't mean it governs all use of the browser.
IANAL
No civil disobedience. Bad Mozilla! Bad, bad Mozilla!
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."
They reserve the right to use every bit of information we type into the browser, which is pretty scary. It means they read and collect every bit of information we input in the browser ... think for example the text we input in a webmail app or in a home banking app ...
Time to switch to LibreWolf and Mullvad Browser.
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.
Why should I give them the right to read the input I type or the upload I submit through Firefox (for example to a private web application) and use it to help me to do what exactly ?
They want collect the data we insert (private and personal) and sell them to the advertisers or to AI engines.
Well ... they posses our data indeed ? And what ? The passwords should be encrypted and not available to them, Pocket is only a collection of links ... our bookmarks ? If they posses some other data it means they act as a middle man between the keyboard and the site we are visiting ...
To me the words
> When you upload or input information through Firefox
Indicate this is not only about uploading to them, but also just using Firefox to upload anything to somewhere.
Mozilla Firefox didn't have a 'Terms of Use' for 20 years. Why now?
Its quite clear they're seeking to expand their rights over their users data with their new privacy policy while simultaneously reducing user rights with this new 'Terms of Use'. i.e. Enshitification
It's a sad end to my literal decades of support for them.
Combined with their blog posts from the CEO saying "we also need to take steps to diversify: investing in privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term." [1]
[0] https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growt...
Is still present on https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/
> Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“), and we don’t buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of “sale of data“ is extremely broad in some places, we’ve had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love. We still put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).
*Update:* Here's the version from Feb 6 that says exactly what the parent comment posted: https://web.archive.org/web/20250206184553/https://www.mozil...
At the time I copy/pasted, the answer was a single line (as shown in your archive link).
I'd be mildly surprised if the current version remains unchanged for a long time. It raises the question of "how do I determine whether I'm one of the 'most people' who wouldn't think of you as selling my data", and I doubt they'll want to answer that.
I wish there was a way to tell the Wayback Machine to do a snapshot for historical preservation.
You can, and I just submitted the https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/ URL.
At the top of the page, click "Web". On the right-hand side of the menu that appears, you'll see:
"Save Page Now
Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future."
And a spot to enter the URL.
Resulting snapshot for today: https://web.archive.org/web/20250227182726/https://www.mozil...
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.
For making goggle the default search engine.
So they aren't really "in contrast to tech giants" in any way.
To your point, cloning Proton is such an obvious path forward to generate revenue while staying true to their values. Even selling a Firefox Pro with an annual fee offering some developer-specific or power-user features would be great.
Together with certain other services, like Password manager and Firefox Accounts, they could indeed go with your suggestion. However, I really do not want my EU data under a US business or non-profit. I want my data under EU laws, or European at least (Norway, Switzerland are also OK).
IMO, Mozilla should team up with Kagi. They have the numbers of users, and Kagi has the excellent product.
If not LibreWolf then what? The rest seem out of date or worse than Firefox in some way.
this whole thing and recent change goes contrary to what i thought they were about.
i'm done with them at this point.
the migration will be painful...
As for your Firefox account, you could consider hosting your own sync server. The documentation for it is of varying quality, but you can keep your data off Mozilla's servers without sacrificing some pretty useful functionality.
I for one don't agree to these 'terms of use'. If people are failing to understand Mozilla's legalese, it is Mozilla's fault for making them ambiguous and difficult to understand. They earned 650 million dollars last year. Surely they have the resources for the task.
Still that leaves ~ 400 million dollars for a privacy policy that doesn't read like it came from a sleazy big-tech company.
This analogy doesn't hold water in the context of giving the coparty access to your intellectual property and detracts from the point the author is trying to make. The answer is no, obviously, because Claris never had the information. The only place that information existed was in some software that lived on and only on your machine did that processing at your request.
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.
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 through the TCP stack. Yet this is what Mozilla has in their own license. (and yes, before you ask, I did review the macOS TOS. You can find them here if you're interested: https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOSSequoia.pdf)
For all their problems, MS/Apple TOS are usually for things that interact with their services. Here, firefox's new TOS is ridiculously wide and touches things that do not interact with Mozilla's services, for no reason.
So, no, I do not see the hypocrisy.
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).
For them to abandon privacy, is a betrayal, it's backstabbing behaviour. Feeling betrayed and wanting nothing to do with said software, as a result, seems normal to me.
I might just choose the best browser, then.
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 Mozilla not have a lawyer that reviewed this who knows what a browser is?
Yea, this is the root "shitty attitude:" This idea that programs 1. running on my computer, 2. loaded from my hard drive, 3. into my RAM, 4. outputting to my monitor, are, in reality "Operated by [COMPANY]." Fuck that. Just because you wrote the software, doesn't mean you're "operating" it. I don't want an ongoing relationship with my products' vendors. Their role is to make it and distribute it to me, from that point on, butt out!
I'm thinking something in the same vein as Iceraven, which is a fork of the Android version of Firefox that aims to make the browser more usable for humans instead of servicing the overly restrictive mobile environment/tracking that's bog-standard in most mobile platforms.
I considered Librewolf, but it's willingness to break pages in the name of excessive anti-fingerprinting (the RFP mode breaks a lot of interactables) and ideology (blocking DRM) makes it kind of unacceptable for this purpose. I guess I'm not looking for a privacy fork, just a fork that protects me as a user from anti-features (with widevine in specific not being an anti-feature; I don't like widevine either, but it's kind of necessary for using a browser these days.)
https://floorp.app/
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 "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.
There's nothing stopping Mozilla's current descent into stupidity just because Firefox is non-proprietary free software; they have enough engineers and manpower on their end to overtake any forks in development speed (which limits any forks to trying to stay in sync with either upstream or ESR.) Chromium is as a browser non-proprietary too, but that didn't stop Google from getting rid of declarativeNetRequest, leaving the forks mostly powerless to do anything about it because they can't hard fork Chromium.
DRM is absolutely not necessary for using a browser.
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.
At the end of 2023 Mozilla Corporation had 964 employees and Mozilla Foundation had 118.
So the difference isn’t that large…
Wikimedia budget is 170 000 000$.
I'm sure that developing a browser is more expensive, would mozilla be able to make it work with at best a third of the budget ? I don't think so..
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...
Mozilla just needs to focus on Firefox.
Something about doing one thing and doing it well...
It sounds like Mozilla needs to be DOGE'd too.
Edit: this was what came to mind: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/lswv11/my_firefox_...
Personally, I refuse to let any nagware on my computer. Free software is supposed to be a better experience than shareware.
If it is open source, how do I compile and use it without agreeing to the terms of use?
(I have no interest in using their “services”.)
If you use chrome still, you are literally part of the problem. I still think Mozilla, just barely treading into the advertising waters, is probably a better option than the literal advertising panopticon that owns our world and data.
I believe we actually went this way because all the techies adopted it first, not because it was some evil overlord that told everyone to. As a teenager, I installed it for some of my family because it had fewer knobs to push than Firefox at the time and it was faster at the time so that was cool as well (especially because they usually had older devices). Can't install toolbars in there etc. Then came Google's cross-site tracking by tricking users into logging into the browser and such. I kept using Firefox myself because I was used to the dev tools, theme customizability, and powerful add-ons, but it's not like I didn't contribute to the problem
That said, I also still wonder how (as you hint at) them advertising a product of theirs on the search engine homepage, a legal monopoly afaik, is not abuse of market power to illegally create a second monopoly. Firefox and any legit browser vendor who asks should be able to get the same ad on there for the same duration (years iirc, perhaps on and off), prominence, freedom of wording, etc. There is certainly an advertising aspect to get the last bit of the market, create a real brand name ("oh yeah I know that icon" when it's shown in the ads, not just know that button on your screen as "the internet"), but the first >50%... I don't know
Just to note the Acid 2 test was released April 2005 [1], and Google Chrome from December 2008 [2]. That's about 3,5 years.
At some point (around these mentioned years), Mozilla Firefox had a very good market share since MSIE's was dwindling, Safari's was minor (no iOS yet), and Google Chrome did not yet exist. Those were the days ;)
Also, Safari only exists due to Konqueror (and its dependencies), and Chrome only exists due to Safari, and Konqueror.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome
Yeah no, both are shit. Mozilla is also literally an advertising company now besides being almost exclusively funded by one.
If Mozilla wants people to choose Firefox over other browsers based on principles they first need to stick to principles themselves. Why are you asking people to give up anything (even if it's just a small amount of convenience) for a company that is run pretty much the same way as the alternatives, run by a CEO whining about a salary of millions per year not being enough. They made their bed.