Comment by nerdile
1 year ago
I don't have to grant Word a license to what I type in it. This is a highly unusual clause that other software doesn't have.
When software has to "phone home" to deliver the functionality you requested, then two things happen: One, a number of privacy regulations kick in, and they need to get you to agree to send your data to them. Two, they now get to move your data out of your control. I mean, you trust them today, so here's hoping they don't ever get hacked or hire someone untrustworthy?
It's sad when even to use the basic features of a web browser, you need to agree to send them your data. It's not fundamentally necessary to send your data to Mozilla or their partners in order to load and render a website. It's a dark pattern to obtain consent to collect your data "when it's necessary", and then rewrite your app to make it necessary.
> I don't have to grant Word a license to what I type in it.
Yes you do.
From Microsoft's Services Agreement [1]:
> To the extent necessary to provide the Services to you and others, to protect you and the Services, and to improve Microsoft products and services, you grant to Microsoft a worldwide and royalty-free intellectual property license to use Your Content, for example, to make copies of, retain, transmit, reformat, display, and distribute via communication tools Your Content on the Services.
That's broader than what Mozilla is asking for.
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en/servicesagreement
Which for the record they absolutely need, for example if you write something in word, click the share button, copy the link and publish it in this forum. Microsoft is now publishing whatever you wrote in the document, and their lawyers want to make sure they are allowed to do that.
Word versions that predate the share button probably wouldn't need the license grant. But since MS likes to limit the number of different licenses it was probably still in there to cover SharePoint and OneDrive
The software license terms for Word and all the other desktop apps does not include such a clause, no. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/useterms
The Microsoft Services Agreement applies to your use of their online services, like OneDrive and SharePoint, as you say, and there's an explicit consent in the app and a giant off switch there. They employ dark patterns to push you strongly to use their online services, but it's still optional.
It should be readily obvious that choosing to use online sharing or storage features or submit reviews require the data you enter to be sent, shared, or stored thusly...
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> Which for the record they absolutely need
"Hey, here are my car keys - can you move my car to a different parking space?"
"I cannot - I do not have a royalty-free non-exclusive worldwide perpetual license to access and operate your vehicle."
I realize lawyers have been wildly successful in making a parody of our societies and legal systems, but permission is implied in clicking the "share" button, it does not require obtuse and overreaching legal language to grant.
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My Word 95 never asked for this though? Clearly it’s not necessary to provide me a word processor.
My CS4, as far as I recall, has never asked for it either.
It seems a fairly recent thing that companies want to harvest your personal information.
I went looking for old Microsoft Word EULAs but didn't find any on google. I did find this fun tidbit, though:
> Performance or Benchmark Testing. You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of either of the Windows 95 Software Components to any third party without Microsoft’s prior written approval.
Wasn't that an Oracle sin? I guess Microsoft didn't want to miss out on the dickery.
A license grant like this is common in the context of review systems or forums or the like. For example if I go to addons.mozilla.org and post a review for an addon, Mozilla arguably needs a license grant like this to allow them to publish the review. And preferably they would want to word it in a way that then allows them to use the same review in print or a super bowl spot.
The weird thing is that a) I don't think this license grant covers any of that, since publishing a review doesn't improve my experience, it improves other's experiences, and b) Mozilla Websites like addons.mozilla.org have a completely different TOS [1], with a completely different license grant.
I have no idea what this license grant is supposed to accomplish, or what it would even allow that requires a license grant in the first place
1: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/mozilla/
Thinking about this a bit more: the most likely use for this specific license grant I can come up with is a 3rd party partnership similar to pre-acquisition Pocket.
Imagine if on first startup Firefox offers you to show website recommendations. Maybe a prechecked checkbox. If you don't say no, they send anything you type in the address bar to some third party, that third party throws that in a recommendation system and spits out websites you may want to visit, which Firefox then shows in the new-tab page. This license grant would cover that. They would be using a license on content I input (all my keystrokes in the address bar) to help me experience online content (recommendations for new content) as I indicate (they asked). In principle recommending me websites based on all images I upload with Firefox would also be covered, though that's a bit far fetched.
Of course in the EU you'd probably have pretty strict consent requirements because of the GDPR, same with other jurisdictions with strong privacy protections. But in places with weak privacy protections the grant in question should cover all bases to pull something like this