Comment by nico42
1 year ago
To Mozilla: if your intentions are indeed good as you claim in your post[1], then update the ToS accordingly.
Chrome is removing µBlock origin, I and probably a lot of other users saw this as a good moment to promote Firefox to our relatives, you are missing a chance and alienating your user base here.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/fi...
Absolutely agree. The blog post is claiming the opposite to what their ToS is granting - but one is fluff (that will be forgotten soon) while the other is legally binding. I cannot imagine applications like browsers that would require such an unrestricted license for user input just to do its service. That clearly indicates some "other" future motive that is underlined by the notion to remove the FAQ entry and other past actions towards an advertising future at Mozilla.
Am looking forward to explore some of the alternatives. And no, I don't want a just a correcting/updating/informing follow-up blog post of how we the users got it all wrong. In fact, the current UPDATE makes it worse:
"UPDATE: We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice."
vs. the ToS:
"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."
No - you don't need a license for my input. Just pass the butter, it's not your job to "use that information" in any way, form or shape. How did you survive 26 years without any license to our input? What did legally change that would require that license? No one asked you to: "We use data to make Firefox functional and sustainable, improve your experience, and keep you safe." (from the blog). What does that even mean? If you have specific use-cases in mind state them clearly, instead of this overreaching general license, that may or may not be misused now or in future. As of this ToS you may very sell my data to AI companies to "help me navigate the internet" which is not even part of the Privacy Notice protection.
Reinstatement your privacy guarantees in the ToS and be transparent about explicit use-cases.
Meanwhile, so long, and thanks for all the fish.
The blog does come from company officials and so you can show it to a judge and state "this is how you should interpret their ToS". It will be harder than if the ToS was clear, but the judge on seeing the ToS and blog differ is likely to come down hard to Mozilla for creating this situation. But you also need a good (expensive) lawyer to pull this off.
Even with a lawyer it's still a gamble if you will win - and in either case, the damage will have been done by then and no monetary compensation will undo it.
I haven't read the article. All I know is, Firefox changed their TOS.
> That clearly indicates some "other" future motive
It's training data, isn't it?
(It's always training data).
I was referring to Mozilla's past investment into advertising: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t...
To me that and the new ToS add up, why else would they remove the FAQ entry.
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> How did you survive 26 years without any license to our input?
Might be a case of covering their asses in the context of services they provide for search suggestions etc. Those are not mere programs users run on their own devices, and they rather make use of services run by Mozilla, which probably leads to their lawyers seeing the need for legally covering Mozilla ass.
A less charitable interpretation is that they actually want to introduce terms for using the software itself, in a way that conflicts with the no-nonsense "no restrictions on use" approach of open source, and thus ignoring open source principles in preference for covering their asses against hypothetical risks, while somehow still trying to look like open source.
In any case I agree the blog post or the update don't make anything better. I don't think the post says anything substantial about the terms of use or their introduction. It doesn't, in concrete terms, clarify anything about the seeming conflict between the introduction of terms of use and the commonly accepted definition of open source (which includes no restrictions on use). The post rather seems like a classic case of trying to make things better with nice-sounding words rather than owning up and actually clarifying any ambiguity.
> Might be a case of covering their asses in the context of services they provide for search suggestions etc.
But they already have a separate policy for the services. Why do they also need a policy for the browser itself?
Based on this, Firefox has a 2.54% market share of browsers worldwide, so if their goal here is to shoot themselves in the foot and get that number under 2%, mission accomplished.
Firefox is still the lesser of two evils when compared to Chrome with all of its telemetry turned on. And at least it supports a proper implementation of uBlock origin, which Google just broke in Chrome.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36759162
This is such a bad way to look at Firefox browser share. Instead, look at desktop share worldwide, where it's more like 7%.
Why is it a bad way to look at it? If anything, I'd argue Firefox is more compelling on Android than desktop.
This is quibbling over details - both numbers are already low enough that many developers won't even bother to test on FF not to mention fix non-trivial issues, and for both stats the trend is clearly downwards.
I'm one of them 2.54% and I cringe when some kiddie develops websites around some chrome bugs, just to let us and Apple folks down.
I'm also the 2.54% and have been since the phoenix days. I am beyond thankful every day for apple keeping both desktop safari and ios running to prevent the internet being even more monoculture than in the IE6 days
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To put some numbers on what a 2.54% market share means, Firefox actually tracks this data. See here: https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity:
> Monthly Active Users (MAU) measures the number of Firefox Desktop clients active in the past 28 days.
> February 10, 2025: 163,203,913 clients
> February 17, 2025: 163,742,671 clients
> Finally, you are in control. We’ve set responsible defaults that you can review during onboarding or adjust in your settings at any time: These simple, yet powerful tools let you manage your data the way you want.
"simple yet powerful tools" (derogatory) is how i would describe the windows popup that gives you the choice between setting up a microsoft account now or being nagged about it later
‘“Simple yet powerful tools” (derogatory)’ is my new favorite phrase I think. It seems like it has wide applications outside tech as well.
Or they are taking the gamble that being able to continue to use µBlock outweighs the sale of customer data.