Mozilla's New Terms of Use Are Out of Step with Firefox's Direct Competition

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, [...]

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.

> You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox

Wait, now Mozilla operates Firefox for me and I can just lean back while they do the browsing?

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/

> When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license

Really the whole document looks like it was copy-pasted from some SaaS template.

Does Mozilla not have a lawyer that reviewed this who knows what a browser is?

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.

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.

> 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.

Remember the time, when browsers were competing who will load website fastest or who will render Acid2 test correctly? Those were the days.

Firefox's blog post in the change[1] has an update:

> UPDATE: We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox…

Uh, yeah, that's exactly the problem. Mozilla shouldn't be allowed to use all the information I type into Firefox at all. Mozilla doesn't need any rights for Firefox to process my data locally on my behalf, or even for Firefox to send my data to third parties on my behalf (ex. instant search suggestions). Those aren't Mozilla using my information; those are me using my information using Firefox.

They would only "need" extra rights to collect data and process it on their servers for unspecified purposes. They do legitimately process some data on their servers, such as Firefox Sync data, but that's already covered under the Mozilla account terms of service. There's no need for a broad license for all data going through Firefox.

[1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/fi...

Mozilla's messaging for the last few months has really reminded me of the old anti-smoking ads from the 2000s. Technically performing their responsibility, but actually extremely obnoxious because the people behind the funding didn't agree with its existence and actively degraded it for their own survival.

Firefox's own about:license page (reachable through the about firefox dialog) says the sources are available under a wide variety of open source licenses. Does that mean only Mozilla distributed binaries are governed by the "Firefox Terms of Use"? If I download Firefox through my distro package manager, and the distro infrastructure compiled and distributed it undet the terms of the open source licenses, presumably I may use the software solely under the terms of those open source licenses.

Does Mozilla take this into account, or do they act as if they have the rights they assert in the ToU, regardless of what license a Firefox user is using the software under?

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.)

firefox is an open source software, i know it's great to bash it with the many questionable decisions they take but at the end it's still the least worst web browser and no one is entitled to having a free, ads free and privacy respecting web browser.

the author shows that mozilla royalty-free, worldwide license TOS change is now similar to what google always had with chrome.

To me as long as i understand the business model of mozilla, which is quite precarious but still, and it doesn't have some funny connections going in and out, i'm fine with their TOS change.

It's not the best but what you gonna do anyway ? chrome is chrome, 99% of the alternative are still running google chrome under the hood which give google insane leverage. Safari is at the mercy of apple dictatorship on the extension support. and that's all.

maybe once google is forbidden to give money to mozilla to choose the default search engine we will see real change in web browser choice, for instance it could fasten the agonizing mozilla death and prompt privacy or even just power user (as people who want to be able to block ads everywhere, not only where google mv3 allows it) to pay to develop, maintain and ultimately use a web browser.

Remember, "Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives processing difficulty in legal language."*

You see that here. Mozilla chose to use legalese and not plain language, despite there being a movement afoot to try to push (and in some cases legally require) for plain language in legal documents. This one isn't so bad, since they mostly avoid passive voice and don't needlessly capitalize much. Maybe the low frequency jargon is necessary but look at those center embeddings...

  - you upload or input information through Firefox with your use of Firefox
  - When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license with your use of Firefox
  - When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information with your use of Firefox.
  - When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content with your use of Firefox.
  - When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

First sentence establishes you input data into firefox when you use firefox (obviously, but maybe not to everyone!). Second clause establishes that when you input that data you give firefox a license to that data which you otherwise own (this could be more clear in a separate sentence). Third clause establishes that the license is to use the information (not to sell it). Fourth clause establishes that they will use it to help you navigate, experience and interact with online content. Fifth clause (as you indicate) establishes that it is your use of firefox that indicates your intention and how they should use your input to help you. As five separate sentences they could make it seem much more reasonable. The embeddings are instead ineffective because they aren't referring to a common category but instead modify an aspect of the former clause.

* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001002772...