Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox | Hacker News Reader

Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

329 pointspentagrama1,149 comments

Related ongoing thread:

An update on Mozilla's terms of use for Firefox - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612 - Feb 2025 (119 comments)

The other WTF is here:

Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations.

Acceptable Use Policy links to https://www.mozilla.org/about/legal/acceptable-use/ which says "You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to[...]Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that includes graphic depictions of sexuality or violence"

It's against the Terms of Use to use Firefox to... watch porn?

Either their legal team made a mistake, in which case they should correct it and issue an apology ASAP, or they really do intend to own you, in which case I recommend switching to an alternative browser which is only a browser, like Dillo, Ladybird, or Netsurf.

> It's against the Terms of Use to use Firefox to... watch porn?

Firefox isn't a Mozilla service. The Mozilla services are things like account sync, or the review tool they use.

So what about synced bookmarks?

And synced history.

If you're syncing a bookmark that is somehow illegal content, it would come to rest on their servers and they'd potentially be liable for it. (IIRC they encrypt everything at rest, so this is a speculative risk)

Porn is not illegal, either are the Rambo movies.

Depictions of sexuality or violence are legal in most places, even if said depictions are graphic

I wouldn’t expect the bookmark to run afoul of this clause, since the bookmark isn’t the content. Now it’d be a curious case if the bookmark contained a base64-encoded pornographic image.

You seem to be assuming competence on the part of the author. But, as is common with documents that lawyers generate, they probably don't care if it's reasonable or if practically every one of their users violates it. Like when you get an employee contract that claims your new company owns every idea you ever had. Some people will claim it's just "lawyer stuff" and is somehow okay. It's really not okay.

Mozilla VPN is a service Mozilla provides though. White-labelled Mullvad or not, it a contract between Mozilla and the user and therefore presumably covered by this terms of use.

I would say porn is probably in the top 3 if not number 1 use for VPNs

So only bookmarks of porn sites if you have Sync active, sending porn tabs to a Firefox instance on another device, browsing porn while on the Mozilla VPN, or using Firefox Relay to sign up to a porn website with an anonymous email address

Fine by me since I don't use a Mozilla account, but sounds to me like I shouldn't get a Mozilla account either

Bookmarks and tab URLs don’t contain porn, generally? References are not typically considered explicit, though certainly their language isn’t clear enough about that.

If you bookmark a collection of data: / blob: links then that would be the outlier scenario where you shouldn’t use any third-party server-involved bookmark syncing service, as presumably they’ll all either break or ban you once they find you using their bookmark table space for data storage.

Good point about Relay.

Bookmarks and tabs hinge on how you interpret "grant access". Do URLs to publicly available websites grant you access, or does the phrase only apply to cookies, passwords, login-urls, etc.? I'm pretty certain it would apply to login-urls, email-confirmation emails, password-reset emails, etc, but for normal URLs I could see it either way

It seems like they might be "use[d]...to...[u]pload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that includes graphic depictions of sexuality"

> Bookmarks and tab URLs don’t contain porn, generally?

Do URL stubs of porn titles count as explicitly sexual? They can get pretty raunchy

Back in the Wild West of geocities days, I seem to recall animated pornographic favicons.

Favicons are not contained within bookmarks under normal circumstances, but I don’t know if Sync syncs those or if the browser fetches them on each endpoint.

I think this is the most damning point: their terms extend to cover the text in URLs, and so by definition all text including titles and URLs — as well as any pages visited, due to tab syncing — would need to be in compliance with policy. If it’s as clearcut as presented here, anyways. Do the other browser profile syncing services have similar language? Is such overreach unique to Mozilla Corporation?

Though, considering how few people are likely to care about the legal exposure risk of continuing to use Firefox Sync, I don’t imagine this will end up being particularly enforceable in practice.

Blob URL is also just a reference to a (local) resource. I guess another valid example would be something like javascript:document.write(<data>)

Do you know any other?

Then you haven't seen my browser

> Firefox isn't a Mozilla service.

They might clarify that in the agreement. I doubt many people are intimately familiar with Mozilla, Firefox, 'services', etc. to distinguish. I am and I didn't think of it in a brief reading (which is all I have time for).

Then they shouldn't explicitly say “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.”

It's against ToS to watch R rated movies.

But python-rated movies are ok I guess? :)

Its against the ToS to watch most PG rated movies. It objects to graphic depictions of violence as well, and has no exception for brief graphic depictions of sexuality.

And yet these terms of service—for Firefox—specifically apply the AUP to “your use of Firefox,” no?

The entire AUP is prefixed “You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to:”. There’s nothing in the AUP that doesn’t refer to “Mozilla’s services.” When the Firefox TOS explicitly includes this AUP, how could it make sense unless they think of Firefox as one of their services?

At the risk of restating the gp’s quote:

> 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 think Mozilla VPN is a Mozilla service?

It's pretty odd if you aren't allowed to use their VPN to watch or share porn

- send unsolicited communications (for example cold emailing an employer about a job) - Deceive or mislead (for example inviting your brother over for a surprise party under false pretenses) - Purchase legal controlled products (for example sending the pharmacy a refill for your Xanax) - Collect email addresses without permission (for example putting together a list of emails to contact public officials)

"If you're doing it you have to give us the data, and btw you can't do it either"

look, i'd have similar clauses if I ran such a service. Porn gets very messy very quickly. Revenge porn, porn of generally unconsenting parties etc. are all to common and people who share know it is wrong and so try to use things like vpns to hide. The problem for you as a vpn provider is proving they're doing the wrong thing with your service, so it is much easier to simply say there is a blanket ban and then selectivly enforce.

The upside for users in general is such a vpn service tends not to be associated with underbelly behaviour and so isn't blocked from 90% of the web.

Do hammer manufacturers required you to sign an agreement at the hardware store with a bunch of legalese so they aren't held liable if you use the hammer to beat someone to death?

Do alcohol companies get shut down when people drink and kill someone with their car?

Did you know that a nonzero percentage of child molesters wear Nike sneakers when they kidnap children? Why doesn't Nike actively try to prevent this?!

So why should a VPN provider need to explicitly dissuade its customers from breaking the law with their service? Why should a web browser be afraid of being on the hook when someone breaks the law via the web?

Bars certainly get in huge trouble if they let someone drink too much, and they leave and drive and kill somebody.

but bars are aiding these drunks. a hammer is a tool specifically for hitting and removing nails. If you put that burden on a hammer, you'll have to put that in a pencil and every object in the world.

Minor objection...

I have and continue to use my hammer, which is none but an Estwing, for demolition work. Often there are no nails directly involved and when there are, I use a prybar. I have also used it to open beers, 'fix' computers, as well as procure therapy to various things that plead for it. On several occasions I've even used it tied to a rope to throw over an unreachable tree limb.

That this may be used as evidence in court against me, well, has me almost welcoming a firing squad. What a silly silly planet.

Is there any hope for Midori?

That's because a bar is generally required by law not to serve someone already drunk.

I honestly doubt that this is true for the country I live in. How would a bar keeper know your intention to drive? And your ability to drive might be impaired before showing obvious symptoms of intoxication

I don’t think this is really true at all, at any decently busy establishment there’s no way the bartender could possibly be responsible for what their patrons do after leaving when they barely have time to take their orders

I am unsure you know how a VPN works, because non of your comparisons work in anyway shape or form as representing the same thing.

A more appropriate comparison is a real-estate company which manages corporate offices, leasing out a corporate office space. That space is being offered under the proviso that NO brothel is opened there, underage or otherwise. Now, they won't ask you what you're doing and generally won't look but if there is a single complaint of you running an underage brothel, they look, and see any brothel activity, instead of wasting time they'll simply evict you and avoid the entire mess and waste of resources spent investigating. Easy.

The alternative is having to painstakingly prove the wrong thing was done, which is notoriously difficult, and ties up a lot of resources.

"Graphic depictions of violence" also covers every 18+ movie or TV show. So I guess streaming Underbelly would also be against such a policy.

That's a bad idea, and a badly formed policy. The legal team and the marketing team need to talk things over here, a wee bit more.

All of that should be covered by not allowing illegal content ?

> Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy

The fact that Firefox isn't a "Mozilla Service" seems irrelevant.

Imagine using Mozilla Sync to ensure you have the same horse porn on your phone as your laptop out of spite.

with this new TOS, Firefox became Mozilla "service"

The French translation of the Terms of Use says they apply both to services and products:

> Vous ne pouvez pas utiliser les services et produits de Mozilla dans les buts suivants :

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

We are under an attack by Puritanism that is quite astounding actually. And no one is doing anything. Everyone just keeps bending the knee.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1hqqpbt/newest_ver...

Some of the things that are happening are just from the threat of “something bad might come down from the new administration”. It’s so ridiculous.

It's gonna be a weird few years that's for sure. I'll leave it to the historians to decide when the actual tipping point was but the shift in the GOP from being run by Republicans with a few bones thrown to Conservatives every now and again when it's time to drum up votes to the show now being run by Conservatives is going to be the point between two political eras.

It's by far not the first time this has happened but it's kinda surreal to be alive for one.

wait till you unlock 1984 esque reality they are beta testing on us rn

when you see slavery is still very alive im sure this will seem like just a playful moment

I want to entertain you but use a caps lock and some punctuation from time to time. It gives your comments more credence.

At least in the US, slavery is alive and well. 13th amendment abolishes slavery except as punishment for a crime, and prisoners all over the country perform forced labour for a small fraction of federal minimum wage.

haha just wait until you unlock the open air slavery they are testing don't even need a conviction just gotta piss off the right spoiled rich folk :)

ever seen a reality where multiple people have access to all your accounts but no matter what you do your bank or anyone else can't seem to help

This is what the 2nd is for.

Attempts to eliminate this have even failed in solid blue states -- Prop 6 in California failed 53-47 last election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_California_Proposition_6

I'd say it was the decline and fall of the Soviet block. Without the external pressure to remain competitive, the balance shifted from realism towards ideology.

The U.S. still has competition from Europe and China, no? I'm not convinced that the puritanical fanatics would ever make the rational decision to ease up on their efforts for the sake of the economy. For non-Western examples, see Iran and Afghanistan since the mid 20th century.

> The U.S. still has competition from Europe and China, no?

Not militarily, at least not the way the Soviets were competition.

If the US really is on the Roman path and transitioning from the republic to the empire, it's not clear Europe + China have enough force to keep MAD in place.

Europe + China have between 500-750 nuclear weapons usable on short notice. Depending on how well classified US missile defense programs work, it's possible for the US to only lose a single digit number of metropolitan areas.

Combine this with the fact that large, dense urban areas primarily contain the current administration's political opponents, and that may become acceptable losses.

A potential alliance between the US and Russia being on the table (or at least a non-aggression pact) further bring a non-MAD world order into the range of possibilities.

It's not any more surreal than the extreme shift in the other direction we had before. If anything, what you are experiencing now is just the expecte (over)correction to that.

The squeeze on any content that religious people find 'yucky' is double-pronged in the US - encouraged both by governments and businesses. Paypal, Visa, Mastercard et al are given complete discretion over what transactions they can block, and they have already extensively used this to deprive legal NSFW platforms and creators of their income.

So, on one end, state governments are trying to strongarm NSFW services by imposing draconian requirements that ask users to submit their private data to some random opaque 'benevolent' third party business - and on the other, payment processors are using their legal right to refuse whatever transaction for any reason so they can starve them of income.

I dont think the pressure from payment processors is because of puritanism, but rather payments in this space tend to come with a much higher % of fraud and chargebacks and they've decided it's not worth the risk.

That is half truth that gives them cover.

Many people agree with this comment, for a leaf comment, it is substantial at 15.

Visa and Mastercard also have limits on what percentage of a bank's transactions can be adult.

"risk management" is not puritanism - sex work has a different/higher risk profile for PSPs (fraud, chargebacks, etc) and it's easier to say "no" than to come up with a new product to serve customers.

An enterprising PM at a PSP or fintech could look at the size of the sex industry, measure the risk of providing payment/banking services to sex workers and businesses and offer them at a premium like any other "niche" financial area.

And while we're on the topic of "draconian" regulations from the government - it's not outside their interest to limit the availability of obscene content from children. This isn't a "think of the children" argument so much as "children consume graphic pornography at huge rates and porn providers make money off them as consumers and producers with such inept guardrails that age verification has been a meme for 25 years." I don't think validating your identity with a government ID (and storing it forever) is a good countermeasure but I disagree its some kind of draconian limitation on free speech. If porn sites didn't buy and sell sex from kids and self regulated, this wouldn't be necessary (nb4 "it's the parent's problem" - good luck!)

That's exactly a "think of the children" argument. CSAM moderation was always fairly strict on the big sites -- they knew it was both an existential threat and the route through which puritans such as "duped" here (nice name) would try to attack -- but they really tightened up with the ban on third party content. Now they have a chain of responsibility for every video. So, "duped," if you actually have an example of the problem you claim is rampant, why aren't you acting on it? Why aren't you lighting the fuse on that chain of responsibility? Do you want to promote the abuse of children? Or do you admit to making it up so that you could use it as a pretext for your agenda?

Also: yes, building a government blackmail database is draconian.

> CSAM moderation was always fairly strict on the big sites

Except on the largest of the sites which was successfully sued just a year and a half ago over it's years-long policy of looking the other way.

I'm no puritan, I'm just not an absolutist. The real world is complicated and I find arguments like yours annoying and naive.

I know this is late and likely won't be read, but I have a few objections to what you said.

First of all, not all NSFW transactions are created equal. A person subscribing to a website, a person buying a physical product, and a person paying an artist to draw what they want all have different risk profiles. (The former is far more likely to cancel). Does this change the opinion of Paypal, Visa, Mastercard et al? No, they blanket ban everything. They pressure businesses and platforms to stop selling this content and to cut out any of their NSFW creators, and the websites often have no other option. These big companies are the only available avenue for sending and receiving money.

Second of all... I think that being free to do legal transactions with whoever you want in exchange for anything you want should absolutely crush the payment processors' right to moderate their transactions in accordance to their own guidelines, rather than the law. Again, you have almost nowhere to run if these businesses turn you down - there is no digital cash. I think that companies that process transactions should be mandated to not discriminate between them, as long as it is lawful.

Lastly... The reason why this verification debate has been standing for 25 years is because it's not solvable. Every proposed scheme for reliable age verification that I've heard of either trades off your privacy, or isn't watertight (and might as well not be there). You can only have one. Given that private companies and governments love private data, and that we've had open internet for 30+ years now and nothing catastrophic has happened so far, I say we should let it be.

I don't think it's particularly driven by religion anymore. The new puritanism is as much left-wing as right, and often atheist.

IIRC, terms like that have been in agreements for many years. It's boilerplate, almost.

I don't think that's the problem here, as I don't want to see porn on e.g. Mozilla's forums either. There's a place and time for that content and Mozilla shouldn't be the one to decide for others. The problem is whether Firefox is a Mozilla "service" or not, and the way the terms is linked implies that it is.

There's a huge difference between a public forum and cloud storage for e.g. your private bookmarks.

The Puritans have been trying to ban porn here since the concept has existed, it's never stopped, and it's never going to stop. They're miserable and they want everyone else to be too. That's like most of their religion. Going to church, being ashamed of bodies, and judging people.

I'm all down to write off contract law as "puritanism" but the rot is far deeper than an aesthetic (and frankly I'm unclear how puritanism applies to this situation at all).

EDIT: I'm not sure why porn is particularly interesting here when most internet activity seems to be potentially against terms of service.

My conspiracy theory is that gears are slowly turning to revamp the culture, redefine what’s acceptable/not acceptable and eventually suggest that if you won’t have kids you’re not accepted in the society. Basically a funky way to reverse the population decline, as the governments are realizing this problem won’t be fixed by free markets and etc.

It seems like not so much a conspiracy theory as something totally transparent and out in the open. There's a huge political push to birth as many babies as possible. Major political parties have it as part of their platform. Their spokespeople talk derisively of "childless cat ladies" and how you're not a real contributor to society unless you produce babies.

The "Birth" lobby is a stool composed of several legs:

1. Attack abortion

2. Attack contraception

3. Attack porn

4. Attack education

5. Attack "women in the workforce"

All of these things are seen as contributing to declining birth rates, so they're opposed by Big Birth. You can see the same politicians tend to go after these things in lock step.

Pretty much, yeah. Like everything is factually right, but I completely disagree with their method. So far, they’ve failed at each step.

There’s a very obvious “pro-religion” push going on across all social media as well, but it’s hard to pinpoint when/how it started. Not sure how far they’ll have to roll back women’s rights to get where they want to, but it’s incredibly sad to watch. Not sure how fathers with daughters are going to watch this happen in real time as well.

I don't think they can succeed though, because the 5. is the crucial step, as being a baby-making machine is a full-time job, and no lobby is going to get a lot of following from the business with the premise to cut the available workforce by half.

With the absolutely massive investment in (and push for) AI, I assume the belief is that the the reduction of workforce will have less of an impact.

If the plan is to have most people out of job soon-ish, then big population with bunch of young people without good prospects is a recipe for disaster.

If 1. and 2. are done, 5. falls very easily. It's no surprise they started with attacking Roe vs. Wade.

Now consider that perhaps the current state is the result of a similar conspiracy but in the other direction.

People aren't having kids because of stagnant real wages and soaring home prices. In the US, the median home price is now $450k. In Canada, it's $650k. And when people do have children, they're on average having fewer, later in life (with a greater risk of complications): https://www.northwell.edu/news/the-latest/geriatric-pregnanc...

I doubt banning porn or abortion or engaging in cultural engineering will fix this.

And then there's this phenomenon, discussion of which was once verboten in goodthink circles (like HN) due to its anti-feminist and "incel" optics, but has since grown enough in strength and scale to shove its way through the Overton Window so that even respectable, MSM sources cover it: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-yo...

The best way to have more kids is to increase the size of the middle class, while lowering housing, food and childcare costs.

I don't think creating the illusion of an imaginary middle class ever helped anything. I believe it only makes things worse, as now a lot of people think they are not working class, just because they have an above median wage. Snap it, even some even hold to the illusion that they are rich, just because they have a house with a mortgage and a private pension.

What you need to have a modern, western country instead of a dog-eat-dog wild west is welfare, including universal health care.

But welfare is considered as an evil communist plot in the US and the people who are led to believe that they are somehow above the working masses keep voting against their own interests. Not just in the US, unfortunately.

I have no idea why people keep saying it's monetary reasons. Why would anyone have 3 kids nowadays? There are no real incentives, other than "I want a big family". Society actively discourages large families as well. The amount of people in their 20s aiming for that is getting smaller and smaller too.

The best way to have more kids, unironically, is making everyone as poor as possible, removing any other method of entertainment, and making "having kids" the only choice. That's how it worked for the eternity, and some people want a percentage of people to go back to it, so it would support the current established system.

I didn't say 3. Perhaps I should have said, any.

If everyone has 1/2 kids, the outcome is the same as having no kids, just with more years to get there. That’s Japan’s biggest problem right now. People are having kids. Tokyo is fairly kid friendly, and infrastructure/culture is there. But nobody wants to have 3 kids.

Simply not true. 2 is the replenishment rate. 3, is a 1.5 increase generation to generation. Our population is out of whack with the resource load. Your model is orders of magnitudes too simplistic.

Top income brackets aren't really having more than 2 children either, which is a requirement for growing population. Like most studies has shown that, in general, educated women, freedom of choice and etc. will negatively impact birthrates. It's the same thing everywhere. Sure, income, less social pressure and etc. affects it somehow, but there's just no real need in general to have 3 kids in this day and age. Asking a woman to give away at the bare minimum 6 years of their youth won't cut it nowadays. And honestly, I don't blame them, I think exactly the same way.

> People aren't having kids because of stagnant real wages and soaring home prices.

That's proably a non-insiginficant factor but unlikely to be the only one. Poorer people have never had problems reproducing in any society.

I think media exposure plays a much bigger part. Not porn exactly, but anything that glorifies a "free" lifestyle over settling down.

First of all, US population has been steadily growing, so I don't get why big business (whose interests current administration represent) would need to engage in long-term culture engineering for steady supply of new workers.

Second of all, majority of US population is urban. People in NY or Bay Area can't elect a president who represents their interests due to how Electoral College is designed but attempting to change their opinions on having children by banning porn is a pipe dream.

Again, it's just a fun conspiracy theory in my head, and no, it doesn't have to be big business. Like you realize churches have been pouring money in ads, apps, and etc. right? They're actively trying to get back all the lost memberships.

US population is growing for a combination of immigration and just slightly better birth rates than others. It's nowhere close to above-replacement levels (2.1). Just check out the population pyramid, and you can see there are less younger kids than older ones.

“The population growth rate is projected to slow from 0.6% per year between 2024 and 2034 to 0.2% per year between 2045 and 2054.”

And almost all growth is immigration, the fertility rate hits new lows constantly.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2024/...

“U.S. Fertility Rate Drops to Another Historic Low”

Confused. What do Firefox's terms of service have to do with puritanism ? Have Firefox developers become puritanist or something ? That would be extremely surprising if true. Any evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) to 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“

When I run Transmission, it also says "don't use this for piracy." Of course people are gonna pirate with it. It's just to cover their asses.

"We"? Do we live in the same first world where people fuck like animals and promiscuity is the overwhelming norm?

Firefox-the-browser isn't a service, it's a product. Their services are things like profile syncing. It makes sense to me that they wouldn't want content on their servers that they could get in legal trouble for hosting.

Legal trouble for sexuality and violence? I am sorry, in what jurisdiction are their servers? Iran or North Korea?

Porn bans get proposed in the US on a regular basis.

Got to love the (oblivious) american moral superiority

So, as someone else pointed out, saving bookmarks of porn and using their bookmarks sync service would be a problem.

It's easy to laugh and dismiss that. But what if you're a journalist covering war? You're going to have plenty of bookmarks of graphic violence, and therefore run afoul of this license.

Comments such as yours are missing the point.

Mozilla's ToS applies for Firefox's use, and this is literally written by Mozilla themselves:

“Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy”

There's no distinction between the browser and Mozilla's online services here.

---

And even if it were referring only to features such as “profile syncing” (and it doesn't refer only to that), does this mean that people can't have bookmarks to porn? And why would Mozilla care about how people use profile syncing at all? I thought it was e2e encrypted.

How do you square this with the following:

> Mozilla software is made available to you under the terms of the Mozilla Public License 2, a free software license, which gives you the right to run the program for any purpose, to study how it works, to give copies to your friends and to modify it to meet your needs better. There is no separate End User License Agreement (EULA).

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

That's for the court to decide, when you sue Mozilla for remotely bricking your browser.

It should really be up to Mozilla to make the licensing of their products and the terms of use of their services clear and unambiguous. If users have to figure out how to square Mozilla's legal terms with Mozilla's other legal terms, they've failed.

Fully agree.

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

If they're worried by what might be in the profile data they're syncing they should just make it e2e encrypted so they can't know what's in it

But they clearly want to collect and sell that data

I agree with you but I'm jumping ship because it is not worth it for me to stick with Mozilla.

TOS has always been a mark of arbitrary service and ownership of all products. None of this is new or surprising.

The applicable laws of North-Korea might differ than the applicable laws of Russia which may differ from the law of Qatar, etc. It might be even impossible to uphold this world wide even if you tried.

So i guess it's more a 'we at Mozilla don't want any trouble' thing.

> I recommend switching to an alternative browser which is only a browser, like Dillo, Ladybird, or Netsurf.

Did not know any of those alternatives thanks for sharing.

After a quick online search, I see they could work for casual browsing and it's great that they don't rely on Chromium

But do you think these can be a full browser replacement without extension ecosystems like ublock origin et al.?

If you're on macOS, then Kagi's Orion seems good:

https://kagi.com/orion

It's been working fine for me anyway.

They are working on Orion for Linux this year as well

Thanks, that's extremely good news. :)

I pay for Kagi and I would definitely pay for Orion on Linux.

interesting they have resources to build a browser. also interesting (and sad) they focus on Apple and not Windows. Hopefull, they'll port it to Windows and Linux.

Worth mentioning that Orion is fully based on WebKit. Calling it a “Safari wrapper” would be unfair, but it’s also not extremely far from that either.

Firefox was the last bastion of freedom on the internet and the replacements aren't ready.

> But do you think these can be a full browser replacement without extension ecosystems like ublock origin et al.?

I'm now actually trying to use qutebrowser as a replacement... it's not easy due to the lack of extensions, but mitigating factors are:

1. it has integrated adblock (though no cosmetic filtering) 2. there are userscripts to integrate with the Bitwarden CLI or a running instance of KeepassXC.

None of these three are currently suitable for casual browsing unfortunately.

> Either their legal team made a mistake, in which case they should correct it and issue an apology ASAP

I don't think it is a mistake but more the translation of a vision and strategy that took hundreds of meetings to be laid down very precisely.

I have nothing to back what I am gonna say but I am wondering if their strategy might be to truly become the default browser of governments who are uncomfortable having Chrome or Edge as the default browser. Especially since now they get augmented by a lot of AI.

Firefox has it largest market share in Europe and Germany it seems and with the concerns with are hearing over there about Big tech I wouldn't be surprised at some point some govs try to make their workstations Firefox only.

Also some governments are trying hard to restrict access to porn, violence and social media for children but we know it is almost impossible to do it at the network level. So they might try at the browser level with the help of Mozilla and some "sanctioned Internet AI safety" inside the browser?

I really don't know but think about it, Mozilla is a dead man walking with it's 2% market share and huge cost of maintaining one of the most complex piece of software. They have to do something about it.

What just tipped me off is reading on Wikipedia [0]:

> On February 8, 2024, Mozilla announced that Baker would be stepping down as CEO to "focus on AI and internet safety"[2] as chair of the Mozilla Foundation.

- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker

I think Baker is now gone gone.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growt...

The damage to Mozilla she wrought is immeasurable. It'll be talked about for decades as a lesson in an organization losing its way by ceding power to the wrong individual(s).

That doesn't guarantee that the new leadership will be any better. A good first step would be cutting down leadership compensation to sane levels.

I'm pretty sure this is about Mozilla services. AFAICT, Firefox itself is licensed under the https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Public_License and as such doesn't put any restrictions on how you use the software.

That is what I expected to see, but the title of the page is "Firefox Terms of Use"

I think its a good argument for using a Firefox fork.

That's the Firefox source code though, not necessarily the Firefox binary. A Visual Studio Code situation, basically.

I don't think they use a separate EULA for the binaries. I've found this:

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

Correction: they do have separate ToS for the official binaries (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/). Still, the "acceptable use" clauses only apply to Firefox services.

A bit of an issue is that the Firefox terms of use page [1] says "Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy", and the Acceptable Use Policy link points to their Acceptable Use Policy page regarding Mozilla services [2].

So either they're saying your use of Firefox, regardless of whether you want to use Mozilla services, must also follow the same acceptable use policy that your use of their services would, or it's a massively ambiguous way of saying your use of Firefox in combination with actual Mozilla services must comply with the policy.

If it's the former, their terms of use would be in conflict with the commonly understood definition of open source and free software licensing. If it's the latter, it's just poor legalese that fails to make its intent clear. (Interestingly, the Mozilla Public License does not seem to explicitly say that there are no restrictions regarding the use of the software for any particular purpose, although that is a commonly accepted part of the definition of free software and open source.)

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250228155328/https://www.mozil...

[2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/

Welp, they stopped being open source, then. From the OSD:

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

AFAICT there is no restriction on the application itself: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/eula/

The terms are very clear that they apply to Firefox the application itself (but not the source code if you compile it from scratch)

> 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.

> These Terms only apply to the Executable Code version of Firefox

But not the source code if you compile it from scratch

> [Continuing previous quote], not the Firefox source code.

However the source code excludes DRM components, and while the terms don't mention it I believe also some API keys

> In order to play certain types of video, Firefox may download content decryption modules from third parties which may not be open source.

(It's not clear to me that these terms are currently in effect. Certainly I haven't been asked to agree to them yet).

Ah, you are totally right! They do indeed have a separate ToS for the official binaries ("Downloadable software"), see https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/.

However, the "acceptable use" clauses that OP complains about are not part of these ToST Rather they seem to apply to Mozilla "services", which are related to Firefox accounts (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/services/)

Side note: strangely, there is no link to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/ on the main legal site (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal).

The ToS has a link to the Acceptable Use Policy and says that use of Firefox must conform to it.

You are right! That's really confusing since the acceptable use clauses themselves talk about Firefox services. Their lawyers need to get their shit together.

They've had a different license on the binaries vs. the source code for a long time.

Dillo is only sporadically developed. They even lost control of the dillo.org domain a long time ago, which pretty much spells amateur hour.

Ladybird would be a better choice, but it's not even fully baked yet. Coming sometime in 2026, supposedly.

I'd recommend the Brave browser for people concerned about recent bad news from Mozilla.

There are also Firefox forks such as WaterFox, LibreWolf and Floorp.

These seem like a more direct migration path for someone wanting to move off of Firefox.

I'm using LibreWolf for a few days. Only annoyance I've found is zooming in on a site(HN) does not stick. I'm pretty sure I don't have to zoom all the time on Firefox or Chrome.

I'd consider that a feature.

> Dillo is only sporadically developed.

I maintain it.

> They even lost control of the dillo.org domain a long time ago

New website is at: https://dillo-browser.github.io/

See https://dillo-browser.github.io/dillo.org.html and maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFJp8JDg8Yg or https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4100-resu...

> ... which pretty much spells amateur hour

Mozilla's management and legal has always been amazing when it comes to unforced errors. These changes are actually pretty normal, but they're also worded more scarily by being more encompassing than they need to be. Mozilla has always sucked when it comes to communicating with the outside world.

They know how to send cake at least

A shooting match between AMD and Mozilla would be a good day to be a cobbler

actually the funniest HN comment i've read in years, bravo

It took me several minutes, but you're talking about foot guns - brilliant reference. :-)

> Acceptable Use Policy links to https://www.mozilla.org/about/legal/acceptable-use/ which says "You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to[

So the text of the policy itself limits its scope to Mozilla Services.

But the purpose of that section is unclear to me. If it just means you have to comply with that policy when using features that use Mozilla services, why is that section necessary, since the license for the services should already apply.

If it is trying to mean that all the terms for Mozilla services also applies to any use of Firefox... that is really clumisily written, and also just generally terrible.

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

Yes

They're basically saying you can't use Mozilla VPN to get around state age restrictions for access to adult content.

Gives them an out to claim it's already not permitted on their platform and that they're not enabling crime in these states.

No they are not. They are saying exactly: "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"

these EULA agreements aren't worth any more than the paper they're written on

By the wording here there are many Netflix shows you could not watch using Firefox.

Why would you want to watch TV in your browser in the first place?

I hate to say this but I am again surprised not by the ToS update from Mozilla but by the people who are surprised that Firefox or Mozilla is doing this.

May be I am way too cynical than average people. What is being stated here is actually inline of what they think is right. They think watching Porn is wrong. Which is why you shouldn't use Firefox to watch porn, or anything else they deemed wrong.

And that is speaking from someone who joined the Firefox 1.0 New York Times Ad.

I guess we will all have to do it again. This time for Ladybird.

I might have differed with Brendan Eich on a few matters, but he was a good steward of Firefox in my book.

When Mitchell Baker took the reins, Mozilla became rather more heavy-handed towards us - the irony being that Waterfox was once proudly displayed on the Mozilla website under their "Powered By" banner.

I appreciate the constant existential wobble Firefox faces, but they've made some peculiar decisions as of late.

On one hand, they're finally implementing features users have been clamouring for ages (tab groups, vertical tabs and the likes) - on the other, rather odd policy choices.

I should point out, it seems daft to me when others suggest using forks with no well-established governance of their own, essentially shifting trust from an organisation at least answerable to certain regulations, to individuals with no proper framework or guidelines.

I've done my best with Waterfox over the years to have it represented by a proper legal entity with policies to follow; so if anyone is interested take a look.

Edit: FWIW I've written some more thoughts on it here: https://www.waterfox.net/blog/a-comment-on-mozilla-changes/

Hey, thank you for Waterfox! I'm using it a lot across all my machines. Well done!

Most of the other "forks" (e.g. Librewolf) are just patches on top of vanilla Firefox sources, so it's really not a whole lot to scrutinize by hand. I've skimmed at least most of the patch files personally just out of curiosity. In my distro of choice, NixOS, the sources are built by Hydra or my local machine, so I'm not trusting that their binaries match the source either.

That makes it a bit easier to trust, but it does run into the issue that it stops working if Mozilla hits a certain level of untrustworthiness.

I don't see how a regulated entity is better in any way than an individual.

We repeatedly see attacks on freedom and privacy by the people who are supposed to protect them, those so-called "regulators": chatcontrol, recent UK backdoor wishes, repeated French proposals to enforce DRM even on opensource. And I wouldn't even google Russia, China, or other less democratic states.

Regulated is probably worse than some anarchistic who-knows-by-whom software, but FOSS and auditable these days, tbh. Especially as everyone's audit capabilities grow day by day with AI. It's kind of good at grinding tons of code.

A heavily regulated entity with all licenses in the world might be more hostile toward users than some niche project.

> I don't see how regulated entity is better in any way than individual.

I feel you. Regulatory bodies have definitely fallen short in many cases, and we've seen concerning proposals from governments that threaten digital privacy and freedom. "Who watches the watchmen" seems incredibly apt nowadays.

However, I feel there's a fundamental difference between imperfect accountability and no accountability at all. With a legal entity governed by stated policies, users have:

1. Transparency about who makes decisions and how

2. Clear terms that create binding commitments

3. Legal mechanisms for recourse if those commitments are violated

4. A persistent entity that can't simply disappear overnight

Perfect? Not really. The ICO in the UK, for example, hasn't been amazing at enforcing data protection. But the existence of these frameworks means that accountability is at least possible - there are levers that can be pulled if someone can be bothered to.

In contrast, with software maintained by anonymous or loosely affiliated individuals, there's no structural accountability whatsoever. If privacy promises are broken, users have no recourse beyond abandoning the software.

FOSS and auditability are valuable safeguards, sure, but they primarily protect against unintentional privacy violations that might be discovered in code reviews. They don't address the human element of intentional policy changes or decisions about data collection.

I grow wearier by the day by the incessant calls to denounce and disown everything that isn't perfect.

> I feel you. Regulatory bodies have definitely fallen short in many cases, and we've seen concerning proposals from governments that threaten digital privacy and freedom. "Who watches the watchmen" seems incredibly apt nowadays.

Many regulatory bodies seem to constantly fall short of what they are supposed to do and then demand more money and powers to continue to fail at what they are supposed to do.

At what point would you accept that they maybe not fit for purpose and other solutions should be considered?

It maybe better to put resources into educating people on how to protect themselves from privacy breaches or minimise the impact.

The only thing I've ever seen from the ICO is a letter saying that if I have customer data I have to pay them a fee or pay a fine. Then I have to go through the inconvenience of telling them I don't have any, so I don't have to pay this fee.

I never see regulatory bodies demand money or powers. That's private companies and law enforcement, respectively. Regulators seem to be staffed by skeleton crews allowing them to take on one case a year, and the Google-tier customer support that entails.

> I never see regulatory bodies demand money or powers.

It happens quite often after a big failure. I've worked in government myself as a contractor and seen huge amounts of waste while completely failing what they were supposed to be doing. I left after a few months (I was asked to stay) because I was utterly disgusted by it.

> That's private companies and law enforcement, respectively.

Law Enforcement most certainly, but private companies that just isn't true.

Maybe if you are at some large corporation, however generally waste at large corporations I've seen is due to having to cancel projects because of situations changes e.g. I was working on a large project to that was to integrate the platform with Russia, that got cancelled for geopolitical reasons.

Most private companies aren't large corporations though and most work is done by a few super stars in the company.

Here's my question: in light of what Mozilla is doing, why don't other forks like Waterfox or Librewolf write a manifesto/contract saying they'll never sell your user data and won't turn "evil" (until they do, of course), and then decide to offer a paid version of their browser.

Two possible outcomes:

1. No one cares. No one pays for it. Nothing changes and nobody loses anything.

2. Enough people pay for it to keep the product healthy and the user-centric promise alive. The Internet is saved.

So why isn't anyone trying to replace Mozilla yet, with a more sane business model than living on the back of Google's fear of antitrust investigation? What's the worse that can happen?

Just sell a bonafide paid version alongside the free one, don't just rely on donations. There is a massive difference between offering a paid product and begging passers-by to spare some change.

>So why isn't anyone trying to replace Mozilla yet,

Because writing manifestos is easy and making a browser is proper hard work ?

My comment is targeted to the developers of Waterfox and Librewolf - they're already making a browser, so the hard part is done.

I'm wondering why don't they try to step it up further by selling a paid version alongside their open source product. What is the worst that can happen? Nobody pays for it and they continue making $0 just like they are happily doing now.

>the hard part is done

The hard part is the rendering engine and security. Both are done by the maintainer of the upstream source, i.e. Mozilla.

A paid version needs to offer something on top of it, which is usually in one way or another proprietary (such as a proprietary service).

Something like this is regarded as the enshitification process, so what typically happens is they (e.g. VC) want to do such after they lured in their users. Which Firefox has (or arguably: had), but Waterfox and Librewolf have not.

Good thought experiment.

It ain't the first drama or controversy with regards to Mozilla, who have had a long tendency which didn't occur recently (and included the time Eich was there). Nostalgia just makes people forget the bad.

It doesn't need to be proprietary or have an advantage. It just need someone willing to pay for it and a mechanism for doing so.

However, the default assumption is that all open source software is free to download and use.

Of course, there's the matter of revenue. If you get 100 dollars or 1000 dollars a month, is that significant to do anything useful for the project?

It doesn't even need to be an extra service.

I'd donate to Firefox for no additional service if they would guarantee my money only goes to the browser and not crypto or AI initiatives.

Note donate. As in one time payments at a time of my choice. They also try to push towards subscriptions when you hit that donate button.

I wasn't thinking about subscription but one time payment for a download.

It does actually seem pretty difficult to sell a browser; I don’t really see how anybody in their right mind would trust a closed source browser. So, it will be hard to make any parts of it proprietary. It isn’t impossible to sell open source software of course, but it does seem to be pretty difficult.

Rather, I wish we would stop accepting web standards that don’t come with reference implementations. Then, we could have a reference browser, and just run that. I don’t expect it to be performant, but I also don’t think browser performance matters much at all. Web pages are not HPC applications.

Currently we’re accepting the anti-competitive behavior of Google, just DDoSing the community with new standards to implement. This is the root problem. The fact that Mozilla is being killed by funding problems is downstream of the fact that maintaining a web browser requires multiple full time engineers.

https://buymeacoffee.com/waterfox wasn't hard to find that. (they also make money from search). Put your money where your mouth is and donate.

Librewolf doesn't want to deal with the administrative overhead of donations - which if they'd only get a few donations makes sense. It likely costs several hundred a month just to hire the accountants and lawyers needed to get the paper work right (you can do it yourself at cost of time doing other things. Often you can find accountants and lawyers who will donate their services, but it is still several hundred dollars worth)

Donating is not the same as buying. When you donate you are subsidizing every freeloader who doesn't donate. No thanks.

Everybody who doesn't donate isn't a freeloader.

Sure, I'm not counting those who contribute with their work. But if you don't contribute with your work or with your money – that's a freeloader by definition.

Exactly, so why not write them?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kagi is making the Orion browser, which you can pay for. I am a happy customer.

There's also Ladybird and several Webkit wrappers.

Orion works on Apple OSes only.

And is not open source

Kagi has started porting Orion to Linux [1]. They’ve stated that multiplatform support is just a question of resources [2].

You can contribute code [3] or money [4] to accelerate this process.

[1] per 2/25 subscriber newsletter: “What’s coming in 2025? … We started working on Orion for Linux!”

[2] https://orionfeedback.org/d/2321-orion-for-windows-android-l...

[3] https://help.kagi.com/orion/support-and-community/contribute...

[4] https://kagi.com/orion/orionplus.html

> You can contribute code [3]

How exactly? The link doesn't say. Orion appears to be closed source.

Hmm… Dug into it a bit deeper.

Kagi has several repos open for contributions [1] but Orion isn’t fully open source yet [2]:

> Is Orion open-source? > > We're working on it! We've started with some of our components and intend to open more in the future. > > Forking WebKit, porting hundreds of APIs, and writing a browser app from scratch has been challenging for our small team. Properly maintaining an open-source project takes time and resources that we are currently short on. If you would like to contribute, please consider becoming active on orionfeedback.org.

It’s not obvious to me which of their public repos are Orion components.

You can contribute translations [3], bugs [4], and docs [5]. Orion is based on WebKit, so you can contribute upstream there [6]. Oodles of open issues on their bugzilla [7]

[1] https://github.com/kagisearch

[2] https://help.kagi.com/orion/faq/faq.html#oss

[3] https://help.kagi.com/orion/support-and-community/contribute...

[4] https://help.kagi.com/orion/support-and-community/troublesho...

[5] https://help.kagi.com/orion/support-and-community/contribute...

[6] https://webkit.org/contributing-code/

[7] https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&product=W...

Ladybird is targeting a 2026 alpha release and last time I looked they lacked site isolation and other sandboxing measures: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/issues/57

This idea of having an moral alignment covenant I think is a great one. I'm fed up of being bait-and-switched by companies that get buy-in by being open and friendly, and then later they decide to kill the golden goose. If you're committed to FOSS then commit! Make it official so that people can trust that you're not going to enshittify later.

Open AI is still technically a non-profit. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Lol and they're as open as they're non profit.

Didn't you hear? After inflation there isn't a thing to be had for the paltry sum of mere eternal vigilance.

I'd pay for this.

The problem with paid versions, is that I don't really trust them either. MBA creep will happen and suddenly the TOS changes and my paid tier is going to have data collection and 'some' ads. I have to move to a high tier to avoid them. After a few cycles of that, one day all the tiers have data collection and ads.

Nothing is forever, but if you get a contract that prohibits their data play (collection, derivation, sale, all of it...) for a year or whatever, you're good for that long. That'd be enough for me.

Paid version have that problem somewhat less because they have a source of income that could dry up if they do. Paying someone means they are beholden to you as well, while free gives you nothing.

There is a reason I get my email via fastmail: they differentiate themselves on privacy features. I also have my own domain, so if fastmail does turn evil they know I can easially move away. I can run my own email server, but having done that I know it is harder than I want. There are other services I'd pay for if I could find someone I could trust to take a small amount of money. (small is key - plenty would do this for thousands, but I don't have that much free cash)

Don't get me wrong, the above is not very large, but it is still something.

Yes, this. When Mozilla (or any other corporation) demonstrates positive cashflow, the odds of MBAs and other vulture capitalists descending on it increase massively. And I have never seen customer agreements like this survive a buy-out: the new owners are never constrained by the promises (or even contracts) of the previous company.

> The problem with paid versions, is that I don't really trust them either.

Yes, Trust is at the foundation of the whole problem with the Tech Industry:

/1/ users (consumers) expect to be protected (not injured, not cheated, not surveilled) by the products that they use, and

/2/ the WWW is a monstrosity, the only software that we can in fact trust is never connected to the Internet (in other words, we don't trust any software)

Ergo...

Given /2/, we cannot trust any software, full stop. Even paying $CORP for its products is no guarantee of care, safety, and security.

and

Given /1/, which software do we accept? For OS, I prefer Linux by far. Even where usability is a little rough, I can exclude components that I do not want. When obliged to use Windows, I hold my nose and try as much as possible to foil all the bloat, anti-user patterns, and telemetry. I resent it all the way!

I prefer Firefox because I like the features and I insist on a small set of extensions: uBlock Origin, Multi-Account Containers, Privacy Badger. Google is a nasty surveillance ecosystem and Microsoft is a Spaghetti Western: by turns good, bad, and ugly.

If it will fund further development and maintain the current commitment to respect for privacy, I am willing to allow Mozilla to do some aggregate analysis of my browsing habits, just as I am willing to provide survey answers for products that I buy.

I don't love the aggregate analysis, but Mozilla needs to do browser business in the modern world.

The tech industry is just one rug-pull after another, but still people line up to try standing on the rugs!

1. We won't show ads in our product -> We'll show skippable unobtrusive adds in our free product only -> We'll show bottom-of-the-barrel scum ads in our free product only -> Those skippable ads are now not skippable -> We'll add a few vetted ads to the paid product -> We're going to shove ads onto every surface of the product we can find!

2. We don't collect or sell data about you -> We will collect limited data for "telemetry." -> We'll also collect some demographic data "to improve the product." -> We're going to collect everything we can get our hands on, but we won't sell it. -> We share your data with only vetted, trusted "partners." -> We share your data with everyone we do business with -> We firehose your data to anyone willing to pay for it!

It's the same progression every time, but users keep thinking this time it will be different.

You have to trust and/or monitor and apply active pressure to (something that virtually nobody does) the developers to some extent either way. The difference with a paid distribution is that there's at least some revenue that helps keep the project afloat, and with a free distribution there's not.

e.g. if you have a CEO/lead developer that's initially acting responsibly, but has a "bankruptcy threshold" beyond which they'll start selling your data, a revenue stream will stave that point off.

Semi-crazy idea: Add clauses which destroy half the company if they change the deal without a year of advance notice.

A modern equivalent to the 'usenet death penalty' is what's really needed. Without a grassroots method to censure and more or less permanently injunct and/or eject bad actors, you can't stop them from harvesting profit from the ecosystem to the exclusion of all other concerns.

I tip some projects that help me. It's been years since mozilla started to do evolve in ways that feel weird. I'd tip for a fork.

Question is: how many people would jump ship, and then how much money would that represent to pay devs.

https://buymeacoffee.com/waterfox

please do tip a fork. Right now this money seems to go to one person, but if that person starts making significant money we can probably talk them into hiring others to work on the project.

do you know if he has a paypal link ?

also, slightly related, people should look into / take inspiration tor browser. they're really great at releasing regular updates with high quality and features, surely they know how to handle this kind of projects

I didn't find one on the website, but maybe you can find it.

I'm personally not a fan of paypal so I look for alternatives, though I have no idea if this is a good one.

yeah paypal is not the greatest, iirc opencollective and liberapay were nice too

Kagi's Orion browser has a lifetime sponsor price of $150. That plus the Kagi subscription support its development.

It's currently macOS and iPad/iPhone only, but a Linux version is being worked on. I don't know their plans for a Windows version.

Which is great, but I'm not going to buy it until it's fully open source: https://orionfeedback.org/d/3882-open-source-the-browser/34

On one hand I agree, on the other hand, their claim that they are too small to support a large community of developers is not wrong.

Also, they claim "zero telemetry", so I don't really know what's going on, I know it's not leaving my computer.

I find that currently even if it's far from perfection, Orion is the lesser evil in the browser scenario.

What is a fair price? Developers are not cheap and you need to pay many of them every month (or get the equivalent in donated time). We can debate that number of course, so I'm going to start the discussion at $50/year. So your "lifetime sponser" is only worth 3 years (ignoring interest which isn't significant at this time scale).

Accounting for lifetime anything is hard (I don't know how to do the math, I'm sure people that do debate a lot of complex issues), but I'm again going to suggest that a lifetime subscription needs to be 20x the yearly fee to give a number to start the debate at.

oh absolutely, I agree. I don't think $150 is adequate to fund development of a browser.

Tbh while I have been using Kagi as search and their AI assistant a lot lately, their browser lacks massively in functionality. uBlock Origin has never been working for me, neither on macOS nor on iOS, and for me it just doesn't deliver enough to convince me to switch.

And it crashes constantly. Lots of other bugs that you start noticing when doing deeper things. I tried it for about six months. Just not a reliable or serious browser although very fast when it actually works.

Brave https://brave.com/ has been around for a while

https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/191yu33/why_is_bra...

I am at the point where I would happily pay an annual subscription on the order of a few hundred dollars per year just to avoid the headaches of today's browsers. Don't add new features, don't change the look of anything, just give me security updates and bug fixes. The only problem with this model is what we saw happen to the streaming services; paying to avoid ads just means your data is worth that much more. Paying for a higher-tier plan is a signal that you have a greater level of disposable income, and are hence more valuable to advertisers.

When this topic has been discussed on Hacker News in the past, it has also been pointed out that developing a browser with feature parity to Firefox or Chrome would be prohibitively expensive.

> I appreciate the constant existential wobble Firefox faces

The wobble seems to somewhat artificial. I'm having trouble believing Firefox could ever not be able to afford to continue browser development — there are way too many interests at stake. Google alone would have no choice but to bail Firefox out because Chrome can't be the only browser without being regulated to hell and back.

Google providing most of their funding is a fact, and that this provides a large amount of leverage over what Firefox can do is obvious. So how is the balancing act artificial?

For it to be self-imposed there needs to be an comparable amount of money ready to spring forth if Google ever pulled out that Mozilla is somehow keeping a lid on.

We are able to develop not just an open source kernel, multiple different distributions and a large suite of software. I would think that we could also develop a browser that doesn't need to spy on us.

we need to clean cut from mozilla.

do they still make ot worthwhile for developers? are any on the payroll still?

i think the community should mobilize to sign up for adopting A single fork* as the official fork and completely drop mozilla from existence.

* only criteria should be the fork that is most convenient for all the other forks to just point to instead of mozilla and continue to ship with their patches. and that one fork should have the minimum resources to respond to security disclosures in place of mozilla, nothing else as a requirement.

More importantly that fork should be what other forks base off of. Anyone can put a skin on a browser, but someone needs to do the engine. If every fork who wants an engine improvement goes to the one place there is some mass behind making the fork real, and the other forks can still to their skin if they think it useful. That one fork also means that when mozilla comes out with a new version there are enough hands to merge (at least until Mozilla diverges too far from the fork)

What about Servo? That's coming along and already has a company/coop behind it.

https://blogs.igalia.com/mrego/servo-revival-2023-2024/

> and already has a company/coop behind it

Considering what has happened to Firefox, that's not encouraging.

the first part of your comment is exactly what i said.

the second part, it looks like you ignored my whole comment.

there should be no more mozilla. if they exist by means of opensource contributors. i question if they have their own developers on payroll still? which might be slightly harder to replace.

They got more than $7B to build a browser.

"I appreciate the constant existential wobble Firefox faces"

I would also love to face $7B existential wobbles.

To put that number in perspective, drawing just 1% of that down each year and putting in a bank account earning interest would fund 100 engineers on $500k/year indefinitely.

They got it over many years with ongoing expenses because they had a browser, so comparing it with 7B lump sum is silly.

With the same argument you could probably retire, after all you already earned (years you've been working) * (average salary).

I don't know... do they even have 100 engineers? Or 20 and the rest is management and crypto and AI projects?

You are right, they got $400M+ a year.

I stand corrected, I would want to face the $400M+ per year existential wobble.

so if I've worked for 20 years from age 20 with a 100k average salary that's 2m

A 2m lump sump at 20 would allow me to live a lifestyle of a 20k/year life, not good enough.

Had I lived that over the last 20 years and saved the rest of the 100k in an 8% return fund then I'd have 4m today and could drawdown a 40k/year life at 1%.

Had I been given a lump sum of 100 times my desired salary though, or 10m, then sure, no need to work.

And depending on where you live, 40k might be barely scraping by now, and certainly not enough another 20 or 40 years down the road when you get to the point where you need daily care and medical services.

You may want to double check your math before you retire.

>so comparing it with 7B lump sum is silly.

It's not that silly, because that's a huge amount of money. What do you think the gross expense of building software like this should be? Because this may be the end of the line.

How much has Google spent on Chrome.

Big numbers without context are not useful outside of taking advantage of people who don't think critically.

I get what you're saying, but the reality is that it takes more than engineers to run a browser company. You'd have to find 100 engineers who can double as lawyers, designers, project managers, etc., and handle payroll, and HR, and after those 100 engineers end up doing the job of 300 other people, how much code are they writing? Your point about them appearing to waste money is taken, I'm just pointing out that it's not quite as bald-faced as that.

It doesn't take more than engineers to maintain an open-source browser, though. Why does it have to be a company at all? Remember Firefox? Firefox was literally just an act-of-love fork from some engineers from a dead acquisition by a dying dot-com era behemoth.

Put another way, does the Linux kernel or the Python language need to be run by a company, or will foundations does these jobs ok?

There are plenty of open source projects that are enormously successful without a single lawyer or project manager in sight.

Or you could literally outsource 90% of that and focus on what you actually should be, engineering and development of Firefox and other Mozilla products. These companies are bloated beyond belief and they have nothing to show for it, clearly it’s not working.

Yeah Mozilla at this point is really like the kid riding the bike and putting a stick in his own front tire meme. I had an interview with them years ago and even then it was clear they were wasting time on the most pointless bureaucracy while Firefox was languishing. Doesn’t google literally give them millions a year to exist? Like idk if I can even think of something more mismanaged than Mozilla.

Wikimedia tries but despite their best efforts Wikipedia is still unrivaled.

1. Is github the best place to report bugs / issues for Waterfox?

2. When (not in your lifetime obviously) Waterfox is broken, what canaries do you have deployed that we can archive now, like Mozilla's tell here?

3. What keeps waterfox afloat? Where/how do you accept funds?

4. How do I find a sync alternative or provide my own? Such that, I'm not reliant on Mozilla sync/backend? ... If none exists, how much would it cost for you to embed one? Would you accept a serious bounty for it assuming the focus is self hosted / no Waterfox backend services?

> When (not in your lifetime obviously) Waterfox is broken, what canaries do you have deployed that we can archive now, like Mozilla's tell here?

This is so melodramatic. It’s a set of patch files applied to the Firefox source tree. If an evil maintainer hatches a maniacal plan to collect user statistics and deletes the patch that removes telemetry or whatever, you can just `git revert`.

>it seems daft to me when others suggest using forks with no well-established governance of their own

Yes, it may be that we are jumping from the frying pan into the fire. On the bright-side this opens up an opportunity for a company, or a suite of companies, to fund an alternative browser. Such an entity might have Signal at its lead, or similar, who's mission is solely to "tighten up" the software stack on which it runs.

That sounds very much like Ladybird's mission.

Truly independent

No code from other browsers. We're building a new engine, based on web standards.

Singular focus

We are focused on one thing: the web browser.

No monetization

No "default search deals", crypto tokens, or other forms of user monetization, ever.

https://ladybird.org/

Rather odd policy choices is an understatement.

The context to keep in mind here is that Mozilla purchased an ad company back in June. They spent money on it, and they will move to earn a return on investment.

Absent that context this could just be another tone deaf policy choice that gets rolled back when there's enough heat, but with that context in mind it's far more likely to be them laying the legal foundation to incorporate Anonym's targeted advertising into Firefox.

From the Register article about the acquisition:

> Arielle Garcia, director of intelligence for ad watchdog Check My Ads, told The Register in an email that she's generally skeptical of claims about privacy-preserving ad technology.

> "For example, how do Anonym’s audience capabilities, like their lookalike modeling, jibe with what Mozilla considers to be 'exploitative models of data extraction?' The data that is 'securely shared' by platforms and advertisers to enable ad targeting and measurement have to come from somewhere – and there’s more to privacy than not leaking user IDs."

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/18/mozilla_buys_anonym_b...

This is not the first time Mozilla bought an ad company, last time it was Qlikz. And last time it cost them most of their German users. Wonder how many users they will lose this time.

> I should point out, it seems daft to me when others suggest using forks with no well-established governance of their own, essentially shifting trust from an organisation at least answerable to certain regulations, to individuals with no proper framework or guidelines

Individuals that care about these things have a far better track record than any business with employees, bills to pay, and investors.

Until that individual tires of the work, and then stops working on it completely or sells it to someone with less scruples or the project gets hijacked by malicious actor.

Aren’t the latter two more or less what happened to Firefox?

I think it's pretty much what happens to every thing

That just shows that trust in Mozilla has sunk below "random stranger" levels. IMO that shift is entirely deserved.

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...

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://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

previous discussion from mid 2023 on low firefox market share: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36759162

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

> 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

Don't worry, EU regulators (and other countries soon I suppose) are doing their best to fix that "bug".

Users sticking with Safari because it is the browser by default on iOS and macOS and they don’t know any better isn’t some sort of moral victory for privacy. (I notice that Apple has only recently been putting out TV ads praising their browser.) It’s almost like privacy through obscurity. And it’s like thanking Samsung for accidentally pushing against Chrome dominance on Android by forcing users to use Samsung Internet by default. Or thanking Microsoft for bundling Edge with Windows.

Users generally don’t know about Chrome’s privacy issues or what browser engines are. Apple simply hasn’t done enough to promote Safari and keep it a strong competitor against Chrome. Relying on their monopoly over their platform is them accidentally doing something good in the wrong way. You know why Chrome attracted so many customers when it first launched in 2008 or so? Because IE, and yes Firefox, were incredibly bloated and slow. Apple hasn’t presented a similar performance jump or another compelling reason for Safari over Chrome. And in open-source land, so many hotshot alt-browsers from Arc to Brave all use Blink. Orion uses WebKit, and it’s the only one. Apple clearly doesn’t care to promote it as a Blink alternative other than for their monopolistic mandate of WebKit on iOS.

Not to mention, they killed Safari for Windows. Apple apparently doesn’t care about privacy as much as HN thinks they do, see mini-thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39975620

Finally, the EU change should in theory be liberating for Mozilla, who can now provide a proper mobile Firefox for iOS that uses Gecko. Instead, from what I hear that isn’t even on the roadmap, because this is the state of modern Mozilla. Here’s hoping that Zen will instead bring Gecko to iOS.

It's not a moral victory, it is a pragmatic one.

If it was 98% chrome and 2% firefox that's basically 100% chrome.

Instead safari on ios (and to a lesser extent desktop) means the web isn't 100% chrome (or chrome skins like brave)

I’m arguing that Apple should strengthen Safari (and not just on iOS and macOS but to other operating systems owned by them) to make it more compelling to use for customers, and not rely on App Store guideline lock-in on iOS. But they clearly don’t care to, even when they could afford to. And they don’t care about promoting WebKit at all, because any alt-browsers running it would just provide competition for Safari anyway. As it stands it all seems very half-hearted and kind of lazy.

“The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

- T.S Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

Having a good web browser doesn't sell apps. That's why they don't care about it. They would rather you not have one at all and only have access to things via apps.

Precisely, and it's quite ironic given Steve Jobs' original envisioning iOS as chiefly relying on web apps. The App Store mandate of banning non-WebKit browsers is entirely technical in nature and self-serving; to prevent apps from including third-party JIT compilers[0], and maybe (like Flash was) other browser engines are viewed as unoptimized and insecure for the platform. It's doubtful that Apple actually cares about preventing Chrome's takeover of the web. This is not the guardian you are looking for.

[0] iOS Application Security: The Definitive Guide for Hackers and Developers by David Thiel, pg. 8-9

"Jailed Just-in-Time Compilation on iOS" by Saagar Jha https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22401146

> And they don’t care about promoting WebKit at all, because any alt-browsers running it would just provide competition for Safari anyway.

Check out webkit.org:

https://www.webkit.org/downloads/

Browsers for Linux are right there.

Sure, because KHTML and the Epiphany project predate Safari. Gotta mention it for legacy reasons.

GNOME Web (formerly Epiphany) switched from Gecko to WebKit in 2008, long after Safari was around.

Alright, that's fair. I was going to say "Well, that's just because there's no such thing as Safari for Linux" but at this point I'm somewhat losing the plot. I suppose ultimately it seems like Apple just cares about Safari for its own platforms and if others happen to use WebKit, that's nice but they don't care, it's not like they're seeking to impact the web like Google does.

For all of Apple's contributions for WebKit, you don't exactly see them doing something like this:

"Supporters of Chromium-based Browsers" https://blog.chromium.org/2025/01/announcing-supporters-of-c...

Huh. That WebKit site links to a Mastodon account that doesn't even say anything. Maybe it's for queries.

https://front-end.social/@webkit

WebKit has this: https://webkit.org/team/

https://www.igalia.com seems to the other major contributor. Sony is in there a little too.

https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/Companies%20and%20Organizations... too but that's 12 years out of date.

I would love to see a WebKit browser for Windows that's released, but https://docs.webkit.org/Ports/WindowsPort.html does exist too.

As for the Mastodon link, I'd ask https://front-end.social/@jensimmons

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.

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

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.

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.

Totally fair, tbh. Stealing data for that purpose has already been normalized, so it's a much easier sell.

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.

> 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?

> 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.

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.

It is really unfortunate.

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

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.

Ye that feels like trying to unmess a Windows install.

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.

>scam sites like amazon.com

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.

> For what it's worth, it can be removed in about 4 seconds.

Sure, but why should anyone have to?

Look, I hate ads as much as the next person.

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 have struggled to find methods as an individual to donate to Firefox.

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/donate/

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.

Same.

They should have offered us monthly services that made sense. Long long ago.

> 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.

See videos 4 months old or younger: https://www.youtube.com/@Lunduke/search?query=mozilla

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.

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.

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*

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...

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.

Your moralizing is tiring to read.

> Yes, it is.

No it isn’t

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.

Not at all.

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.

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.

[1] https://www.mellett-architects.com/en/portfolio/mozilla/ [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/places/2013/03/27/mozilla-paris-fin...

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.

> 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...

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.

Considering how hard it is to avoid dodgy counterfeit merchandise in certain product categories, that seems like an apt description.

https://www.onlyamazingseller.com/us.html

I've still received counterfeits that were sold and shipped by amazon.

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 think the worst is when you spend extra to buy from someone that isn't amazon and the item shows up in an amazon box with an amazon receipt.

Damn, really? That’s very troubling

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?

Amazon receives inventory directly from manufacturers. Third party sellers are significantly more likely to sell counterfeit products

Same reason you’re not likely going to find counterfeit goods on the shelves of a Target or Costco

they have a history of "comingling" goods that claim to be from the manufacturer but sometimes are not.

Amazon has been a scam site for years.

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.

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.

Scam site was probably not very precise.

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.

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.)

Honestly, I regard that as a plus.

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.

buying the thing doesn't do that.

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."

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.

It's hardly hyperbole at this point:

- 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.

Use LibreWolf. It's just firebox rebuilt and released with better defaults (no suggestions/spying)

Firefox has Mozilla facilitated services in it, and the license is saying " we get to use the data we see to help the service".

I don't think their AUP considers the browser software a service.

> 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/

> 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/

Isn't the internet for pr0n?

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.

IANAL

> You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to: Do anything illegal or otherwise violate applicable law,

No civil disobedience. Bad Mozilla! Bad, bad Mozilla!

>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.

From their blog post[1]. Smells like bullshit to me. You haven't had this license for the last 30 years and I've had no trouble browsing. What's changed that you suddenly need it?

[1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-terms-o...

Absolute bullshit.

I have no idea what I am talking about but could it be related to future AI related features that process user data locally and/or on their servers? At least that would make some sense to me.

“process user data locally”

Ha! As if slowing down browsing and your computer would have a good result.

Definitely.

There's a hidden motive, or utter incompetence in managing this side of the licensing and communication (either by beginners "better cover you ass" MBA or lawyers thinking, which could mean it's the result of some consulting firm operation).

Either way, the sudden change without proper communication is suspicious.

They are removing all the text about how they do not sell personal data as well.

My suspicion is that this is somehow related to Mozilla Anonym: https://www.anonymco.com/

If you haven't already configured "Firefox Data Collection and Use" and "Website Advertising Preferences" to not share data you should do so immediately.

What basic functionality are they talking about? Do they list it anywhere? Or is "basic functionality" the new "security reasons" for justifying every stupid rule or policy.

Tactical vagueness.

Mere speculations: they might have been contemplating the integration of their Orbit add-on into the browser. For that, they might need some extra legal fluffs.

They're covering their asses for something. That could also just mean that the old license/terms/privacy policy doesn't actually cover the data processing they're already doing (i.e. the opt-out telemetry, the account sync mechanism, etc.). If they publicly admit that their previous agreements didn't provide enough legal cover to allow their basic data processing, the class action lawsuit vultures would be all over them.

Something something malice something incompetence.

> What's changed that you suddenly need it?

That lawyers are spooked. That's all there is. California changed the rules and that made every lawyer in an organization that can't have a portrayed legal battle with the state very nervous. Nothing in the language says that they can do things that they couldn't do before.

> Mozilla can suspend or end anyone’s access to Firefox at any time for any reason, including if Mozilla decides not to offer Firefox anymore.

On what planet is that free, open source?

Can you imagine: "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) can suspend anyone's access to GNU Emacs at any time for any reason, including if the FSF decides not to offer GNU Emacs any more".

This likely refers to Firefox-the-product, not Firefox-the-open-source-project since there's no functional way to revoke your access to a mercurial checkout on your PC.

It's not unprecedented to have an open source license with revocation or termination clauses, either. I recall seeing ones that basically say "If you file a patent suit around this open software, your rights to use it are gone".

> It's not unprecedented to have an open source license with revocation or termination clauses, either. I recall seeing ones that basically say "If you file a patent suit around this open software, your rights to use it are gone".

Trying to take back the license based on use of the software, however, would make it not "open source", since that would be use restriction.

Mozilla has had their own dedicated license - the Mozilla Public License - for as long as I remember. My understanding is that FF and Thunderbird's source code are both still under this license.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/

Whether or not the MPL counts as 'open source' is a question for the people who steward that term, I guess. But they've not been using a Standard Open Source License for a while.

It's OSI approved which is about as official as 'open source' gets: https://opensource.org/license/mpl-2-0

- "It's not unprecedented to have an open source license with revocation or termination clauses,"

Yes, but aside from jokes[0] it's unprecedented for an OSS license to attempt to restrain the purposes for which end-users use software. That's incompatible with the definition of free software ("free", as in "freedom").

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSLint#License

- "Before that, the JSLint license[4] was a derivative of the MIT License.[5] The sole modification was the addition of the line "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil."

- "According to the Free Software Foundation, this previous clause made the original license non-free."

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

Let's not forget this post: https://web.archive.org/web/20210109032814/https://blog.mozi...

What’s wrong with transparency for advertisements? If you take offense to the “boosting” of news sites, I see the point but now we have Elon arbitrarily boosting his own content on X.

Not sure how you end up solving that issue other than perhaps a more transparent system like the original Birdwatch.

This post was what finally pushed me to switch after years of growing dissatisfaction.

Judging from nearby wording, this is primarily geared towards the Firefox account stuff as opposed to the Firefox browser.

(I'm not happy with Mozilla's decision to name everything Firefox, it makes things like this confusing.)

Yes, it seems like Mozilla has long had a problem of marketing getting in the way of communication. This keeps happening over and over gain. They make changes for marketing reasons, and then people are confused when they make policy changes because they've solidified their naming so much in the pursuit of brand recognition that their audience (rightly) is confused about what they're actually saying when they use that brand name to refer to a singular component of their offerings.

Mozilla is quite adept at own goals when it comes to privacy. If I were a Mozilla executive reviewing this policy, I'd send it back to the lawyers to make a lot more effort to be clear about what Mozilla will and will not do for stuff, in a way that is actually readable and understandable by lay people.

I have enough legal knowledge to know that most of this is basically necessary legal boilerplate because holy crap does the legal system suck, but Mozilla tries to pitch Firefox as a privacy-favoring alternative, and looks-like-everybody-else legal boilerplate absolutely undermines that pitch and more.

The problem is more that they actually do want to sell user data (albeit anonymized and/or aggregated), and they want to present themselves as a privacy-favoring alternative.

They literally say:

> 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).

Sharing data with partners and getting money in return (that's what "to make Firefox commercially viable" means) is selling user data. They want to change the definition of selling data to exclude what they want to do, but they don't get to decide what the meaning of words is.

So they're not as privacy-friendly as they want to appear, and that's a difficult position, and that's why this policy allows them more access to data than a naive reading would indicate.

Is the audience confused though or is the text simply ambiguous and thus should be interpreted defensively.

I think the fact I said they are rightly confused makes that explicit, does it not?

If that was the intention, the correct term would have been "Mozilla's services". The very first sentence of that document defines Firefox: "Firefox is free and open source web browser software".

As a non-legal word of advice: when reading legal text, always read defensively. Never assume good will when legal matters are concerned.

Here's the remaining paragraph:

> If we decide to suspend or end your access, we will try to notify you at the email address associated with your account or the next time you attempt to access your account

It seems like this is not about the browser itself, but rather about Firefox accounts. The wording is pretty ambiguous, though.

They’re referring to the binary release, in this case. You can compile Firefox from source at any time (but if you distribute it, you’re not allowed to call it Firefox due to trademark restrictions)

Open source does technically allow you to put restrictions on binary releases, as long as users can do whatever they want with the source code and compile it from scratch.

It really goes against the spirit of open source though.

The problem I have with these kinds of hot-takes is that they often don't tell the full story, and it's seemingly for the purpose of generating rage. For some inexplicable reason, this guy truncates the paragraph from the Terms of Use, repackaging the information without a key part of the final sentence: "....to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."

I'm not saying that this definitely makes a material difference, but it certainly changes the framing of it. The way he has framed it makes it sound like Mozilla has given itself carte blanche to do what it wants -- but the little caveat at the end of the sentence really does change the narrative a little bit. So why cut off a sentence half-way through it -- is it maybe to make it sound worse? For that reason alone, I can't take this guy seriously.

But Mozilla said what they will do. They also had very expensive rebranding to support it! They are now activist AI company that wants to fight disinformation, censor people and sell ads.

> "....to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."

We weren't born yesterday, and companies pull this shit all the time. This sentence is meaningless. You could use this sentence to justify literally any behaviour.

One _easy_ way to read this change:

> "... to help you interact with online content"

Selling your data to have more relevant ads could easily be justified as helping you interact with online content

> as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

Using firefox indicates that you want us to do this.

Or,

we made it an opt-out that is quietly rolled out in an update.

No. We are talking about legality. Quote the whole bloody thing. If you don’t get to say “I picked out the bit I like” in court, then you don’t get to do it here. If you’re so right, then it’s not worth taking out in the first place.

Yes exactly this -- thank you for getting my point, I'm a little tired of internet people misunderstanding things. I'm not even disputing that Mozilla is trying to pull a fast one on all of us, I'm purely questioning the framing by the "journalist" this post links to. To be taken seriously, quote the whole thing -- if it really is a case that the last part of the sentence is meaningless, then leave that in your quote, and address that in your wittering diatribe, explaining to all of us why it's meaningless. Without that, all I see is someone cherrypicking half-sentences and trying to mislead people.

While I'm by no means defending Mozilla here, one quick look at the linked twitter user's history shows that generating rage and taking text out of context is their modus operandi and very much intentional.

I'm bummed that out of all the posts on the topic, this is the one that gets to stay on the frontpage.

Quoting the whole bloody thing is meaningless when the added bit adds nothing to the context. Nothing about the "added context" says they won't sell the data. If anything it just improves the case that they are going to sell the data.

None of this matters -- quote the whole sentence if that part of the sentence adds any kind of modifier or caveat to what came before -- which this did. Again, not saying it makes a material difference, but I just find it weird when people decide to "quote" things and leave out the whole thing. It tells me that they don't mean well.

Correct, that quote is very typical corporate language that includes selling your data to advertising companies to ""help users discover new experiences which align with their interests"" or some other weasel speak. People acting like that language meaningfully changes the meaning are either painfully naive or think the rest of us are.

If it's simply a matter of principle, quoting the full section with no abridgements because we're larping like we're in a court room or something, whatever. But get real, that section doesn't make Mozilla look any better.

That bit pretty much sounds like "by using the software you're agreeing to whatever"

No it doesn't. Most businesses finish that sentence with "...for any purpose" not "... to help you navigate the web"

It will still be interpreted to mean "...for any purpose" by Mozilla somehow.

For me it sounds similar to Google‘s phrasing that they use to make people activate personalized ads: „used to deliver better, more helpful experiences“

How does them selling my data help me navigate the web?

In their holier than thou attitude (shared by some here) you have to pay to do anything. And that's how you pay to use the web with their browser.

By serving you relevant ads!

"...interact with online content" is pretty much all encompassing.

Yes and this phrasing is used in many other products, like credit cards. Additionally, the fact that the phrasing can be interpreted as such means that it will be interpreted as such and so makes Mozilla's new Terms unacceptable to anyone who values their privacy or data.

Im fully on board that people should try to include or link as much of a story they can so that I can form my own opinion. There are way too many times that I read a reasonable take, then you read the original source, only to find that the reasonable take is completely off base.

In this case I don't have the reaction, but I will agree that in general its a good idea to include more rather than less.

The redacted part here looks to be a GDPR boilerplate for consent. GDRP require consent to be specific. In order to do so the lawyers of Mozilla seems to have used industry standard phrasing to comply with the law, such as "to help you navigate, enhance experience, and interact with {INSERT SERVICE/PRODUCT}".

For those with some interest in legal history, there is similar stories in other boilerplate texts that consumer get exposed to. I always find the background to the WARRANTY DISCLAIMER text to have a fairly funny historical background that is a few centuries old legal case regarding a mill axle. The current form we see now was created as the first example in a list from US regulation guidelines (which reference the mill axle case). A company can use any other form given in that guideline, but as it happens, everyone just jumped on the first example, slapped it onto stuff and shipped it. Lawyers know it is valid for US trade regulation and that was apparently enough for the rest of the world.

You are kind of answering your own question here...

I generally wait before jumping on the outrage-train for this reason, but two things stand out:

- Mozilla explicitly deleting "we don't sell your data" statements across their documentation

- Following up to criticism that the statement is vague, bullshitty and open to interpretation with statements that are even more vague, bullshitty and open to interpretation.

By now, they've had time to notice that something is not right and that they need to make a clear statement, and they haven't taken the opportunity.

They didn't delete it. Go to the github diff they reference and check. It's still there. They just removed it from one of the JSON files but people here aren't actually checking facts, they're just jumping on the hate train.

See: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...

People love to hate Firefox. Reinforces their reasons for using the shiny big brands.

at this point, it’s Mozilla that loves to hate Firefox and its users, not Firefox users themselves

So where is that paragraph found on their website?

The relevant section isn't what you linked to - scroll down to the change in structured-data-firefox-faq.html

Here is the previous version of the FAQ: https://web.archive.org/web/20250128115051/https://www.mozil...

Here it is now: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/faq/

All three statements about not selling your personal data are gone.

Good point. I checked the page it should be on, and the switch has disabled it. I checked also https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#lawful-bases and it smells like Firefox is selling its users out.

Specially bits like this: "This data may be shared with our advertising partners on a de-identified or aggregated basis."

Apologies for my previous defense of Firefox. I can't find a reason to defend them anymore.

I can’t take people seriously who think the little frilly PR bandaids that companies slap on these types of statements mean much of anything at all.

For example, “we promise”.

are you replying to wrong post? the linked tweet says:

> Mozilla has just deleted the following:

> “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. "

That tweet is 100% correct, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43209001 for two links, all references to "not selling personal data" are gone. There is no missing context or truncation here, and this says nothing about terms-of-use (except commit message but that's immaterial)

So, what do you read the end of that sentence mean? Because the way I read it is worse:

> to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."

I don't read that as a caveat, so I'm assuming it means something different to you. To reword slightly and hopefully show how that sentence is coming across to me:

> As you have indicated by using Firefox you have given us the right to...

I am, unfortunately, looking at alternative browsers because of this. Firefox was the best fit. Big enough that they could reasonably keep up but not one of the corporate browsers that I have 0 trust in. It wasn't perfect but it was better than chrome for sure.

Browsers are like cars now. It is becoming impossible to buy a new(er) car and have your privacy respected, but it is unreasonable to expect any normal life (at least in most of the US) without using cars or browsers. So, things like cars and browsers should have strong protections because there is no avoiding them. Unfortunately that is obviously not the case. You should never be forced to sign an adversarial TOS to earn a living or live a normal life, but here we are. TOS that are effective without you even reading them, that say they own you, everything you type, everything you do, that change and bind you without your consent or knowledge and what are you going to do about it? Given any reasonable choice I will take it, but the reasonable choices are dwindling.

LibreWolf? It's Firefox without the Mozilla branding

I've been using LibreWolf as my daily driver for a couple of years. Highly recommended! Available for Windows, MacOS and Linux. Ranked as the highest for privacy protection in a 2022 study: https://www.ghacks.net/2022/06/15/privacytests-reveals-how-y...

Occasionally, you might get a broken website but to fix it you just click on the shield icon and lower the privacy settings.

Any recommendations for an Android Firefox replacement?

I am using IronFox (on GrapheneOS). But I don't really use my phone for browsing the internet very often.

Fennec on F-Droid

I use https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser for its ability to install any extension, including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_Paywalls_Clean. If you don't need that, I'd recommend IronFox because of its explicit security goals.

I switched to LibreWolf over this, and it's good so far. A couple of things:

* I had to switch off the fingerprinting protection. For me, running at 60 FPS and without automatic CSS dark mode detection isn't worth whatever fingerprint resistance it provides. Sadly, you don't have granular control over RFP, you have to turn it off entirely.

* It doesn't have Google Search available by default, but it turned out to be fairly straightforward to add. DuckDuckGo is just too slow to load for me compared to Google, and their AI integration is stupid. Google doesn't have AI answers and text fields like DDG does in my region.

* Their implementation of container tabs don't seem to support automatically opening certain URLs in certain containers, which is annoying. Maybe I can get the official container tabs extension working, but I kinda wish LibreWolf either had proper container tabs or left it out in favour of the Mozilla extension.

Otherwise, it seems great. I found it hard to pick between all the different Firefox forks and rebrands, but LibreWolf seemed like one of the more serious ones and I don't regret going with it.

honestly, at this point it makes sense to use vanilla Firefox for you, that offers exactly what you need and it's still quite good about privacy.

I agree, which is why I used vanilla Firefox until now. I don't want or need the additional privacy features LibreWolf (or other forks) offer.

But I don't want to use a browser from a company which gives themselves a broad license to do whatever they want with whatever data I enter into the browser. It's probably just a matter of time until Mozilla exercises this right to send stuff I enter into Firefox back to Mozilla for ad targeting and AI training purposes, and I don't want that. I have some faith that the LibreWolf team will notice such features and rip them out when they appear.

"But I don't want to use a browser from a company which gives themselves a broad license to do whatever they want with whatever data I enter into the browser"

As this discussion made abundantly clear, that's not what it says at all.

Nothing I have seen makes that clear at all. In fact, from what I can see, the ToS makes it very clear that they are giving themselves a license in the way I describe:

> 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.

Mozilla is clearly planning to do something which requires them to have given themselves this license, and I'd rather not be on Firefox when we figure out what that is.

I switched because of this. Day 1 so no opinion yet.

Brave is fantastic.

You can always buy old cars. Can’t use old browsers unless you really like getting pwned.

Icecat is the GNU build of the open-source base of Firefox. I think that's the best bet until Ladybird is ready for daily diving.

Fennec on Android.

> 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?

Sounds like a license to train on your data.

This is exactly it. They're covering their bases as they roll out AI garbage no one asked for.

> 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!

This made me look into Firefox forks/alternatives:

Librewolf [1] seems to be fairly active (last commit on Codeberg was last week) and up-to-date with the latest upstream releases (mirrors FF's versioning scheme and matches their latest). Has a nice focus on privacy and no-telemetry.

Floorp [2] also looks active (last commit last week), also claims focus on privacy. Based off FF's extended support releases so it may lag behind in latest features.

Waterfox [3] is also active (last commit a few hours ago), also big focus on privacy, but it uses a custom versioning scheme so I can't tell how closely it follows FF's releases.

GNU IceCat's [4] latest release was in November 02023, so it looks like it may be abandoned.

Does anyone have any experience with any of these, good or bad? With all of them more or less promising the same things it's hard to tell which one may be the better option.

1: https://librewolf.net/

2: https://floorp.app/en

3: https://www.waterfox.net/

4: https://icecatbrowser.org/

Iceweasel has been around for sometime:

https://github.com/adonais

https://sourceforge.net/projects/libportable/files/Iceweasel...

Forks can be healthy for a number of reasons =3

Oh, I thought IceWeasel had been renamed to IceCat, but the repo you linked to has recent activity and calls it IceWeasel, now I'm a bit confused. Glad to see it's active though.

The Gnu Icecat is still active as well.

Compiling Firefox without telemetry is just a flag, as we discovered while doing something over the debugging interface not available in the Windmill Test Framework. Tip: running profiles off a ram drive reaches ludicrous speeds.

Tor Browser also works: https://www.torproject.org/download/languages/

Best of luck =3

I use librewolf as my daily driver after the Firefox "privacy preserving ad measurement" SNAFU last year [1,2]. The fingerprint resistant and anti-canvas functions were different, but I got used to them and I really appreciate the added features.

With that, having everything turned on can break some sites. If a site wasn't all that important and isn't respecting privacy, I just won't visit it. Otherwise, I'll keep another browser around just in case I absolutely must for business or something else.

When Firefox began opting people in by default to leak data to advertisers, it felt like the beginning of the end to me. After looking into canvas and other fingerprinting capabilities, it's somehow still surprising and alarming to me how far companies go to invade our privacy.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40971247 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40974112

Try going to gitlab.com with librewolf, you'll see a white page with no content. Librewolf is blocked off from half the internet that uses cloudflare, so it's kind of a useless browser.

Every browser that's not a majority browser will be associated with these kind of blocking risk. I can't risk access to my financially important accounts, nobody can. So to me this is not a feasible alternative.

The only way to build a browser is to act like one of the others, and to behave like one of the others. Can't use brave, given their history, but farbling approach is the most sustainable solution in my opinion.

My remaining hope is that ladybird will actively deny implementing web standards that can be used for fingerprinting.

Something as simple as overflow:hidden is used on every website to force people to get tracked by having to activate JS, and things like this should be something a web browser should protect its users from.

We need a CSS engine that denies setting these kinds of things, because JS fingerprint prevention isn't enough if every website breaks because of it.

If you want a headstart, I tried forking webkit and do exactly this. Project is unmaintained because couldn't work fulltime on it without funding. Maybe somebody else picks it up? [1]

[1] https://github.com/tholian-network/retrokit

This is purely FUD per my experience. I use librewolf on websites behind cloudflare and with plenty of js. They all work just as well as they did in Firefox.

Librewolf sends Firefox in the user agent, and you can toggle Firefox "features" on if a website you use requires them.

Not trying to convince you to switch to it--you do you. Just sharing with someone who might be reading this thread and that hasn't tried librewolf.

The amount of re-edits of your comment are a bit off the charts.

Why do you think I have a personal stake in this? Why do you feel personally attacked by my comment?

I am sorry if I somehow personally offended you!? Not sure how I could've phrased my comment differently.

Yeah, I thought it was unnecessarily confrontational and tried to make it clear that's not my intent.

I'm not offended in the slightest, just a very happy user who wants to encourage other people to try librewolf for themselves.

Yea, I just went clicking all over gitlab.com and their own repository without issue on LibreWolf.

> Try going to gitlab.com with librewolf, you'll see a white page with no content.

> If you want a headstart, I tried forking webkit and do exactly this

> [1] https://github.com/tholian-network/retrokit

I just opened that page on LibreWolf without any problems.

Lab and hub are different words.

https://gitlab.com/explore works fine with my LibreFox as well.

> gitlab.com with librewolf, you'll see a white page with no content

It works fine, even with JS disabled.

you should add zen browser[1] too, i tried some from your list, librewolf breaks some websites (online banking doesn't work) floorp is a good one, but in my experience zen is better.

1: https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop

thanks for the research. I just quickly tried them all. I have an older mac with older FF. Results: librewolf and waterfox wont run (10.15 min) and the floorp (react) website crashes. IceCat runs! and seems to use LibreJS for javascript, so my first few tests failed because you have to individually allow scripts per site. I quite like that idea! although my quick test of breakout (HN yesterday) runs slow/stuttery. A couple other sites are throwing up js console errors, so I need to play around with it more. It did enable me to access the floorp website, but also 10.15 min. I guess this helps me migrate faster to my asahi setup, although I've been trying to keep that one away from daily browsing and the little web of horrors.

I wonder if this FF change is pre AI infection, which might end up affecting these other builds too. Pretty disappointing after such strong privacy promises for so long, whatever the reason for these changes.

> I have an older mac with older FF. Results: librewolf and waterfox wont run (10.15 min)

That's just because Firefox itself requires at least macOS 10.15. IceCat only works because it's based off of Firefox ESR; once the next ESR comes out IceCat won't work either.

There is a fork of Firefox (which is in fact the web browser I use) that adds back support for older versions of macOS. At the moment, it supports all the way back to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. However, this is all it does; it does not contain any additional privacy features above and beyond mainline Firefox. However, I guess it technically isn't a Mozilla product, so you won't need to agree to Mozilla's Terms of Service.

https://github.com/i3roly/firefox-dynasty/releases

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

Taken literally it means that when I use Firefox to upload a file to a customer's web site Mozilla is getting that file too, which does not seem likely. They could get a copy of the text I'm typing right now in Firefox or it means that the browser could do some local processing on those data. But if the results of that processing would stay local why would they ask the permission? It's not that emacs, vim, grep, sed, awk etc have to ask me the permission to use the information I'm inputting into them. So they are definitely sending information back home or they plan to do it.

The point becomes how to block any calls from Firefox to Mozilla. Note that don't have a Firefox account because I never trusted that the data in transit from them would stay private. I'm not logged in into Google as well. Maybe I have to finally install a Pi Hole and route all my traffic through it. Hopefully Blockada will take care of that for my Android devices.

I have seen discussions of this sort of wording so many times over the years. My understanding is as follows (and I could be wrong, but this is my understanding of why that wording is used). If you use Firefox to upload a file to a website then, legally speaking,the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file. Because of Draconian laws in many countries, to publish a file you have to have a legal right to the file, therefore Mozilla have to establish that if you use them to upload a file that you are granting them the legal right to publish that file. It has to be worldwide because you may be uploading to anywhere in the world.

Perhaps the legal situation is different somewhere, but I would think the browser isn't acting at all. It has no agency; it's just software running on my computer, following instructions I give it. Mozilla has no agency in that situation either; the software is running on my computer, not theirs.

The new terms grant Mozilla, the corporation a license to do things with my data.

The question isn't what you (who presumably understands technology) would think. The question is what every court in the world would think.

But the more important question then is: what else will the courts think this language allows? Probably Mozilla could argue they need to store those uploads and analyze them under those conditions.

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

Now, it does seem strange that Mozilla have suddenly added this when they haven't had it previously. Personally, I deem it highly unlikely that they are planning on monetizing our content in some way; whilst they have made some strange decisions sometimes I don't think they are completely stupid. Mozilla is in a precarious position right now, they are only managing to scape by on user trust and if that disappears they are finished. I'd like to think they are not foolish enough to do something that would catastrophically erode that trust, and selling user data to advertisers would kill them.

Having thought about it a bit more now, I have to wonder if they have dreamt up some other mad scheme, like Mozilla Cloud Storage, or something that would require such wording in the terms. Hopefully, it's just a wording update to protect themselves. I guess we will find out in due course.

[edit: fixed a typo.]

I think it's likely they're planning to more deeply integrate some sort of cloud services, perhaps with a paid tier. I don't want that either; stuff like that is fine as an optional extra, but problematic when joined at the hip to a browser.

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

By such logic, operating systems would need a disclaimer like this, as would keyboards, screens, etc.

> If you use Firefox to upload a file to a website then, legally speaking,the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file.

If that's the way the law is interpreted, it's silly.

The "publisher" in this case would be the website the file is uploaded to. If the website doesn't make the file public, then they're not a "publisher".

The browser is merely acting as a tool to do the uploading. Firefox shouldn't be held liable for the contents of the file any more than any other web client. If it did, tools like cURL should be liable in the same way.

Somewhere along the way web browser authors forgot that they're merely building a web user _agent_. It's a tool that acts _on behalf of_ the user, in order to help them access the web in a friendly way. It should in no way be aware of the content the user sends and receives, have a say in matters regarding this content, and let alone share that information with 3rd parties. It's an outrageous invasion of privacy to do otherwise.

>If that's the way the law is interpreted, it's silly.

It's hard to tell from your comment who exactly is the target of your complaint. You're not wrong that this interpretation might be silly, but that's not out of the ordinary in carefully using terms of art to insulate from legal liability.

And the issue of peculiar terms of art is leagues different from the issue that everyone else seems to be raising that it represents an intent to abuse private data. Those are two completely different conversations, but you're talking about them here like they're the same thing.

They could restrict the language to that specific legal situation, couldn't they?

So why doesn't my backpack come with a mandatory TOS that I won't e.g. put illegal drugs in it and bring it across the border? Why is Firefox any more liable if I used it to publish illegal content on the web than the backpack manufacturer would be if I used it to smuggle illegal content across a border?

Because the legal system around backpacks are better understood. The more common something is the less legal paperwork there is. Judges understand backpacks and have for hundreds of years. Many judges don't understand technology. As a result when selling a backpack you can rely on the court's understanding and thus not have to account for every possibility. Meanwhile because the court might not understand technology you have to account for every possible trivial thing.

for example - app that downloaded entered urls, something even simpler than a browser, hit with copyright takedown in 2023: https://torrentfreak.com/google-bans-downloader-app-tv-outfi...

I don't think a TOS would have helped you with Google's shoot first, ask questions later takedown policy.

Pretty sure this isn’t a legal thing, this is Google going “we got a takedown notice from this company and aren’t about to read it or hear your opinion, in order to protect ourselves legally”

> the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file

If that's all is required to be a publisher then ftp, scp, rsync and hundreds of similar tools are also publishers of the files they transfer. However they don't have Terms of Service like the one Mozilla is giving to Firefox.

That’s interesting, do you know of any cases that were decided on that basis? It seems downright ridiculous but then the legal system is pretty dumb, so…

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

That's exactly what Firefox originally claimed was a stark difference compared to Chrome: "use us and you can finally be safe and not need to play cat and mouse anymore"

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

At this point my trust in Mozilla is so low that I could almost believe they intent to run the text I download and upload through an LLM nanny that can scold or ban me if anything offends its Californian sensibilities.

> 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.

> You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to [...] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/

“Californian”??...

Call it what you like, "San Francisco techy", ""woke"" if you like trendy pejoratives, whatever. I don't care what you want to call it but I won't play along if you intend to say that regional value system is actually uniformly embraced across this country, let alone across the same globe Firefox users are spread across.

In the social sphere Mozilla resides in, voting for a socially conservative political party makes you a fascist which puts you at odds with Mozilla's acceptable use policy if you talk about your politics using Firefox. If Firefox users are supposed to be bound by that document, as judged by Mozilla, that's a problem.

Not everything in the world is about political party your circle disagrees with. Given trends I'm sure Firefox will do something stupid like you're afraid of in short order. But this isnt that, so until then you should save your manufactured culture war fear mongering.

sigh, I feel bad for you... and us Californian techys... this us vs them toxicity is so demoralizing

Not everything is, but Mozilla specifically has been more loud in its support of various political causes most of the world has no interest in than in developing a good web browser for about a decade now, so GP's reaction seems quite appropriate in this case.

Then you’d call Mozilla overly political, not “Californian”

There are many styles of being political, different value systems and approaches to pursuing those values. Mozilla's flavor of political can reasonably be called "Californian". That's not even derogatory so there is no reason for you to act bent out of shape about it. I could have called them woke libtard cryptofacists.

In your estimation, could Brandon Eich explain and defend his political beliefs using Firefox and/or a Mozilla service without running afoul of Mozilla's acceptable use policy, as judged by Mozilla?

I think they would say his beliefs "Threaten, harass, or violate the privacy rights of others".

Any ideological purity test for the use of Firefox is unacceptable. They can have that for their online services if they like, but having such restrictions on the use of Firefox itself is a violation of the essential freedoms of free software.

I think you misunderstood my point. Was that intentional? My assertion was the issue under discussion isn't a political one, and there's no reason to think there is^1. Thus injecting the political issue you're upset about is unreasonable and encourages us vs them fighting; instead of us being on the same side here and resisting Mozilla's attempt to sell user data to AI companies. Because that's all this is about, they want permission to sell your Firefox data to "Big AI".

^1: I do think that you desperately want believe this is about how Firefox is coming after your beliefs, and while maybe they have, or maybe they might. This isn't the step before that, which makes your comment a weird distraction.

> Not everything in the world is about political party your circle disagrees with.

http://web.archive.org/web/20240511204242/https://blog.mozil...

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.

I'm not familiar with this change, do you have a link?

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]

[0] https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growt...

>Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you, and we don’t buy data about you.

Is still present on https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/

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):

*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...

Indeed, it was updated from the time I posted my first reply and now.

At the time I copy/pasted, the answer was a single line (as shown in your archive link).

Good to know, thanks!

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 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...

Nice, thank you again!

I use librewolf with privacy badger on macos (best browser) except when I have to run on battery - then its Orion (also the best browser).

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.

The overwhelming majority of Mozilla foundation's revenue is from Goggle corps.

For making goggle the default search engine.

So they aren't really "in contrast to tech giants" in any way.

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.

> I use a Firefox fork too

If not LibreWolf then what? The rest seem out of date or worse than Firefox in some way.

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).

been using mozilla since i was a teenager and now i'm an old family man...

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...

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.

Link directly to the Github commit: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b..., which links to the following issue: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/issues/16016

There are a bunch of locked Google docs linked in the issue, probably internal privacy guidelines.

I can't say that this surprises me, perhaps they are looking for alternate revenue streams in case Google cuts them out?

To HN: Will you be quitting firefox over this change, or is there simply no better place to leave for?

Yeah, I've been a Firefox user and Mozilla supporter for approaching two decades now, even used to donate monthly to the foundation. I'm furious over this. I installed LibreWolf on my personal machines last night and expect to uninstall Firefox after work today.

I'm a happy LibreWolf for years. The transition from FF to LibreWolf is seamless. And you won't be surprised anymore nor annoyed when Mozilla does moves like that.

I probably will, actually. It was good to have an ally with their stature and history.

It's seamless-ish.

Sometimes the more aggressive privacy settings stop some sites from rendering properly unless you add canvas exceptions, for example Openstreetmap and UK National Rail.

I'm happy to make the effort.

/Librewolf on desktop, Waterfox on mobile.

"No better place to leave for" seems an apt way to put it.

I think/fear that in the long run, there will be fewer and fewer ways to participate in activities and communities on the web on your own terms, as only a vetted, allowlisted set of client builds (that may be "open source" on the tin, but by that point it is effectively meaningless) will be able to pass CDN "anti-abuse" restrictions. It will not be a better web, but it sure will be more profitable for some.

> No better place to leave for

This is an amazingly common psychological trap. You wouldn't believe the number of people, men as well as women, who end up in the therapy chair, at the police station or at the hospital A&E, because they are "stuck" with a violent and abusive partner.

The modern tech landscape is all about abuse. People use fancy names for it like "enshitification" or "rot economy" - but at the end of the day it's about domination and abusive relations.

A very common position here is that the victim sees "no alternative".

And... surprise surprise, where they get that idea from is the partner, friends, group/organisation that is also toxic and colludes in gas-lighting and co-abusing the victim into a limited worldview.

Once the victim spends any amount of time outside that mental prison, they regain perspective and say... "Oh, so I actually do have choices!".

This is a poor analogy. There are thousands of people to meet and bond with, so you do have a choice. But there are less than a handful of fundamentally different browsers.

Derivative browsers don't really count here, as they depend on the upstream to not hurt them. For instance, if the parent project completely removes something essential for privacy, it it a lot of work to keep it in your code. The Manifest v2 removal is an example. Over time, when other changes are built on the removal, this creates an increasingly high burden. Eventually, the child project is starved. You simply do not want to be in this position.

I don't think the analogy is weakened by bringing numbers/quantity into it. The dynamics work for any number of principals. Take a 3 player game, where Alice trusts Bob but is better off with Bill, however Bill is not visible to her because of chaff/disinfo/noise broadcast by Bob or Bob's confederates.

It's not what Mozilla does, it's about what Mozilla says/claims.

Mozilla is a deceptive/defective entity here.

So, where is the better Bill of browsers that Mozilla is preventing me learning about?

The numbers matter because they affect whether there actually is a better option.

What happens when Alice is with Bill, but Bill is also abusive to a lesser extent? And "don't have a browser" is not an option.

You only need one better browser to switch to. I guess you're getting at a Hobson's choice [0], that there really is only one browser and all others are copies of the same harmful set of properties, so moving isn't worth the overhead (switch cost is a factor in this that we often ignore). To my mind, there must be at least one browser out there that is "less undesirable" than that case. Just iterate your way into your comfort zone.

So often arguments on this axis come down to how much convenience are you going to give up for the trust relation you desire. We get stuck if we mistake convenience for necessity thereby bringing absolutes into a continuous trade-off problem.

I wouldn't say there's only one, but there are two main clusters for anyone not on a mac, and a handful of teams large enough to do a solid job of running their own variant. There's precious little iteration to do.

I'm not a typical user [0] but am very mindful of the typical user. Maybe I'd not realised how much the browser space has shrunk and that the experience of "browsing", the abstract task, now breaks down into more specialised tasks.

I'm thinking lately the myth of the "browser" and "web" as coherent data spaces is something even Sir Tim gave up on, right? If the centre cannot hold constellations of specialised clients (which are already "apps" in a sense) look like enduring in the near future at the expense of interoperability and standards. The "best browser" will be the one that strikes the most deals with the parts of the network people want to connect to. It's just like the best "game console".

That seems really bleak for the Internet qua people's network.

No doubt http/s and the worlds of port 80/443 will endure eternal, but the "Universal" search and information space the pioneers and then proto-Google aspired to now seems so remote that the idea of a "browser" is itself a little ridiculous to beards like me. I think today the "browser" has become a clique of PKI suites and CAs, at the behest of banking and retail, backed by broken but well meaning regulation, and unwittingly creating this monster we still call "The Browser". anyway, peace.

[0] I use w3m for 99% of my daily drive and a sandboxed degoogled chromium for any of the "messy stuff"

> This is a poor analogy. There are thousands of people to meet and bond with, so you do have a choice. But there are less than a handful of fundamentally different browsers.

This is because users decided that they want a browser that spies on them.

At least in Germany in hacker and IT-affine circles, you will often be frowned upon if you voluntarily use Chrome or Edge (except if you have a really good reason).

> At least in Germany in hacker and IT-affine circles, you will often be frowned upon if you voluntarily use Chrome or Edge (except if you have a really good reason).

That's largely the same here, at least for anyone worth their salt. But how does that matter when Mozilla's pulling things like this?

For years now your only browser choices are "Google", and "funded by Google", and it shows.

I can't even give someone too hard of a time for using vanilla chromium or similar anymore; Not like it's any worse than literally every other browser offering nowadays, minus rare exceptions like librewolf or ungoogled chromium that also add a whole host of minor technical complications to use.

Okay. So why don't you tell us what the better choice(s) are?

What's the purpose of gating "we don’t sell access to your data" by "if switch('firefox-tou')"?

        {% if switch('firefox-tou') %}
          <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>
        {% else %}
          <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>

Does that in multiple places. Maybe they wanted a way to quickly revert it? Or enable on countries where they think they can get away with it?

They said in the commit comment that the new TOU will "roll out" to different people at different times.

I quit the original l"Firefox" a long time ago, I've been using librewolf since its release and now zen (also a firefox fork) and I keep ungoogled chromium in case a site is broken on firefox.

I'll stay for the time being because there is no better alternative.

> To HN: Will you be quitting firefox over this change, or is there simply no better place to leave for?

Not to be overly whataboutistic, but we tolerate sooo much more from other players. It's annoying how we hold some to a higher standard, but ignore others doing worse. I get people are disappointed in Mozilla and wants them to do better, but it's a bit like the "we live in a society meme", where those doing good must be perfect or else..

Those perceived to be doing good are often used to lessen the blow of those perceived to be doing bad. Like how it's not so bad if your train sinks of faeces if there's a bus you can take instead. Losing the safe alternative makes the original sin worse.

I use Firefox, and advocate for people to use Firefox, because I believe it's the one browser that is not evil. It's the entire reason for the existence of Firefox.

Saying, well, why aren't you upset that Chrome is evil is such a confusion of ideas I barely know how to respond. Yes, I know Chrome is evil, I've been telling people that for many years, and I don't use it.

> It's annoying how we hold some to a higher standard, but ignore others doing worse.

People use FF, _because_ they can hold it to a higher standard. That's the entire point.

> Not to be overly whataboutistic, but we tolerate sooo much more from other players. It's annoying how we hold some to a higher standard, but ignore others doing worse.

Who is "we"? It certainly doesn't include me.

Someone who tries to gain your trust only to betray it gets a stronger reaction than a known bad actor doing what they are known for? Color me surprised.

> I get people are disappointed in Mozilla and wants them to do better, but it's a bit like the "we live in a society meme", where those doing good must be perfect or else

You are talking like mozilla made a mistake. Yet their response was not to apologize but to claim people are just confused.

How much shit can Mozilla pull before people are allowed to say enough is enough?

I have long left the sinking ship and switched to enshitified and actually private https://librewolf.net/

Which will go under within a few years of FF dying. (Yes, the current code may still work, but the web will move on without it.)

I am very aware but that does not change that currently its a superior alternative.

i don't think that matters. we are looking for firefox based alternatives to get away from stupid policy changes, not to find a browser that has a better chance of survival.

any alternatives will be good as long as firefox is alive. if firefox itself dies, then that's an entirely different matter.

> if firefox itself dies

Switching to forks makes it a matter of when, not if.

All the forks are dependent on FF's current funding for their own long-term viability.

All the forks are currently dependent on Mozilla. That doesn't mean no one else will step up when their drawn out suicide concludes. Mozilla goign under is not an existential threat for Firefox - quite the contrary, it is likely the only thing that can save it.

i admire your optimism. i wish i could share it. i do not believe that firefox can be be saved by a group of unpaid volunteers. it is to big and to complex for that. volunteers can keep it on lifesupport, but in order to save it it will take some substantial funding.

Why do you think unpaid volunteers are the only possibility. There are plenty of organizations that have a vested interest in an open internet and new ones can be formed by interested individuals. That Mozilla is unwilling to try other funding methods besides getting paid by what should be their main adversary doesn't mean that no one else can.

there are plenty of organizations that could lend support, but not one that could do so single-handedly. the consequence is that these organizations will have to pool their resources and also take away resources from other projects in order to do this.

accomplishing this is going to be a major feat. again. i admire your optimism. my pessimism tells me that there are a lot of ways this can go wrong.

the big risk is that mozilla won't go out with a bang. they will stick around and even without funding try to hold the reigns. that will make it hard for other organizations to step in. while many have a vested interest in keeping firefox alive they may want to get a seat at the table.

(i am just making this up as i go, so don't take it to serious, but i just had a thought of what ideally might happen:)

when mozilla loses its funding from google they realize that in order to continue there needs to be an organization that is comprised of all the above organizations that want to support an open internet. they get together to form some kind of super organization like a consortium where they all are a member of and all contribute to the continued funding of firefox.

Will FF die though or will it be released from mismanagement when Mozilla finally goes under.

I'll keep using firefox simply because I keep it behind a proxy server with all pocket, mozilla, firefox and google domains blocked.

The larger impact I suspect this will have in my life, is that I'll increasingly turn to not using websites, opting instead to using tools like yt-dlp.

These changes didn't just happen because of a bunch of greedy ad pushers. This and many other changes over the last few decades came about by taking my tax money and pouring it into these companies to gain compliance to state agendas. This isn't something the 'community' will be able to stave off.

If the internet is just going to become another medium like TV, Radio and newspapers were for so many years, adding on top the ability of the producers to watch me watching them, then it's over. The tech community is full of intellectual dishonest sellouts. Game over. Let's push letsencrypt again in response to the state backdooring the certificate authorities, duuurrr. "AI", duurrrr.

What other tools are you using instead of Firefox and/or a browser?

How does discovery work with tools like yt-dlp?

Yes, I’ll be leaving. I used to prefer Firefox but have long since moved to Safari for browsing and <insert Chromium based browser> for web dev. Every year I give switching to FF a try. I’ve been using it for everything since mid-December but it’s honestly a pretty bad user experience. This is the move that’s gonna make me stop for this year’s trial run and all future ones. It’s simply not worth my time if their ideals don’t align with mine anymore. Safari and Chromium have their issues but I know what benefits I’m trading off for. Without ideals, FF has no standout features compared to the alternatives (for me).

I'll look for somewhere else. Web browsers aren't as special as they used to be, there's a lot more choice now. Funny thing was, I was paying for Firefox through some of their services (VPN) that I had no intent to use.

> To HN: Will you be quitting firefox over this change, or is there simply no better place to leave for?

It doesn't really concern me yet. I'll wait for the controversy to die down and examine it then.

It's all so strange. I would happily buy Firefox, either as a one off, or as an annual license, and be done with all the weird license nonsense - presumably they want to sell data to pay the bills.

But instead the choice, realistically, seems to be between giving all my browsing data to Google and to Mozilla. And Chrome works marginally better... :/

Sigh. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Mozilla's situation. The "weird license nonsense" you're vaguely gesturing at doesn't even make sense in context. Firefox is open source under MPL 2.0.

Your framing that "the choice is between giving all my browsing data to Google and to Mozilla" creates a false equivalence. Even with their recent privacy policy changes, Mozilla's approach is structurally different from Google's core business model.

And "Chrome works marginally better"? By what metric? Firefox has better memory usage, stronger privacy protections, and doesn't exist primarily as a data collection tool for the world's largest advertising company.

The idea that you'd "happily buy Firefox" misses the point of Mozilla's mission for an open web. This kind of uninformed take that ignores the nuances of browser economics is exactly why we can't have nice things on the open web.

> "Chrome works marginally better"

Performance, compatibility, security. Chromium runs faster, it works with more websites, it's sandbox is better, particularly on Android. I don't care much about memory usage as I don't need a billion tabs open at once (does anyone). There's options available beyond Chrome that offer most of the same privacy benefits as Firefox does.

I think marginal is an understatement. As for Mozilla's business model, what business model? They're throwing everything at the wall to see if it sticks and virtually nothing has, all the while their browser has languished. Going full cynic, at this point the only reason it is allowed to exist is because Google deem it useful to have it around as a counterpoint to accusations that they have a monopoly.

> (does anyone)

Oh yes. And you don't even need that many tabs open for Chrome to eat half of your RAM.

RAM is supposed to be used. "Saving" it doesn't bring any value, it's actually just waste.

That's true, until another program needs ram and crashes because chrome is hoarding it all

Ive run chromium and firefox side by side for years to isolate personal from work. The only noticeable difference is Chromium crashes when it uses all the memory.

People's overwhelming fascination with Chrome escapes me. Some subtle detail seems to make it stick out. Everyone remembers that one time ff crashed on 2005, but gives berth to Chrome crashimg every few days and selling their personal data to google.

I dont care if ddg and ff sell aggregate data.

Fewer than 100 will massively pig out memory, on Android, Linux, and MacOS, for Chrome, IME.

My main FF instance has ~1,500 tabs FWIW, though I'll often bypass those for a given session by running incognito only. Even then I'll easily hit 100+ tabs in only a few minutes.

There's a cool feature web browsers have called "bookmarks"

> Firefox has better memory usage

At the cost of a subpar cache; it's not like Chromium is leaking memory, & its memory pressure effects are both well-studied and well-understood. Yet, Firefox stans keep touting lack of comprehensive caching as some kind of advantage. I'm sorry, this is not 2005. It took Mozilla two years to implement some kind of JIT pipelining, and guess what, Chromium had V8 all along: an engine that can benefit from "open web" cooperation courtesy of Nodejs and the vast ecosystem around it. SpiderMonkey? Please. This is the crux of the issue.

> The idea that you'd "happily buy Firefox" misses the point of Mozilla's mission for an open web.

The idea that the web—chaperoned by the likes of Mozilla, can be "open"—is the crazy, unsustainable one. OP is being pragmatic, and considering their privacy carefully. Mozilla's track record is that of a gravely mismanaged, disoriented, and subservient (Google) organisation. Firefox codebase is arcane, was already showing age even ten years ago, & now there's a whole ecosystem of Chromium-based browsers that can benefit from "open web" cooperation.

Firefox has zero moral high-ground, & pretending like it possesses some kind of virtue is a crime against semantics.

I think it's just as well not to have a monoculture (i.e. chomium-based-browsers).

Just being different and capable of rendering websites makes the web a place where standards matter. It doesn't have to be noble to make this happen.

Firefox is just standing in there like a marker - as long as there's AN alternative, there's a chance for ANOTHER alternative.

Everything is a monoculture if you squint hard enough.

Even with their recent privacy policy changes, Mozilla's approach is structurally different from Google's core business model.

>This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't that the entire brand identity of Firefox is Privacy.

>It's like discovering there's ham in a vegetarian sandwich. When you ask them they look puzzled and say their focus group was clear it tastes a lot better that way, besides it's just a little bit and the bread is vegetarian and there's way more meat in a Big Mac.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30715947

If only people cared as much about privacy as vegetarians do about not eating meat...

> If only people cared as much about privacy as vegetarians do about not eating meat...

In Germany, a lot of people do (in particular in hacker and IT-affine circles), and I do claim privacy discussions there often do become as heated as discussions with vegans about meat.

This is the reason why in Germany Firefox has a significant market share (according to

> https://www.statista.com/statistics/462158/browsers-most-use...

13.65%).

Firefox is open source. You can take the source code and strip out all of the malware, spying, telemetry and corporate harm leaving a safe and private browser (to the extent any modern browser can be).

There are multiple forks that do that. Download one of them instead. Mozilla Corporation has no control over those, so if you don't like what Mozilla make, exercise your software freedom.

The problem with Mozilla, as far as I can see, is not the the compromises they make for obtaining money (everyone suffers that), its that they're deceptive and underhand about it. That makes them unethical. I wrote plenty regarding that here [0]

[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/you-are-too-dumb-for-tech/

Rather than downloading random binaries from random forks (or clamour for governance at the sidelines), you can take back more control by building your own fork.

Librewolf and Waterfox are two fine choices to use for upstream sincr they have saner defaults and make the forking and building easier to wire up.

Ive been running my own FF fork for a few years like this now.

The problem with these privacy-first Firefox forks is none have the resources to match FF.

If Firefox dies, eventually so will they, as the code stagnates relative to better-funded browsers.

Saying "switch to a privacy-first fork" is not a long-term solution.

> Saying "switch to a privacy-first fork" is not a long-term solution.

You're 100% right while operating in an environment that is hostile to privacy. In these conditions security/privacy remains mostly tactical, not strategic. In fact, against a predominant tyranny it is insurrectional. Free Software will have to learn to adapt with more intelligence-sharing and opportunistic manoeuvres.

As an aside though, one might generalise to say there are no long term solutions in tech, period. And therefore advocates of freedom and privacy are at no particular disadvantage relative to any opponents.

The internet doesn’t actually need any more new features anyway, and most sites reflect this and just serve HTML.

Some sites will need new features. But I guess it is fine to have a data-collecting version of Firefox or even some moderately well behaved malware like Chrome, as long as most browsing doesn’t happen through it. So, I guess I’ll look at moving most of my browsing to a privacy respecting form and keeping the a browser around for faulty sites…

Anyone can fork. However you need to keep your fork updated as firefox does new releases which means repeating that work often. Either that you are need to support all the security fixes yourself.

I would wager most people that offer to buy software "one off" typically underestimate their lifetime worth earned through other means like ads and data sales.

Would you pay a one-time $10 for a lifetime Firefox license? $100? $1,000? $10,000?

Without thinking much about it, $60 / yr seems reasonable to me.

I never click on any ads, so while I'm sure I contribute to Firefox's revenue as another pair of eyeballs, I don't deliver any end value to their ad-biz end customers.

> I never click on any ads [snip] I don't deliver any end value to their ad-biz end customers

This is a complete misunderstanding of the value of ads. Clicks are of course the most valuable signal, but any ad seen is valuable. If clicks were all that mattered TV would never had ads, nor would newspapers.

Many ads are about awareness not buy now. Ford/Toyota... doesn't expect you to buy a car the day/week you see an ad, they just want you to think of them when you buy a car. They also want to slowly drive discomfort with whatever car you already drive so that eventually you do buy a new one despite having on that works. (or if you don't have a car they want to be sure you are reminded how much freedom to go places you are giving up - without concern for the costs of having a car)

Last time I checked, Mozilla's ARPU was less than $5 pa. I think many of us would pay a multiple of that per annum _iff_ it went towards Firefox and not whatever project/cause of the week that Mozilla has undertaken.

You're overestimating people's willingness to pay for software when free and arguably better alternatives are available. Preferring Firefox to free Chromium alternatives requires a level of nuance and tech literacy that most people will never have, and even with that tech literacy, people may still prefer Chromium.

You're basically talking about asking for donations from people that prefer to ad-block YouTube instead of paying for Premium.

You are forgetting that Firefox has been around until now with no profit except Google's bribe.

They could've at least tried to sell a paid version - what's the worst that could happen? Any sale would be on top of what they're currently earning per download, i.e. pure "profit" that could be reinvested in the product.

It never was an "either/or" proposition.

They did try some extra services, such as VPN or Pocket. I think at this point a Pocket subscription is how one can fund Firefox.

But indeed, even if they ensure that donations go towards Firefox development, instead of other crap, that would be a step forward.

Pocket and the other Mozilla services fund Mozilla, not Firefox directly. My company uses Firefox professionally and we'd buy per-seat enterprise licences if they existed, iff they funded Firefox development.

We have no interest in funding Mozilla, whose manifesto barely mentions Firefox and who has now decided that AI is their focus.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/about/manifesto/details/

> They could've at least tried to sell a paid version - what's the worst that could happen? Any sale would be on top of what they're currently earning per download, i.e. pure "profit" that could be reinvested in the product.

Assumedly, a paid version would exclude some features that Mozilla is otherwise monetizing through (like selling your data). This doesn't seem like sales "on top of" what they're already earning, but rather an alternative that replaces (at least some of) existing monetization routes.

Kagi, a search engine with countless free alternatives, starts at $5/month.

The people who care are willing to pay.

Is Kagi making money? I know they exist, but are they paying their own bills or living off of investors. (I couldn't find a direct statement, but their timeline implies they could be)

Today, who knows. However they were profitable in May 2024: https://blog.kagi.com/what-is-next-for-kagi#:~:text=We%20are...

Have you not heard about how successful Thunderbird's funding campaign had been? The reasons as I see them are simple: they ask for money directly, and use it for developing a good email client, not for fighting the boogeyman of the week (and/or chasing the latest fad).

> Preferring Firefox to free Chromium alternatives requires a level of nuance and tech literacy that most people will never have

I think it's already the case that only tech literate people prefer Firefox over Chrome or Edge (I bet a significant part of users don't even know about Chromium or what's the difference from Chrome). So putting a price on Firefox wouldn't change this in a meaningful way. The real question is how much tech literate people would be ready to pay, most of the users will stay on Chrome/Edge for the foreseeable future.

ARPU isn't a great metric here since it's revenue averaged across all users. In my experience, the vast majority of free software users sit below ARPU and are hoisted up by whales -- who are also the main reason one-off pricing like this doesn't typically exist: Mozilla would be fine if most users just paid ARPU (in fact, they'd probably make a slight profit if they could get a higher-than-industry-average free->paid conversion rate...), but they'd quickly lose their cash cows when their whales suddenly only paid ARPU instead of the 10x, 100x, 1000x, etc they already "pay".

This logic applies more to Google than Mozilla. Their mission is (or ought to be) to cover development and hosting costs associated with Firefox, not to milk users for all they are worth on the ad market.

> presumably they want to sell data to pay the bills.

Can't the EU just sponsor Firefox?

That's the surest way to kill it, and that is before taking their recent anti-privacy policies into consideration.

That feels like a witty thing to say without much basis in reality. If the EU got their act together and gave Firefox funding, it would be more of a pain in the neck for them to stop doing that than it would for them to threaten Mozilla over e.g. anti privacy policies. Even Germany, a single nation with a lot less difficulty in passing laws, hasn't used their Sovereign Tech Fund (https://sovereign.tech) in such a manner.

And even if they did, it would have to be a world in which they've lost all funding from Google and becoming dependent only on the EU. Perhaps such a thing might happen, but it wouldn't happen overnight — in the meantime it would be more money, from more diversified sources.

Ok, let’s dive into the details:

1) The European Commission has proposed Chat Control, pressuring platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram to scan encrypted messages with AI, including client-side scanning, which critics say breaks encryption and enables mass surveillance.

2) The EU has adopted the eID (European Digital Identity), a centralized digital ID system via a “wallet” app, tied to biometric and personal data for service access.

3) The EU’s Data Retention Directive forced telecoms to store metadata until it was struck down in 2014; debates still persist.

4) The EU’s Digital Services Act mandates platforms share data with authorities to fight illegal content, raising profiling concerns.

5) The EU’s Data Act requires businesses to share data with governments, threatening personal info control.

6) The EU supports the UN Cybercrime Treaty, boosting global surveillance and data-sharing powers.

That’s just off the top of my head; I’m sure there are more examples of how the EU abuses its power and infringes on users’ privacy.

So yes, of all possible stewards for Firefox, the EU is maybe the third-worst, behind only China and Putin’s Russia.

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

I'm shocked when in 2025 the term "you stay in control" regarding browser emerges as something exclusive.

When a web page or a program is downloaded to my computer I cannot imagine anything else, yet every major company tries to do something opposed - take the control from me as soon as possible.

My mental model of a browser is the same as of any tool, as a hammer, purely defined by its technical capabilities to do a job, like to display a website and offer basic functionality like for saving a bookmark.

The very idea of an entity called "we", an anonymous and ever-changing cast of people managing "responsible defaults" and "simple tools to manage your data" and communicating it on their terms, making me try and keep up, is alien to this idea. They lay their hands on our data; want to know how exactly? Follow several links to this page:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#notice

The page in its tone trivializes the entire deal and is just another EULA and as such could just as well be presented in a small textbox in all-caps. It's more than the average user will ever read, and way too vague anyway.

"Be informed about what data we process about you, why and who it’s shared with (that’s this Notice!)" they say, but

...how about you show the entire dataset compiled about any user with information who is using it and for what exactly (excluding truly secret law enforcement requests). Everyone involved would be mortified with shame.

I consider a browser as similar as a complicated curl with GUI. Therefore:

- when I see that browser does not allow playing video in the background (youtube on mobile phones)

- when my browser disallows me blocking certain things

- when my browser prevents me from taking screenshot of things I can see on it

... it really angers me, as I feel betrayed. Of course, nowadays, web applications tend to get complicated and hide everything behind 'obscurity-security'; however, this should still be code that is a guest on my device, not me being a guest on their device running their code. I consider it extremely impolite behaviour.

You can actually play YouTube in the background with Firefox on Android. There is two ways, 1. Put the video in full screen mode and then press the system home button, this enabled PiP. 2. Start the video, click onto another tab in Firefox (this will pause the video) but then with that second tab active, open the tab switcher and press the play button beside the other tab with the video. Then it will play in the background until you interact with the tab again.

Or install an add on that blocks the api yt uses to detect if it's in the background. It wrecks my charge though.

Disagree

It is your device and you are free to not run that code. You can leave

Of course this changes if it is something you specifically fund like government websites

Ah, the good old Internet Libertarian.

If only free and enlightened individuals could, through their choices in a market in which everything is allowed, spawn such a diverse set of solutions, or allow true self-help, that every need is met...

...rather than everything consolidating under a few big players who leave few realistic alternatives, who confront users and customers with conflicting and hard to identify or quantify problems. There might just be 3 unreconcilable goals like:

- not allowing Google/Chrome to own the internet outright - have privacy for oneself and others who don't "opt out" - have a browser that is established enough to work on most websites

and you can't tell me what browser to use.

The same issue is present almost everywhere you look: All products have such massive permutations of health, energy, waste, sustainability, ethicical and economical parameters that making a decision is almost impossible for any well-informed individual, let alone for enough people to steer change in any meaningful way.

If you maintaing this sort of "Libertarian" view, make sure you're not inadvertendly serve the interest of corporations that would like to not be criticized nor regulated.

Mozilla needs to pay their developers. Donations alone don't cover the wages. The way money is divided is rather suboptimal at the moment in my opinion, but most of that money comes from Google, which may be ruled illegal in the coming months if the antitrust case against Google pans out well, leaving a hole where 86% of Mozilla's funding used to be. They _need_ to make money.

Developing browsers is very expensive. Currently, the only people doing that are Google+Microsoft (Blink), the megacorps in it for the ad money, Apple, in it for their own independence, and Mozilla, trying to be a third party. Forks are made constantly by individuals or small teams, and are often lagging behind in quality, maintenance, and security; Palemoon simply cannot keep up with Firefox, KHTML is effectively broken, and even the maintained Gnome fork of WebKit has tons of issues that make it hard to use it as a daily driver.

Everyone wants a super duper privacy friendly browser that only does browser things and preferably only works on their personal requirements, but nobody wants to actually spend time and money to develop one. I hope Ladybird turns out well, or maybe Servo will get revived into a functional browser, but how those browsers will be developed and distributed is entirely up to those browser vendors.

You can use whatever browser you like, but unless you're paying a significant sum for it or are part of the dev team, you'll have to succumb to the terms under which the browser is made available. I'd rather have parties like Mozilla funded by donations or independent government funds than by big tech, but nobody is willing to spend the millions necessary to catch up to Chrome just yet.

> Donations alone don't cover the wages

> but unless you're paying a significant sum for it

In fact, zero donations cover wages, and AFAIK nobody is paying for it, because Mozilla does not provide any way for users to give money to Firefox. You can't blame users for not taking an option that was never given.

> - when I see that browser does not allow playing video in the background (youtube on mobile phones)

The browser supports it just fine. Youtube itself disables that functionality (to try to push you to Youtube Premium). You can install an addon from the recommended addons to fix that.

> - when my browser disallows me blocking certain things

The only thing I remember Firefox blocking from meddling with is pages like mozilla.org and their addon store. Which, for security reasons, makes a lot of sense.

> - when my browser prevents me from taking screenshot of things I can see on it

That's a setting, though, isn't it? Unless you mean the optional DRM support Firefox has. You can disable that permanently if you don't like it, though you won't be able to visit many DRM-based websites. I've configured my browser to request permission before playing DRM based content and you'll be surprised how often the permission prompt pops up on websites that host normal (non-TV) media.

Have you tried to watch YouTube in Chrome on android? It will turn off once switched to a other app or tab and it can be prevented. Prevented only on Firefox (with add-on). While other web pages like sound cloud will still play in background.

The only reason YouTube premium's background playing is possible as an additional feature are the limitations imposed by the Google company on the android and Chrome themselves. In other words Google built up the "open source" environment to make this exactly possible. They limited us from our phones and now they are selling features that never have been features - they were normal behaviour

Browsers are becoming SmartTVs.

Either you control the software, or the software controls you, yadda yadda...

It's bad that it says that, because the "us" in this sentence should absolutely not be doing anything that requires such a license, and should not have a copy of it in order to do so; but "Mozilla owns" is also not a correct summary of it.

why does this require "a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license"?

Speculatively:

- nonexclusive, because they're not demanding exclusive rights to your content. If they did, there's no way this would fly.

- royalty free, because otherwise you could charge them money for doing anything with your data, even things you've asked them to do.

- worldwide, because you may ask them to communicate with servers in other countries. i.e. you are using Firefox Sync to sync your bookmarks and you travel overseas, your bookmarks are now traveling between two countries.

The question is "why do they need a license at all", IMO. The qualifiers on the license all make sense to me. It's possible additional qualifiers like 'short-term' could make it less scary.

> 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.

folks, this is NOT good. i guess we're generally at the mercy of big tech day to day, but with firefox in particular -- i use it almost more than any other software, and these terms seem particularly nasty.

i do think we can exert some pressure on mozilla here -- HN users are like 60% of the firefox user base. i recommend writing to legal-notices@mozilla.com to object to this policy. do it right now.

here's what i wrote, feel free to use it as a template:

Dear Mozilla,

I'm not just a long-time user of Firefox -- I'm a Firefox promoter. I've been recommending Firefox to all my friends, esp. since the Chrome privacy fiasco. I even pay for Mozilla Monitor just to support your organization.

I ABSOLUTELY object to your new Firefox terms of use. I DO NOT grant Mozilla any soft of license to information I "upload or input [...] through Firefox". This change is alarming and hostile. If you insist on rolling it out, there should be a clear opt-out in the browser itself. I strongly urge you to reconsider. Otherwise, I will be moving to forks, and urging others to do the same.

Sincerely,

> HN users are like 60% of the firefox user base

lol

> i recommend writing to legal-notices@mozilla.com to object to this policy

denial

anger

bargaining <--- you are here

depression

acceptance

Best accept that the Mozilla that was interested in creating a User Agent as opposed to a consumer product is gone and look for and support the creation of alternatives.

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?

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.

This commit looks particularly bad:

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.

> 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

For the last 10 years or so I've pendulum swung between the positions "privacy at all cost!" and "what's the point, you can't win". Well, I'm tired now and the pendulum is stuck on the latter. All I care about now is blocking ads. Go ahead Mozilla, Google, Apple, whoever, if you can hoover up my worthless browsing data without me noticing, you can have it. I hope my reading HN and watching inane Youtube videos is worth something to you.

> I hope my reading HN and watching inane Youtube videos is worth something to you.

Oh it is. It definitely is

Only if they can use it for ads which was blocked in this discussion.

Of course in the real world odds are they can't block ads perfectly and thus the data has value.

The ad blocking might work however

1) Their customers (i.e. advertisers) don't necessarily know that, and they only care about aggregate

2) They still have your data which can be sold off to others who have other ways of pushing ads to you

>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.

Emphasis added.

In case anyone is unaware...

https://librewolf.net/

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

> Who is behind librewolf and why should i trust them?

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.)

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 mean nixpkgs is the largest linux repo there is.[1] I think anyone can upload a package, similar to AUR :

[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.

I was unaware, thank you!

I've read that a few times now and I'm trying to decide what I think they are actually asking for. It's a bit too vague to pin down.

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.ai

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?

Unbranded forks of Firefox are not covered by that terms of service document.

That looks like end of road for FF for me.

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.

I hate to say that I am probably in the same boat.

Mozilla is totally out of touch with their users. Going to give LibreWolf a try for a while I guess.

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?

Debian feature request: A system-wide switch to disable all telemetry and "cloud integration" features that make any network connection to the developers' or developers' partners' servers, applied to all software distributed in the official repositories.

Just use https://librewolf.net

So:

  # apt install librewolf
  Reading package lists... Done
  Building dependency tree... Done
  Reading state information... Done
  E: Unable to locate package librewolf

If the thing that doesn't suck isn't the thing that comes with the OS, it's time to fix the OS.

Also, that feature should exist. The next time I see a story about MS training ChatGPT on your nude selfies, I want to be able to show people the big red switch that says "All Telemetry: OFF" as an example of something Microsoft will never give them.

But you first have to provide it in order to show to them that you provide it.

Apt is basically just a bad package manager:

  nix run nixpkgs#librewolf

But I do agree, it's hard to find these alternatives, and have them be "just works". Librewolf still sometimes have weird issues (for good reasons!), but it means I don't recommend it to "normies". I just tell them to use firefox and most importantly adblock, giving up ads is a huge ROI both in terms of quality of life and data privacy. Everything else is almost marginal in comparison.

Apt being a bad package manager is not related to the selection of packages that Debian ships or doesn't.

That is a distro problem not a software problem. Librewolf is available as a flatpak meaning on every Linux desktop distro.

https://flathub.org/apps/io.gitlab.librewolf-community

If you want to be pendantic again:

apt -y install flatpak && flatpak install io.gitlab.librewolf-community

It is possible to improve the distribution and that is the thing being requested.

If you want to improve the distro go ahead. But it's fantasy that every distro will support every software => flatpak

The suggestion is not for all distributions to support all applications, it's for Debian to support system-wide disabling of telemetry in the software it does support.

They could compile Firefox with telemetry disabled however i would not trust those settings since even with that Firefox does plenty of unsolicited phoning home and has a lot of bloat.

I prefer to have a trusted third party (the distro) vetting updates to the software I install. But if you have the time and capability to vet all patches yourself then sure, you can use flatpak.

Why Librewolf and not Waterfox or any other open source fork?

because I don't think a tiny browser fork that moves too far from the original is maintainable and secure long term. even someone of microsofts size seems to think so. librewolf is mostly config changes and couple small patches removing superficial anti-feature like pocket.

It's time for distributions to only include browsers developed by non-profits

If Debian could just stick to free software that'd be grand. It is a good ideology and there is no need to change it. Introducing ideological confusion is one of the paths to organisational rot.

Debian already doesn't just stick to free software. Let's say I have a program in debain's main repos. Suppose tomorrow I release a new version that uploads all your data (including shitcoin vallets ant passwords) to my server. All fully open source of course. Do you think Debian should include this update? Does rejecting it cause ideological confusion?

Which network access is telemetry?

User explicitly requests connection to a specific server (e.g. navigates to debian.org), so browser makes a connection to debian.org: Not telemetry.

User explicitly requests a connection to a specific server (e.g. navigates debian.org), then browser makes a connection to mozilla.org to upload metadata: Telemetry.

In general telemetry is when the software connects to a server chosen by the developers and not telemetry is when the software connects to a server chosen by the user.

When I open Slack, to which servers am I explicitly requesting a connection?

I see your point, but my point is that implementing this is either impossible or would require changing how networks are used by programs at a fundamental level.

A middle ground might be to create a distro that uses something like SELinux to prevent all network access to non-system processes. Then each package would have to be audited to determine which addresses it can bind to, and/or which name lookups it can do, and how those capabilities are connected to actions performed by the user. Then there is still the question of what to do about software that accesses the network independent of the user, but maybe you can argue that shouldn't exist. How do updates work? Besides, if I allow Slack to connect to mychats.slack.com, nothing prevents the software from sending telemetry to that endpoint. You would need an army of manual enforcers, and that's not to mention non-free software.

> When I open Slack, to which servers am I explicitly requesting a connection?

Debian only supplies open source software. Proprietary apps that only support the vendor's service aren't included as it is. Open source apps using standard protocols like Matrix or similar do allow the user to choose the server.

> A middle ground might be to create a distro that uses something like SELinux to prevent all network access to non-system processes.

We're talking about open source software in the official repositories. You're not putting it in a jail to thwart it from defecting on you, you're modifying the code so that it doesn't even try.

> How do updates work?

When you install Debian it asks you which mirror you want to use for updates. Several of them are provided by universities etc. You can also make your own and some large organizations do that.

Would cdn-debian.org be allowed? Its on a different domain, but I've noticed a lot of websites use a different domain to host their CDN.

You're referring to requests from the same page as the one the user requested, rather than requests by the browser at the behest of the browser developer. Loading it is presumably what the user intended by navigating to the page and if it isn't then at that point it's in the bailiwick of uBlock etc.

Surely you mean a systemwide switch you can optionally enable to allow programs to send telemetry.

Or just disable it altogether because there is no real user benefit.

Relevant discussion: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/information-about...

> 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.

Yet, modern mobile app stores insist on a privacy policy even if you don't send data to a server owned by the app vendor.

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.

Yes. I’ve used that in my software. App stores just require a policy.

Previous version: https://web.archive.org/web/20250219051713/https://www.mozil...

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)

This is also new, and very broad and unqualified:

> 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...

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

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome

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.

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.

In 2023 the Wikimedia Foundation had 700 paid employees/contractors working for them.

At the end of 2023 Mozilla Corporation had 964 employees and Mozilla Foundation had 118.

So the difference isn’t that large…

Google - mozilla contract alone gives mozilla 500 000 000$.

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..

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.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growt...

[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/06/mozilla_foundation_la...

That's the other problem:

Mozilla just needs to focus on Firefox.

Something about doing one thing and doing it well...

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.

I wouldn't have a problem with Mozilla doing other things if they did it well and it didn't involve them compromising on their values.

Isn't the Mozilla Foundation (non-profit org) distinct from Mozilla Corporation?

overpaid executives and bloated administration

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_...

Wikipedia is really not a good example here. They ask for way more than they need to run Wikipedia itself.

Personally, I refuse to let any nagware on my computer. Free software is supposed to be a better experience than shareware.

We're entering the end days now. Stallman showed us the light and then ESR closed the blinds.

People really don't get it.

I'm simplifying: Stallman told us that free software was the only way. ESR said open source was the way with business in mind.

We've ended up with businesses taking advantage of open source. The slew of licence changes to not compete, having special paid versions, and generally shitting on the open source community.

The only thing free, is the labour companies are exploiting.

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

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...

Yeah, it would be like saying everything I write and draw into my Acer laptop means I now give permission for Acer the company to use my content. It's bonkers.

I really hate this kind of response to criticism. No Mozilla, fundamental disagreement does not mean that peole are confused and need to be told what to think.

Since it's mostly just people who care about this privacy who still use Firefox, these changes seem particularly tin eared.

People who care about privacy have already moved on to LibreWolf or some other Firefox alternative.

Not true. I was under the impression that Firefox was a privacy-oriented browser until these Terms were published today. I'm now posting this from LibreWolf, which I have just now installed for the first time.

This is pure speculation, but what are the chances this change is simply an attempt to provide legal cover what they might have started doing 50 versions ago?[1]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29082856

According to the tweet, Mozilla claimed

> “Does Firefox sell your personal data?”

> “Nope. Never have, never will.”

I do believe that never is a very, very clear statement (concerning every possible future) that needs no legal cover.

Ah but what you are interpreting in layman english is actually a term of art in marketing that means "this will change as soon as it becomes more profitable to do that".

If that's the case they should stop doing that no give them selves the legal right to do it.

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?

"Mozilla" & "Firefox" are trademarks which would come with their own legalese I’m sure, and of course there are some services used by Firefox (the Mozilla addons store, the malware blacklists managed by Google IIRC, etc.) that would still require legal statements even for distro or other 3rd party builds.

Sure, but neither Distribution Policy for Mozilla Software[1] nor Mozilla Trademark Guidelines[2] make any mention of the Terms of Use. Services Firefox connects to have their own Terms of Service, like you say, but those are unrealated to Terms of Use for Firefox itself.

[1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/trademarks/distribu...

[2]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/trademarks/policy/

> Does that mean only Mozilla distributed binaries are governed by the "Firefox Terms of Use"?

It means that usage of binaries is governed by the terms set by whoever produces and distributes them.

If your distro leaves the "Firefox Terms of Use" notice intact then I imagine it would be in force. The only exception that immediately comes to mind would be if the distro explicitly relicensed Firefox under the GPL (I'm not clear if this is permitted or not) in which case the GPL explicitly invalidates any such additional restrictions.

If your distro provides a binary that includes inaccurate, conflicting, or otherwise problematic terms, such as (ex) on the about:license page, then that would be on them, not on Mozilla.

If your distro removes or modifies the license terms permitting Mozilla to collect data but forgets to modify the data collection code itself, I'm not sure who is at fault. Presumably the distro maintainers. However, given that the entire thing is very clearly without warranty I doubt that you'd have any recourse. In any case I don't think Mozilla would be breaking any rules since they neither compiled nor distributed the binary in question.

Off topic, but one minor issue I noticed is that the about:license page doesn't seem to include either a link to or a copy of the GPLv3 despite the fact that the LGPLv3 states:

> c) For a Combined Work that displays copyright notices during execution, include the copyright notice for the Library among these notices, as well as a reference directing the user to the copies of the GNU GPL and this license document.

This is concerning.

From the new Tos:

> 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.

I do not want Mozilla to use or have information I type into Firefox except when I explicitly give them such information. I disable all the settings I can to keep Mozilla from getting any such information.

From what I understand, this crap is only for the Mozilla distributed binaries. So I will now be using third party builds.

Make sure the third party build you choose doesn't use official Firefox branding too.

Been using Firefox as main browser since it was called Mozilla.

It's the only desktop application I've consistently installed on every desktop for that long. This is the end of that era and ends the streak.

It's as frustrating as it's sad.

What are you replacing it with?

This is getting niche enough that I'd doxx myself :^)

Check out everything recommended elsewhere in this thread though! And strive to compile your own fork based on whatever.

It's fascinating how any Firefox thread here inevitably devolves into accusations that Mozilla has abandoned users and a push to switch to alternatives, despite Mozilla working in the interest of users to a infinitely greater degree than any other major browser vendor.

Actions speak louder than words. Firefox (including derivatives) is by far the most fingerprint resistant and adblock friendly webbrowser there is.

In terms of features, it's very rich and always improving.

Mozilla also maintains arguably the best web development resource there is, which is MDN.

Mozilla's internal problems aside, some people really don't appreciate how successful Firefox, Thunderbird and MDN have been and still are.

"Actions speak louder than words. "

Indeed. Talking about privacy and having spyware and ads activated by default and now this probably to legally safeguard this and more speak a very clear language.

The only reason to still use FF is indeed, that the competition is worse in this regard.

But that will change, once Ladybird becomes mature enough.

Pinging a Mozilla server to see if there is an active and usable internet connection is not spyware, let's stop with these useless accusations.

It's a product which optionally does accept some help from the users, e.g. opt-in error reports, which is a huge help. Certain people consider that a blatant violation of their rights for some reason, and they would apparently rather see the last bastion of a non-chrome internet die.

"Pinging a Mozilla server to see if there is an active and usable internet connection is not spyware, let's stop with these useless accusations."

No, but have you checked your firefox settings lately?

Meaning in the last 5 years or so? (Probably has been longer by now)

Some updates brought "allow firefox to install and run studies".

That sounded like experimental features, but were in reality spyware to study the user behavior to sell that data to ad companies.

It is still there. And a more blatant checkbox by default also arrived lately. (I think just in forefox mobile)

And then there are ads activated by default.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report

"How is your data used?"

... lots of seemingly innocent technical blabla

and then

" 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."

Lots of words and details to hide the kind of important detail, that they do sell the data by default how you browse the internet. What websites you use, how long etc.

If all of these 'phone home' features are as benign as you say-- why isn't there a clear, exposed, and stable user setting to disable them?

At best there is maze of about:config which incompletely prevent firefox from phoning home and are regularly undermined by new additions.

It's no business of the browser to know if there is an active and usable internet connection. All it needs to know are the responses to the URLs I have asked it to request.

> Firefox (including derivatives) is by far the most fingerprint resistant

Do you have a source? The fingerprint detectors [0] as well as reddit's banned/duplicate account system suggests otherwise.

Maybe at one point Firefox stopped the fingerprinting, but the tools have quickly found other ways to uniquely identify me.

[0] - https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/kcarter?aat=1 https://firstpartysimulator.org/kcarter?&aat=1&a=11&t=11&dnt...

Try Mullvad Browser or Librewolf, both of which are derived from Firefox.

These projects are made possible because of Firefox's customizability and feature set.

Firefox has a fingerprint resist toggle that may not be on when using vanilla Firefox.

Worth noting is that many of these features come from the Tor Uplift project[0]. I'm not sure if they'd exist if it weren't for Tor's work.

[0]: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-advancing-privacy-in...

It’s about expectations. In very simple language: people expect Microsoft and Google to track the hell out of them. But Mozilla says they are your friend and respects privacy, but then their actions speak the opposite.

A betrayal from a friend is harder to handle than a blow from an enemy.

Mozilla's goals are still much more aligned with my own than any other browser vendor. Not even close. It's not a betrayal, it's a difference of opinion between friends.

Edit: If that. I personally think this Terms of Use thing is a storm in a teacup.

Are they? Their incentive is to maintain their revenue stream, almost all of which currently comes from Google. That source is now under threat so, to continue being able to pay the bills, they need to find another. And it's a big hole to fill.

Google's goals were once noble.

> Edit: If that. I personally think this Terms of Use thing is a storm in a teacup.

You may be right, yeah. I don't actually use Firefox, there was something else they did like this before which spooked me off. I was mainly explaining the seemingly odd response people have about this, and why they created a storm.

It's like a friend who says they are your friend, but then don't act like it. As opposed to say a known asshole being an asshole, people don't make a big deal about that any longer.

Yes, Firefox is the best bad option. But I'm not sure how we dont classify it as a betrayal to remove these statements:

  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.

and

  ...Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data...

While also weaseling your words about your new policy and how its "basically the same thing if you think about it" [1]

[1] 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).

The same effect applies to political parties. The people that care about X focus their complaints to the party that is trying to address issues with X.

Yeah, pretty much. If you look historically, it's always that traitors and betrayers get the most severe punishment. It just wakes up something very basic in humans.

It's not just an emotional reaction but rather that trust is a fundamental requirement for a functioning society.

It's disheartening to see people playing villification of users when it is the companies (yeah, mozilla CORPORATION) that went back on their words. Just cos you did something good in the past isn't and shouldn't be an excuse to do bad things now.

Also, why are we talking as if we haven't seen these same things happening to favourite products/companies over and over again? You don't need to be an analyst to put things together.

Tell me why I should care when they gave up Rust and MDN to competitors with the excuse of no money and then gave the boss a heft hike with an ever decreasing userbase? Would any company give a hike of this margin to it's employee when their product is doing bad in the market?

They kept doing things against the community. And then they bought an ad company, then this change. ENSHITTIFICATION IS WRITTEN ON THE WALL IN BOLD LETTERS. Let them backtrack.

Still very very disappointed. We are supposed to be a community who should be thinking through things. This isn't a new scenario. We have seen this so many times.

>despite Mozilla working in the interest of users to a infinitely greater degree than any other major browser vendor.

Obviously not anymore, it's a add company now.

But at least they have "cool" party's in Zambia.

> it's a add company now

Note that "any other major browser vendor" is a short list of ad companies with a much worse track record.

I don't think Apple (Safari) is a ad company.

They are[1][2]. It makes them billions every year[3]

[1]: https://ads.apple.com [2]: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/control-how-apple-del... [3]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/15/apple-ad-business...

Ah ok, but do they have a worse track-record then Google Microsoft or Mozilla?

Relative to Mozilla: on the advertising front I can't judge whether Apple is worse or about the same. On most other fronts I don't think there's much of a question. Others disagree, the extent to which Apple's actions are user-hostile is an often debated topic I'm not particularly interested in re-threading.

Google and Microsoft aren't really a comparison, both have been openly anti-user on many fronts for many years.

So let's correct your statement then to >>most other major browser vendor

;)

No, I stand by my statement. I consider Apple extremely user-hostile and in many ways worse than Microsoft and Google. Those ways are just less broadly agreed upon.

Huh? Those aren’t in-browser ads. Those are ads delivered through installed native apps.

Do you have a source showing that Safari makes money from ads?

You're right, and at the same time those two things go together if you think about it. The browser that does more (or cares at all) is held to the higher standard and inevitably found wanting.

(I'm not taking sides in the debate about it, I just find internet psychology fascinating)

My dream team of execs would send lawyers back to the drawing table on at least one of these clauses.

"Imagine that someday we get taken over by bad people. Write this as if our today selves want to protect everyone against our future selves."

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?

I have been wanting to love Mozilla for a while, but let's be honest: I use Firefox because Mozilla is the least shitty of those companies. I don't like Mozilla, I just hate them less than the alternatives.

Please see this helpful clarification post: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms...

If anything, it just confirms Mozilla is selling data.

So, is firefox no longer open source?

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”.)

Title is a complete lie/misleading. They get a license, not ownership.

Let's dissect what it actually says, and we do it backwards, because given the discussion around this subject it seems like people space out or have their mind clouded by outrage before they get to the end of the sentence:

> help you [do things] as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

So this already only covers things that you indicate you want to do with your use of Firefox. Meaning that if you hit some button, Mozilla now has a license to process the data they need to make that button work and nothing more. That means unless you give them additional permission somewhere, they can't, for example, also store and process that information to train some AI model or whatever. All they're allowed to use it for is making whatever you interacted with work. Seems pretty reasonable.

> to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content

This further narrows the scope to websites and such you interact with (online content). It also says that license only covers "helping" you with these things. The part we looked at previously narrows this to your intent.

> you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license

So just a license. No transfer of ownership is happening.

> When you upload or input information through Firefox

Note that this says "through". They're clearly only trying to cover their butt as an intermediary by obtaining a license to process your information to act as such an intermediary. Explicitly nothing more.

Putting it back together we get:

> 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.

Important part in cursive.

So broadly what is the license for?

> license [..] to help you [..] as you indicate

I still don't get it. Is Mozilla phoning home the fact that I pressed the button?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Unless the button says "phone home my information to Mozilla", this license wouldn't cover that. This license only covers whatever is necessary to make the button itself work - whatever is necessary to realize the user's intent.

They didn't need a license to your data before. Why should they need it now?

Let me guess: chmod775 will not reply to this comment.

It's an apt username for naively giving read access

See my reply to you here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43205587

Honestly I'm surprised that a research technician is more interested in this style of "argument" rather than figuring out the meaning of a (very precisely worded) sentence to for its own sake.

From the link that was already provided, and which is repeated in their Privacy FAQ: "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."

That seems like a pretty reasonable justification to me

Nope. It seems like legalspeak to say "we sell your data" while making it sound like they don't.

That'd be a matter for the privacy policy. The section in question is whether they can then go ahead and publish a list of all the buttons you pressed. Which according to this license grant they can, but only if it "helps you navigate, experience, [or] interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox". What does that mean? I have no clue. It's a really strange restriction and I can't decide if that's wide open or so narrow that it is basically never met

>Let's dissect what it actually says

I don't believe that dissection is a good way to understand the implications of this clause.

>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.

Rather than go over this word-by-word, please tell me: what limits exactly does this place on Mozilla? What rights does it give to the user? One way to express such a limit is by construction, that is, construct hypothetical acts A, B, and C that would be allowed under these terms, but actions D, E, and F would not be allowed (and be a cause for action by a user). I assert that the first set includes literally anything you can imagine (modulo a sophists ability to morph "help you" into anything they want), and the second set is empty.

To steel-man this concept, let us say that Mozilla wants to store and use your password to your bank to check your balance regularly. I assert that this action is allowed by there terms. Why? First, you used Firefox and therefore enabled the clause. Second, your authentication details are entered through Firefox, and this constitutes "input" or "upload", to which they assert ownership (which I will use as shorthand for a "nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license"). One thing they could do with your financial data is show it to you (least harm). Another thing is to aggregate it with other's data (medium harm). Yet another application would be to pool it into a database to be sold to the highest bidder (maximum harm). In the latter case, you could make the argument that such a move "helps you" by giving Mozilla a reliable revenue stream that helps fund continued development of the browser.

Needless to say, I am appalled and feel bad for all the many people I've told about Firefox over the years, described it as a bastion of fairness and privacy in an all too often sinister world. And now that they've assert these extraordinary rights over user data, I feel ashamed of my advocacy. I daresay that even if they rescind this incredible overreach, I will not come back. My trust has been broken and cannot be easily (if ever) repaired.

> First, you used Firefox and therefore enabled the clause.

I believe your confusion stems from a misreading of "as you indicate with your use of Firefox". You're reading it like "by using Firefox, you indicate".

Contemplate the difference between

"The car is allowed to move as you indicate with the controls."

versus

"By using the controls, you indicate the car is allowed to move."

The former explicitly only allows the car to realize your intent, whereas the latter gives the car license to do whatever it pleases.

You have now edited your comment at least 3 times. I find it hard to take this argument seriously, and indeed struggle to understand how it isn't trolling. At best this language is ambiguous; at worst it is misleading. It certainly ignores the core point of my comment, which is to construct hypothetical actions by Mozilla that would NOT be permitted by the clause. I strongly feel that your purpose in defending Mozilla here would be better served by providing those examples.

> You have now edited your comment at least 3 times.

Yes. I reworked the example a few times. I think the third rewrite made it pretty clear.

> It certainly ignores the core point of my comment, which is to construct hypothetical actions by Mozilla that would NOT be permitted by the clause.

The hypothetical action you gave is not permitted, because the user would not have indicated they wanted Mozilla to do that. Firefox/Mozilla is only allowed to use your data as indicated by you.

Mozilla should consider rewriting their statement for clarity, unless of course the ambiguity is the point.

The statement is clear and simple and would not benefit from a TOS rewrite. What you really want are clearer processing directions built into the Firefox UI, not a longer or different TOS.

Something like, a popup over the execute button on the search bar disclosing the specific processing instruction you are providing by pressing that button, and by whom.

Or, when you use a vertical scroll bar, a confirmation that no processing is occurring outside your local machine.

These things would satisfy some more detail-minded people, but ultimately would provide no significant value to either Mozilla or the marginal user, so it's really no mystery why Firefox does not do this.

I guess. But what they really need is trust, which was their selling point for a decade. But that takes a long time to build up and no UX changes can bring back.

The phrase is "...as you indicate with your use of Firefox"! It is NOT "...as you indicate with your Firefox user preferences." Using Firefox is what indicates your agreement, similar to how using your credit card indicates your agreement with the card terms. I take it back - the meaning is not ambiguous at all.

I'm at a loss as to how to proceed from here, given that we seem to have different ideas of how the English language works.

However there's more that also precludes such use as in your example:

> license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact

Mozilla phoning home your bank account details is not helping you do that in any way, so it is not covered. The next part, that we seem to disagree on, only further narrows that down to actual user intent.

You're not indicating that they can have a license to do anything, you're specifically giving them a "license [..] to help you [..] as you indicate".

Ok, so you read it to say that at some later point they will ask, and that point the language will matter.

What was the purpose of mentioning it now? And why write in such an ambiguous way that it could be interpreted otherwise? And that still doesn’t give me confidence about what they will do at a later time. I don’t like it at all, these are used car dealership tactics.

I think that's just a cover-all and they also have a privacy policy [1] which is explicit about how they use it and how they don't, for example:

"the data stays on your device and is not sent to Mozilla’s servers unless it says otherwise in this Notice."

... "When you perform a search in Firefox, your search query, device data and location data will be processed by your default search engine"

... "Mozilla derives the high level category [...] from keywords in that query [...] privacy preserving technologies such that Mozilla only learns that someone, somewhere, performed a search relating to a particular category, without knowing who."

... Review Checked, AI Chatbots, advertising on new tab page, etc.

So yea Firefox does so much they pretty much have to use your data, but it's not a blank cheque to do what they want.

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/

Not so say I like some of those things - advertising and categorizing searches. But still, it's finite and explicit.

> what limits exactly does this place on Mozilla?

Mozilla is bound to only use the content to help the use navigate, experience and interact with online content as the user has indicated.

> One thing they could do with your financial data is show it to you (least harm).

Yes - this is what the user indicated.

> Another thing is to aggregate it with other's data (medium harm).

And the user has not indicated that this would be a permitted use of the data - thereby revoking the license of the first clause. If the data is used outside of the final clause of the license, that is unlicensed use of data. This would be a material breach of the contract by the corporation. This could open them up to massive legal penalties.

What is the definition of "help"? Is it showing ads to help you discover the products or services?

So basically they can track everything I upload or type on my keyboard while in Firefox?

No, they cannot.

You're replying to a comment where I've broken the sentence down into smaller parts. It's the best I can do.

How is "to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content" different from "to do anything we want with it"?

The last part of the sentence narrows it down, as does the first part.

It doesn't narrow anything down unless they say specifically what they do.

They only have license to use the data in order to realize the intent of the user, how much more specific than that can it get?

And the means of realization are up to Mozilla. In other words they can do whatever they want. If my intent is to type something into the searchbar and get redirected to the search engine website, there is no reason why Mozilla would need to know about this.

> there is no reason why Mozilla would need to know about this.

Precisely. That's why it's not covered by the license.

> That's why it's not covered by the license.

It says it is.

No. It doesn't say that.

If you want to claim otherwise, show where it says that and elaborate. This style of "argument" leads nowhere. You're stringing together vague statements and claims, leaving it to the imagination of the reader to tie them into the matter at hand. Maybe you want to do your own dissection of the sentence we are arguing about to make your reading of it clear.

I think you're interpreting "as you indicate with your use of Firefox." in some weird charitable way. Law doesn't work like that.

No, I'm not. I'm interpreting it precisely as written using the rules of the English language. Lawyers get paid good money to word them very precisely.

I appreciate your candor and good-faith, benefit-of-the-doubt reading of this clause.

However,

> Lawyers get paid good money to word them very precisely.

This is true, but not in the way you are presenting. The precision is often to provide unilateral freedom under the guise of protection. They will "lawyer" you. "As indicated by you" is a grossly broad phrase. An indication is not an express, enthusiastic consent. (FWIW browsers have a lot of lessons to learn from sexual misconduct training, but I digress).

Importantly, you are making an implicit assumption that actually is not protected by the statement. And that is when the intention was shared. If you accept the terms of a Mozilla service elsewhere that indicate you are amenable to, for instance, being served ads in exchange for using the browser a certain way --it can now be argued that the data can be exfiltrated.

So, there are two points of failure with your assessment.

1. "Indicated by you" is subjective and Mozilla can solidly argue implicit consent or action 2. The indication need not be contained to the same operation which which the information in question is being sent.

I had to vouch for your comment, which given that yours is the first and only comment responding with something substantive in this entire comment tree is rather... interesting. Thank you for actually engaging in the discussion about the matter at hand using well laid out arguments.

> "As indicated by you" is a grossly broad phrase. An indication is not an express, enthusiastic consent.

I agree that by itself "indicate" could be interpreted very broadly, however in context it is decidedly less so: "to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox". So in order to be licensed use, it has to serve to help the user "navigate, experience, and interact" in the way the user indicated.

Also see the steering wheel example here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200940

> If you accept the terms of a Mozilla service elsewhere that indicate you are amenable to, for instance, being served ads in exchange for using the browser a certain way --it can now be argued that the data can be exfiltrated.

You're right. It absolutely could be argued. As long as they obtain consent/a communication of intent somewhere - for instance by you leaving a "yes, serve me ads" checkbox ticked somewhere - they arguably could now have license to use your data for that.

However the point is that something on top of your agreement to the TOS is necessary to make that happen. Just agreeing to the TOS and browsing the web normally doesn't give Mozilla license to do much at all.

If I could make a change to the sentence, I would modify it to include "license [..] to the extent necessary to [..]":

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

I don't think that change is strictly... necessary, but it makes it very clear that Mozilla doesn't have license to do all sorts of other unrelated things with your data beyond what is absolutely necessary to realize the user's intent.

> This is true, but not in the way you are presenting. The precision is often to provide unilateral freedom under the guise of protection. They will "lawyer" you. "As indicated by you" is a grossly broad phrase. An indication is not an express, enthusiastic consent. (FWIW browsers have a lot of lessons to learn from sexual misconduct training, but I digress).

I'd like to second this. I've attempted to have lawyers write contracts that adequately protect and limit both sides of an agreement. First drafts always look to completely balance the scales in favor of the person paying them.

Writing a well-balanced contract requires a lot of work that Mozilla should be doing, but charitably doesn't know they need to do or pessimistically is intentionally not doing. It's hard to read this situation as not either incompetence or a change in Mozilla's priorities.

You have been nitpicking on minutiae while blatantly ignoring the broader context. What is your stance on Mozilla removing the "we don't sell your data" clause as indicated in other comments? You have been latching on wordings and dragging people in clarification contests, but have been carefully avoiding to respond to this not at all vague statement/fact.

Here, let me repeat some of the comments you ignored:

ndiddy 4 hours ago | unvote | parent | prev | next [–]

Given that Mozilla updated their site a couple days ago to remove any wording along the lines of "Firefox will never sell your data to advertisers" when a flag associated with the new Firefox terms of use is enabled (see https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...), I'm not so sure that this is a CYA about standard web browser usage.

theturtletalks 4 hours ago | unvote | root | parent | next [–]

> {% if switch('firefox-tou') %}

      <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>

    {% else %}

      <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>

    {% endif %}

The proof is in the code, great work.

> You have been nitpicking on minutiae while blatantly ignoring the broader context. What is your stance on Mozilla removing the "we don't sell your data" clause as indicated in other comments?

Why do you care about my stance?

I'm just here trying to correct a misreading of a specific instance of "lawyerspeak" and am not interested in joining some ideological battle where you believe me on the opposing side. It's not my kind of past time. I'm more interested in making sure I fully understand a matter, often by bouncing my interpretations off other people. I could not care less about joining some online brawl and making my side seem right by any means necessary.

What you're bringing up has no bearing on this conversation - it doesn't change the meaning of the sentence people were confused about at all.

That's why I was ignoring these kinds of replies. I just don't care for it.

> I'm more interested in making sure I fully understand a matter, often by bouncing my interpretations off other people.

Are you a lawyer?

You've been doing more than "bouncing my interpretations of other people". You've been confidently telling people that your interpretation is correct and that concerns about this granting Firefox legal cover to do much more with user data are baseless.

> navigate, experience, and interact

You claims these words are restrictive, but they really aren't.

Did you write an reddit post about air condidtioners? Does that indicate an interest in buying an air conditioner? Can mozilla now sell/share that data with advertisers so you can experience ads related to air-conditioners?

Those three words provide a huge amount of wiggle room.

If you truly want to "fully understand a matter", it hells to look at the entire context.

They didn't need a license before. Why should they need one now?

Law degress are expensive

Do they need to secure a license in such a way? Probably not.

Would that fact at all change what the sentence in their TOS means? Nope.

Whether or not the sentence needs to be there has no bearing on its meaning.

That's a wonderful non-answer. It's really showing how much leeway you're giving Mozilla for this overreach.

What changed? Why do they need it now?!

I'm not here to defend or attack Mozilla.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43205587

"The intend of the user is to experience the best browsing experience hence we upload and sell all data for training to improve that experience"

This is why broad "boilerplate" agreements are unacceptable especially from a self proclaimed savior of online privacy such as Mozilla.

My guess is the first phrase is lawyer-brain for "we send the words you typed in the search bar to the search engine for you."

(Yes, they need your express permission to do that, because copyright law is really fucking dumb and makes absolutely no sense if you're approaching it from engineer-brain.)

> navigate, experience, and interact with online content

I can do all of those things just fine without Mozilla also experiencing my online content.

My browser sent a request that starts with “POST” in order to tell this website to create this comment but it includes the words that I wrote and therefore “own” as far as copyright is concerned. Mozilla requests a license to send such data to websites in similar contexts as, in this case, I “indicate” by clicking the “reply” button.

Other uses of that data are not licensed. For example, using that data in an unrelated request they send to themselves, not indicated by clicking reply, is not licensed.

This is nonsense. Does curl need a license to send HTTP requests for me?

> Does curl need a license to send HTTP requests for me?

No, but if they had one and it was phrased like this one, the license itself would be limited to these activities. If you want something to decry from Mozilla's terms, pay attention to this part:

> 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. We will post an effective date at the top of this page to make it clear when we made our most recent update.

Note that they even tell you that you can check for yourself to see if/when they tell you that you've agreed to give them a new license. That is much closer to allowing them to do anything they want than what the current license allows.

Regardless of any of that, the thing to have in mind is that this is an explicit message from Mozilla that you are agreeing to these terms by using firefox and continuing to agree to the terms by using firefox. Not to say this is ideal; just that it's as good a time as any to move on from Mozilla and firefox, especially if one is unhappy with these terms. I say this as someone who has left behind Mozilla and firefox after using it for over a decade. I will continue to be on the look out for and supportive of alternatives. So far librewolf (https://librewolf.net/) has been an easy pick-up as it's primarily just firefox with telemetry turned off.

Mozilla isn't sending that data. You're sending that data.

These terms are common on webapps because, well, they're webapps. You send your data to the webapp and they store it on their own servers.

Web apps, operated by individuals or organisations, are very different to local apps which are operated by you. Just because the Firefox app is running on your device doesn't mean that Mozilla is operating it.

By granting Mozilla the right to access and use your data, you're agreeing to give them data which they never had previously - instead of just sending the POST to xyz.com you're now sending it to Mozilla as well who can do whatever they like with it, sell it to ad networks, whatever.

Yes they can and will, they are a add company now, the money from google will stop flowing so they do everything to make money with your data.

Do you have expertise, for example as an IP attorney? I don't meant to disqualify what you say; at the same time people would benefit from knowing what your analysis comes from.

I am not an expert in this field, and I think the meaning is ambiguous. It could be interpreted as you say; it could be interpreted otherwise.

Mozilla's current intent isn't relevant to what they do later or its legality or enforceablility.

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.

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

> 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...

In that case I stand corrected. Apparently you could use Word without accepting an agreement potentially granting Microsoft a license to what you write.

No offense, I'm aware of how complex laws can be, but... Shouldn't that be obvious? Or do you think you also grant a license to any pen manufacturer to help you write whatever it is that you are writing?

Word isnt a desktop app anymore. Its a service that is also made available via a desktop app. You cant just ignore 365 like that

> 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.

So to take your example:

So based on this request: "Hey, here are my car keys - can you move my car to a different parking space?" The parking attendant's gonna drive it like they do in Ferris Bueller's Day Off[1]. Oh - you didn't want that? Well you should have been more specific.

If you are comfortable leaving things ambiguous, that's fine. That's how you get situations where Twitter and Meta are using all of their user content as input for LLMs. Obviously you can stop using those products if you want, but when you get angry about (or mock) companies that are making it illegal for them to do the same thing you are part of the problem.

I don't "like" legal jargon, but I understand that the legal system is one way we can limit the power of corporations, and throwing up your hands and claiming we don't need it feels immature to me. We live in hell but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve hell. We certainly shouldn't lie & distort what rights Mozilla has under this agreement as the title of this submission does.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0_rKOlzVuY

> Oh - you didn't want that? Well you should have been more specific.

But that license agreement does the opposite - it gives Microsoft more general permissions. You tell them to host & share your content by clicking "share", but then they also give themselves all sorts of other permissions.

I don't know that I agree I guess? I think when they say they have the right to "make copies of, retain, transmit, reformat, display, and distribute via communication tools Your Content on the Services" - that basically describes sharing your content? They copy your content, they transmit it to their service, they retain the copy, they reformat it for another context, they display & distribute it - all on "the Services."

Like what in there is "more" than you need to share an item? I certainly see how they could add more text restricting the nature of the license to be in line with user intent - but that feels like it goes against that it's "implied." Which is it? Is it obvious what rights Microsoft needs to share content or should they go into more excruciating legal detail?

(I do agree with you that the post title distorts the Mozilla license, for the record)

> I think when they say they have the right to "make copies of, retain.." - that basically describes sharing your content?

It does. But that is not the rights they granted themselves - they start that list with "for example". The actual rights they grant themselves are:

> 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

That is all MS products and services. In other words, they grant themselves exactly the right to train AI on your content, that you had used as an example of the consequences of vagueness.

To move beyond this specific license - when an entity wants to do with your input only what you implicitly tell it to do (send a search query to Google, host & share a document, etc.), they already have all the permissions via implication. It is when they want to do more, that they need a license.

Oh! I am the asshole here. I was relying on the quote in the thread but you are right that the full license is far too broad!

> when an entity wants to do with your input only what you implicitly tell it to do (send a search query to Google, host & share a document, etc.), they already have all the permissions via implication.

I guess I don't think this is true. If they have a nice broad license that covers what you ask of them that broad license might also allow "improving their services" (you would have to read it). The alternative is what Mozilla does here - putting limits on their use. Legal frameworks aren't...physics? They only matter if you go to court - but once you get to court the thing that matters is the text of the legal agreement. I guess...if you wanted to sue Google over what they did with your search query, the lawsuit would hinge on what their ToS said and it either says they can do what they did or it doesn't?

> Oh! I am the asshole here. I was relying on the quote in the thread but you are right that the full license is far too broad!

Don't feel bad - it was the purpose of those examples to deceive.

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.

> {% if switch('firefox-tou') %}

      <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>

    {% else %}

      <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>

    {% endif %}

The proof is in the code, great work.

Are lawyers OK with a client doing things like this? Or is this a client you fire?

> remove any wording along the lines of "Firefox will never sell your data to advertisers"

You mean wording like this?

""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."

Which is contained in both the link you provided, and on their official Privacy FAQ: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/

I'm really confused how you can possibly claim that they removed the wording when it's right there for you.

Here is the next sentence from that FAQ:

> 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)

So they are sharing your data with partners, commercially. but only in "anonymized" form so its OK?

The only thing they need to do to make Firefox commercially viable is to have me pay them for the browser.

I'd pay $50 yearly if they're willing to just work on the browser and remove their added value services and any telemetry.

Are we reading the same thing? They removed:

> We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data.

and instead there's vague weaseling

> doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“)

I'm not like most people, I am a bit stupid and have a very low threshold for what selling my data is.

> 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.

You can either have 2.5% of users who know why they are using your browser and are willing to make a donation or you can have nothing while we use a fork with your telemetry ripped out.

What a neat sleight of hand. "We're actually Truly Good, but those annoying lawyers won't let us call ourselves that, so we kind of take that back, but you get the idea right?"

Look at what they are ACTUALLY doing:

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...

The change removing "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." makes it pretty clear that the intention in the changes is NOT just covering their bums for using your input to provide the webpage you wanted. They are positioning to sell your personal data.

That promise to never have, never will sell your personal data was highly valued by many Firefox users and Mozilla must be pretty desperate to break it.Particularly given online privacy is suddenly crucial for many out-groups in the US - and pretty much everyone outside the US. The biggest marketing opportunity for years just landed in Mozilla's lap, and they spilled it.

Full context, from the link YOU provided: ""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."

There is no reasonable way to read this as an attempt to sell your data. This quote is also reiterated in the linked Privacy FAQ on their official site: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/

Is there an actual genuine legal threat or something that prompted this change, or is it just some bored lawyer.

That text continues with this:

So they share data with partners, which helps to make Firefox commercially viable, meaning those partners pay them for that data. Or in other words, Mozilla sells user data. Even when anonymized or aggregated, it's still selling data.

On https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms..., they give an example of an overly broad definition of "selling" from California:

> "selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration."

I read that definition, and think to myself... "transferring" ... yeah, a web browser definitely has to transfer data ... "to a third party" ... yeah, web browsers have to send that data to web servers owned by other people. Silly California! That's not selling!

Oh wait, there's more. ... "in exchange for monetary or other valuable consideration". ... oh. Yeah. I would call that selling too. How is that a broad definition? Rather than broad, I would call it comprehensive.

So Mozilla has had to stop saying they are not selling your data because... they are actually selling your data. Or else they have plans to do so.

> to help you navigate

This definition of helping me (a user} navigate could be interpreted in many ways, from the obvious all the way through to sending Mozilla my data so they can "improve Firefox" and therefore help me through giving them my information. This signals intent against my interest, regardless of whether that actually is there intent. The 'help' in particular is extremely suspicious and ambiguous

Thank you sir.

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...

This commit says that they can know sell your data as well, which does look beyond using them for improving their software

And how do I deny Mozilla this request to grant them a license “to help me”?

Firefox is dead. What do I use now?

From the link that was already provided:

"(BTW there are opt-outs linked from each chapter/category of data, like sponsored content in new tab experience etc. that should lead you through settings to disable such telemetry. Nothing has changed about that, and you can always find it in the privacy center. The changeset you're looking at here is just to remove things that are unfortunately not that simple, and need explaining in the full legal documents instead.)"

In EU user can not legally give up ownership of their personal data, artwork, or intelectual property. "Giving license" is a legal workaround to get ownership.

That varies between EU countries.

My ISP doesn't need a license to everything I do online to facilitate the transfer of bits from my home to the wider internet, so why should Mozilla need that? How about the transit providers, they certainly don't have a license to anything I do.

Assuming that everything is HTTPS, what are they actually licencing? My encrypted data?

This is some Mozilla legally idiot that went WAY to far in a "cover our ass" legal document and nobody stopped to think about the potential damage this would to the Mozilla and Firefox reputation, which already isn't doing so well. They didn't even stop to think if MAYBE this needed some clarification, to avoid unwarranted speculations. It's getting increasingly clear that the people running Mozilla has absolutely no idea what they are doing, nor do they have any respect for the project they've are in charge of. At this point I wouldn't be surprise to learn that the Mozilla CEO uses Edge.

I think everyone is unsettled about the fact that Mozilla was able "to help you ... as you indicate" for twenty years before today without the need of a license agreement. And so we ask: what's changed?

I think you are bending the meaning of the word license to the breaking point here. What your analysis implies, is that Mozilla needs permission to store and process your data in order to carry out the services implied by your use of Firefox. Obtaining a "nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license" is definitely an excessive move in that context.

> complete lie

I disagree. I definitely editorialized it to make it attention-grabbing and point out the essence, because I wanted to raise awareness and spur discussion.

But they do own it in the digital sense (i.e. "piracy is not stealing" sense). You get to keep your own copy, but they also get a copy and they own that copy.

> help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content

These terms are vague enough to allow pretty much everything. Google would argue that tracking your information so they target ads is "helping you navigate" ("you see, sponsored links are more relevant!"). As well as "lets train an AI model that helps users experience the internet!"

> Title is a complete lie/misleading. They get a license, not ownership.

I completely agree. Saw the HN title, clicked through to the page and saw nothing relevant to the title. I've flagged the topic now.

Maybe Mozilla doesn't own that information legally, but they grant themselves practically unlimited rights to do what they want, as the restriction they imposed to themselves ("to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.") couldn't be more wishy-washy.

No difference to me. Goodbye Firefox.

By the way, what alternatives are there for Thunderbird?

The main problem with the "important part in cursive" is that it's Mozilla execs who decide what is actually a "to help you". There is no way to opt-out of "help".

Trash take. Don't try to make this seem ok.

Honestly, I am a bit surprised dang didn't change the title, given all the outrage and huge number of upvotes. Regardless of whether your analysis is missing anything, it just says what license doesn't say, and in that sense, yes, it's a complete lie, and people who were completely ok with what's going on yesterday are completely outraged and are massively switching to brave/chromium(lol)/ladybird again.

And, honestly, at this point this feels seriously misguided. However many bad things I can say about Mozilla, what really has changed on 25 Feb? Nothing much, really. The removed claim that they don't sell user data (linked in another comment) might be actually the bigger news here. But that also is much less important than what data they can actually gather (compared to brave/chromium/ladybird/whatever). If you can still disable tracking as before, well, ok.

Obviously, I don't think it's ideal in any case, and I'd rather like to have the same relationships with my browser as I have with Vim. But that is besides the point, the point being that news aren't really news (at least, definitely not the same news as 90% of posters in the topic are perceiving/discussing).

Thanks—we've updated the title to mention licenses now. I think probably we'll end up merging all these threads; not sure yet.

Edit: merging into https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43185909.

Earlier thread (in this case) was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065, which had that title.

The fact that this surprises me must be an indicator that Mozilla still had a good reputation with me. No longer. Starting the search for an alternative browser now.

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.

I'm sorry mate, that does not make sense

I am appalled by this change, but I am not switching to Brave. Mozilla is loosing trust, Brave started with zero.

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.

- [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/

Developers that fill those informations.. So then saying over there that they do not collect does not mean they are not collecting something..

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..

Mozilla has broken trust multiple times as well. If you don't trust Brave because of that, then how on earth are you trusting Mozilla?

I do not trust the scetchy guy running it

I do not trust their relationship with crypto

I do not trust their business model

> the scetchy guy running it

You mean Brandon Eich, the author of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla? Why?

The other two points I 100% agree with.

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.

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...

They removed this:

            {
                "@type": "Question",
                "name": "Does Firefox sell your personal data?",
                "acceptedAnswer": {
                    "@type": "Answer",
                    "text": "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. "
                }
            },

They bought an ad company back in November I think, so this is not a surprise to me. Boiling frogs

> "That’s a promise."

That always has been a lie, ever since they accepted Google's money.

Now due to the anti-trust lawsuit, 'principles' don't pay the bills. Now you are seeing that Firefox doesn't care about the privacy of its users.

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.

Break it into multiple sentences.

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...

The term itself is bad here. The problem isn't just because it's hard to understand.

> Second clause establishes that when you input that data you give firefox a license to that data which you otherwise own

Firefox doesn't need a license, because it's not a legal entity; it's software acting on behalf of a person (the user).

Mozilla doesn't need a license to all information input through Firefox, because Mozilla doesn't need that data for Firefox to operate.

It isn't just software: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/access-mozilla-services...

I will maintain it is an issue of clarity. Your argument is that Mozilla isn't offering online services but this isn't true and clarifying what actions upload information and exactly how that information would be used would mollify this. The list would probably be quite extensive. Moreover, the clause doesn't necessarily give them a license to all information input through firefox and that clarification should be demanded of them.

The ToU is clearly referring to the browser, not the other products of the Firefox brand family. The literal first two paragraphs:

> Firefox is free and open source web browser software, built by a community of thousands from all over the world.

> Please read these Terms of Use (“Terms”) carefully because they explain important information about using your copy of the Firefox software. These Terms are a binding agreement between Mozilla Corporation (“Mozilla”) and You. For details about Firefox privacy practices, please read the Firefox Privacy Notice.

I see a lot of people suggesting Brave, but is it still full of crypto nonsense?

The coin is still baked into the browser, but it's disabled by default and doesn't really nag you about it.

At least, that's how it was when I used Brave around 2021-2022.

I've long-since moved to Librewolf, but it's my 'plan C' browser if SHTF with firefox and its downstream forks ('plan B' being Ungoogled Chromium)

Yes.

Brave has a couple crypto features in the UI but that's about it. I'm big on crypto but I don't use any of the browser's crypto features. Just a browser that cuts most of the bullshit out.

Only if you enable it?

The problem with the other mainstream browsers is they're embedded with ad-tech nonsense which you can't get rid of.

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.

So... for the most practical question:

Anyone have a favourite Firefox fork that removes this and doesn't add other spyware or reinvent the UI too much?

That's almost exactly describing Librewolf, though it adds a ton of privacy 'hardening' features out-of-the-box, which can be a positive or negative depending on who you ask.

I personally use Librewolf with the Lepton (Photon style) UI[0], which replicates the previous UI style Firefox used a couple years ago, with small square tabs and condensed menus, before the current pseudo-tabletified abomination.

Of course, if you like the current UI—you'd literally be the first person I've met to like it—you can just use librewolf stock and it doesn't apply any changes to the standard Firefix UI.

[0] https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix

Thank you, it seems pretty neat so far!

Librewolf seems to be the best. https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/

What I ask myself is why is Firefox collecting months of telemetry data if sending telemetry is disabled.

If I disable telemetry, I would also expect it to not get collected.

So that there's plenty to send when they oops-accidentally forget that setting during an upgrade, and ask you to set it again.

They will of course assume opt-out rather than opt-in, and send what they've collected the moment the browser launches, then they're ready to give you the choice of opt-out once again.

Like they say, die early or live long enough to become a villain.

I never thought I would live to see the day when Mozilla's ethics would shift away so much from the "ethical" alignment.

Does anyone have any idea of what has changed inside Mozilla to prompt this?

Maybe business necessity finally caught up with them

The text leaves way too much up for shady interpretation. At that point I might as well fully switch to Chrome, even at home. Privacy was the single last reason for sticking with firefox, and these terms do not sound like privacy anymore.

Chrome is absolutely not a step in the right direction if this is pushing you away from Firefox. Look at the number of forks that strip out this nonsense and behave functionally identically instead.

I'm not going to go out of my way to fetch a modified build for a functionally worse browser. I only use FF at home due to privacy, but since that is no longer covered by Mozilla I might as well use the browser I've already been using for web dev for years at work.

I think this probably isn't as big of a deal as people are making it out to be. But I find a certain kind of joy in Mozilla being judged on the worst possible interpretation of their terms of service, since they do that to others _all the time_ [1].

[1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/

The first few steps on a slippery slope never do seem like a big deal, do they?

They sell your data now. Their strings are pulled.

I tend to agree with you, but I’d hope that given how badly this has been received, Mozilla finds some better writers to put some better thought into the contents of their ToS and issue some corrections in the near future.

> being judged on the worst possible interpretation

That's the correct way-- contract terms must be read defensively.

Mozilla became an ads company after acquiring ads tech startup Anonym. These changes follow that direction.

When I was a contractor, I worked on a project with this well-intended guy who wanted to make an app for people to store a persistent map of their movement over time using the GPS. On day one, he made it very clear—and I believed him—that a user's private data was sacrosanct. As the project wore on, never finding traction, and costing more and more money, I remember one of the last meetings I attended with him. He was trying to find new sources of revenue to keep the company alive, and he uttered the inevitable phrase: "well, we've got all this user data we could sell." That was one of those moments when you get a little more cynical, and since then I access as an axiom that every company will sell my data eventually, regardless of their promises. It's just a question of limiting their access to it, and being willing to switch to an alternative every once in a while.

I think it's time to bring this to the attention of the EU. The browser race to the bottom may be somewhat acceptable for entertainment, but it is my firm opinion that accessing online government services and banking infrastructure necessary for a modern life shouldn't require me to accept such terms.

I agree but unfortunately very few see this as an issue. For browsers, they kind of soft-lock-out established niche browsers due to heavy use of JS. But this is deepter: more and more banks and public institutions' services imply everyone and their grandma possesses G/A-owned device so they start to require these to access their web services (either through exclusive app access via A/G app ecosystem or by enforcing 2FA (T)OTP which implies using such device for non-devlopers). Some countries force kids to use apple/google-owned devices in class. All of this requires citizens to accept and agree to (possibly changing) TOS and privacy rules (self) of A+G and opting out is hard often times and sometimes impossible. very sad

So my bank password is now licensed to mozilla? This is not great...

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.)

Floorp may be what you're looking for. Pretty similar to native Firefox.

https://floorp.app/

Oh interesting, I'll check it out.

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.

[...] 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.

https://xcancel.com/LundukeJournal/status/189524980533888659...

The Vivaldi browser takes donations FYI. https://login.vivaldi.net/profile/donations

I note LibreWolf is built from FF sources.

Zen also.

Are they specifically removing the telemetry stuff Moz are going to use to collect user data?

They just use Gecko, right? Is telemetry actually built into the rendering engine

https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/

Librewolf has less spyware than waterfox.

If someone already deleted Firefox Sync and wants to get rid of Sync item in main menu, you can disable it by going to "about:config" and setting "identity.fxaccounts.enabled" to false.

AFAIU Firefox Sync is end to end encrypted, right? I interpreted the language here to mean that the data might be sent to Firefox outside of Firefox Sync. Have there been any changes to Firefox Sync that we know about?

Shout-out to Vivaldi. If you're looking for alternatives, give it a chance.

The engine monoculture is not great, but they're a small team and doing a great job to create a useful browser.

Sibling discussion (might be worth unifying): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43194536

Can't wait for Ladybird to become usable. To be fair, it already is fairly usable, but I'd need history syncing / Keychain sync to make it a daily driver.

Do you really? Seems you can wait, as do many of us. By waiting, what behavior do we encourage in software makers?

I suppose I could manually copy paste things, but it's not a great user experience. I'm fine with using beta software, but pre-alpha even is a bit too hard for me to swallow.

People are acting like this is new. This is about:studies. With about:studies you agreed to upload usage data. Right now they are enabling credit card autofill support, a CRL alternative that doesn't give information about the sites you visit, etc. Actual corporate goes out of their way to say "we do whatever we want", Mozilla at least gives a condition.

I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand I just want Firefox to keep being a free software web browser that I can trust. But on the other hand I realise Firefox isn't some hobby project and competing with Google isn't cheap. They already take money from Google and this could be shut off at any time. How can Firefox be independent if it doesn't have some revenue?

Unfortunately they've been stupid and blurred the lines between Firefox the browser and Firefox the "web platform". I don't think anyone would be too concerned if this was clearly about the web platform bit.

Maybe we need a smaller GPL browser that doesn't have the fancy stuff but can actually be maintained by the community. Yeah it won't with with a bunch of "web apps", but it will still provide access to information. This is also why if you are making websites you need to make sure it works without js etc. Otherwise you're basically forcing people to use adware.

I'm of one mind about this because

> Unfortunately they've been stupid

They could have had an enormous amount of good will and they do nothing but burn it. Weird how they get a lot of money from google and then, while technically meeting their mission by providing a browser alternative, seem to do a lot of self-sabotage in google's favor.

I honestly think the best thing that could happen to Firefox would be for Mozilla to exactly have their funding removed, have the foundation die, and a better entity focused just on Firefox, perhaps with more earnest and honest fundraising efforts and not a multimillion CEO salary, fills the vacuum.

Maybe Google is paying them to self-sabotage?

If you're not blocking your mozilla process from accessing firefox.com, mozilla.com/.org, and mozgcp.net, as well as turning telemetry settings off after every update and keeping a tight policy.json file - then firefox is just as bad as Edge or Chrome re: tracking

Also they actively take down extensions that unfuck websites without notice

Nice picture-in-picture implementation tho

Append all Mozilla services and telemetry to Pi-hole? What are the other ways this can be quietly mitigated and, the possible workarounds to exceptions created by DoH?

I see this thread pop up about once every 3 months for a different service. Its always the same license term that spooks people.

How much of a financial effort would it be to have some non-profit take a fork of Icecat and Fennec F-Droid, and just maintain a browser for the actual free world (akin to codeberg for example)?

i.e. if we strip down all the corporate overhead what would be the annual cost of maintaining a European sane version of 'land of the free' Firefox?

Clickbait title. I have read what is linked there and it claims no such thing.

At best, if you read through the notices, input data can be used to train personalised AI chatbots (running locally) IF you give your consent at the time of activation.

There's a lot of vitriol in the comments below but nobody seems to have read what is linked here.

Secondly, text typed into the search/address bar is sent to them for "suggestions" and to broadly categorize the search ("travel"). Turn this off if you don't want it.

Thirdly, they'll be notified if you click an advert on the new tab page. Again, this can be turned off

The only inaccuracy in the title is that it used the word "owns" as short-hand for "gets a broad license to use". Which isn't unheard of: we talk about owning a copy of a piece of software or music for example even though what we have is a perpetual and broad license to use it.

I wish the title didn't use such hyperbole, but it's closer to true than to false.

where does it say "own"? it says: "nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content" type something - it's "used" to get what "you" want - how is that "own"?

Since facebook was fined for processing friend requests with foreigners on foreign servers, I feel like licenses like this are actually necessary for any product with any remote services components to operate in the EU, with more jurisdictions to come suddenly and unpredictably.

> 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.

This is very frustrating. It becomes impossible to use the web in a privacy conscious way. I know that Firefox wasn't perfect, but it was the best we had, and I have been a loyal user, despite minor quirks and annoyances. And now this… Guess will have to find another browser.

Related on 27-feb-2025:

Mozilla owns "information you input through Firefox" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065 271 comments

Mozilla's new terms of use are out of step with Firefox's direct competition https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43194536 139 comments

Mozilla Introducing 'Terms of Use' to Firefox https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43187423 40 comments

Welcome to Ladybird, a truly independent web browser https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200806 211 comments

As Far as I can understand, Firefox is paid by Google just to justify chrome is not the only choice, and avoid anti-trust lawsuit.

I read the Google money are the true income, and it is a pity, because this technology merits more now than in the past.

Okay, can anyone recommend a good, uBlock-Origin supporting browser that isn't controlled by underhanded corporate/for-profit lying-through-their-teeth pieces of shit?

Making these legal terms changes while "summarizing" them with the typical "we care about your privacy" bullshit is of the same nature as punching someone in the face and exclaiming you are caring about their health. It's just evil - misleading and abusive.

I feel like the internet needs a tracker of moral failings of companies/organizations like this, it's still too easy for something like this to slip through and not reach sufficient publicity to affect public opinion and therefore action. They need to be held to the highest account, openly, publicly, and brutally shamed, ostracized and sued if necessary. If they fail and exploit the rights of individuals, mishandle the "implicit consent"/trust of their users, at their scale, they fail and exploit collective humanity.

One may argue this is a non-issue due to the freedom of contract - and people can just choose to use whatever they want - but who among us has such a continuous legal awareness of all the software they use to be able to switch whenever needed due to some software enshittifying?

My only hope may still lie in software managed by legally codified (truly) non-profit organizations. Lichess and the Blender Foundation are led by people who have held to their word, and made the world better for it.

https://librewolf.net/

All talk of "Privacy", "Principles" and "Promises" from Mozilla was already empty as they were completely dependent on Google's money.

This should surprise absolutely no-one and Mozilla never cared about their claims of privacy or their users as long as Google was paying them.

So now we know that when it comes down to the wire as their biggest customer (Google) was under anti-trust scrutiny; indirectly threatening Mozilla's deal with Google, They once again chose to violate the privacy of their users to sell their data to other companies like Google.

For Mozilla, money has always crushed their so-called "principles".

I bet there are still some software developers there who genuinely care about the mission.

Other than that, I've had to backspace and abort comments so much tonight, because I was angry beyond decorum, at the repeated betrayals.

Cool down friend.

There will always be great people building alternatives.

We need a trustworthy Web browser. There isn't one. And such a massive complexity moat has been created with de facto standards, and also made a moving target, that some nice programmer's temporary hobby project isn't a viable solution.

The illusion of mozilla having any privacy principles collapsed for me on May 2019 when they required users to enable telemetry to allow using adblock and tracking blocking extensions.

Lately I've been working on strategies to use software in unusual enough ways that I'm essentially off the radar of, well, anyone looking. The dark forest approach to the internet.

To avoid interacting with the web directly, I'm thinking of running some AI software in a container on a home server that would be a translation layer between me and the real web. All webpages would be converted to a simple, and secure, format. Gopher, gemini, asciidoc, or maybe just static html.

Is that a tractable problem with modern AI tools?

The only way to win is not to play, but I'd like to have my cake and eat it too.

The more unique your habits, the easier to fingerprint. That said, with those habits, you may be a less attractive audience.

Wht does Open Source needs any terms of use?

This is into the opposite direction about what "free open-source" means.

You get that software into your computer, you are entitled to free unrestricted use or modify in any way you want.

Except by the Firefox trademark of course.

Hmm it seems to me a viable solution (at least for the more tech inclined) is to just firewall it so it's unable to call home (although then there's an extension sourcing issue). Unless there's more of a philosophical stance. Or am I missing something else?

I've been a mostly happy Firefox user since v2, and have made it through - though will never forget - the extensions system "upgrade" debacle and more. As long as I have means to maintain reasonable control, I'll continue with it into the foreseeable future, because I consider the Chromium-based alternatives to be worse.

"At least for the more tech inclined" instantly eliminates 99% of users, probably even of Firefox for what you're talking about. I mean I'm tech inclined and I have no idea how you propose to firewall an internet browser from calling home. Maybe it's possible, I've never tried so I legitimately don't know. But if it is, it's an absolutely meaningless portion of users who'd even be able to do so much less go through the effort of actually doing it.

Windows user, 32 years FF user (Mosaic, Netscape, Firefox), what to do now?

Anyone forking? (I don't want a derivate which Mozilla controls)

[edit] Switched to Waterfox (Macos, Windows, Linux, Android), no fork but better than FF for now

Firefox forks:

* Waterfox

* Librewolf

* GNU IceCat

* Pale Moon

* Seamonkey

Chromium forks:

* Ungoogled-Chromium

* Thorium

* Iridium

You'll have to do your own due diligence as far as how trustworthy or suitable these are, but nominally privacy-respecting alternatives do exist.

Thanks didn't know, thought Waterfox etc. were just a new UI on top of Firefox rendering/HTTP/HTTPS/etc. engine and were depending on Firefox development. Didn't know they were forks like the Redis forks for example. Will take another look.

"Ungoogled-Chromium"

Can't be a fork? Don't they just patch Chromium?

I mean I guess that depends on what you mean by fork? Most of the above projects follow upstream Firefox/Chromium (Pale Moon, for example, doesn't -- but that also means less support for recent web standards) but they are forks in the sense that they maintain the codebase/patchset themselves. How much they actually diverge from upstream varies by project.

So you're right that they are dependent on Mozilla for now. With Mozilla circling the drain lately, maybe that could change. But right now, for the purposes of removing privacy-unfriendly antifeatures, I find them sufficiently independent for my purposes. Most Firefox code isn't evil.

If you want something like Firefox but you're adamant that Mozilla can exercise no control over it, Pale Moon is probably the one you want to look at.

This is of course very subjective.

With fork I mean, taking the code, forking it, and developing it on your own.

If someone would take the Redis-C lib and the Redis CLI and change it, but keeping Redis unchanged, I would not call that a "Redis fork".

Valkey who is forking Redis and everything, does not depend on Redis (at most cross patching exploits). I would call that a fork.

"Most Firefox code isn't evil."

You are successful, they will change the license, and you're dead - most current fork will not keep up the work because it is too much compared to changing the UI.

"recent web standards" The only reason for these is the cartel of web browser vendors (Google,Apple,Microsoft,Mozilla) to keep out competition. Worked for 10+ years, until Ladybird showed the strategy is flawed.

You are successful, they will change the license, and you're dead

Yeah, but this assumes that Mozilla itself is successful enough to retain the leverage to pull back users towards Firefox.

With the kind of stuff they have been pulling lately it's possible to see a future where one of the above forks (or call-them-what-you-will) gain traction and take users and developers away from Firefox. If this happens, Mozilla deciding to close off the code would just be the last nail in their coffin.

Thorium is regularly 3 months behind on updates

Iridium brings me to a 404 when I try to download it for MacOS

Sadly, neither seem like good options.

Thorium is regularly 3 months behind on updates

Unfortunate, I suppose, but this is the kind of tradeoff that is to be expected when switching to something maintained by one guy in their bedroom instead of a megacorp.

A detailed listing of whats collected and why:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#lawful-bases

It's times like these I look forward to the likes of the Ladybird browser [1] making progress.

[1] https://ladybird.org/

Disclaiming ownership is not enough. Making the supposed license that users supposedly grant more limited would be a step. Yes I saw it has some qualifiers but they are not protective enough of the user.

Switched to Vivaldi long time ago. For reasons like this, ToS, Mozilla changing their mission, etc.

Vivaldi respects your privacy, supports Chrome extensions, and all the customizations you'd ever need.

Vivaldi is probably the most ethical company making a for-profit browser now. But note that because it is a for-profit it tracks your installation, with an anonymous but unique id, and phones home every time you use the browser. There were complains about this in the forum, but Vivaldi said they had to do that to know how many unique users they have, to make browser deals with other companies. They refused to change that and instead suggested that interested parties could use an application firewall to block those connections from Vivaldi.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it still an issue that due to Chromium not supporting the V2 manifest, adblockers like Ublock Origin won't function in Vivaldi?

What does that mean for the Tor browser [0] which is based on Firefox?

[0] https://www.torproject.org/

It means that the state got a two-for-one deal.

Nothing. The ToS is not part of the license to the code.

Anyone using a fork? I'm thinking on migrating to https://floorp.app

I've been using Zen (https://github.com/zen-browser) for a while now, it's still in beta but is very cool.

I find this so sad. I would gladly pay/donate to support Firefox, far in excess of however much money they would make from data mining and advertising. I am sure that enough people feel the same way to make it a viable model.

Thunderbird raises more than $8mn a year in donations to support their development. Thunderbird's success has proven that this model would work.

Does using Firefox now force you to use some Mozilla services?

On Android, Fennic isn't bad. Is there a desktop version of Fennec?

Ask HN: Is ungoogled chromium a good alternative ?

It's missing containers and overall has less privacy features available than firefox.

This is exemplified compared to forks like librewolf that enable the majority of them.

Ungoogled Chromium and stock Firefox are pretty similar privacy-wise though.

The main advantage is all baked-in telemetry is stripped out, but it doesn't do much to protect you from privacy-invasive sites other than disabling WebRTC and blocking 3rd party cookies.

I used it for a number of years, but recently switched to Librewolf ~5 months ago and don't expect to switch back unless Firefox and all downstream forks completely implode.

The main question for me is can ungoogled Chromium run uBlock Origin?

Yes, it's just a downstream fork of chromium. It can run any extension that runs on the equivalent upstream build of chromium.

For the same reasons you can install it on Librewolf too, and it actually comes with ublock origin pre-installed.

> Yes, it's just a downstream fork of chromium. It can run any extension that runs on the equivalent upstream build of chromium.

Therefore, no, it cannot run uBlock Origin, or soon will be unable to run it.

It can run ublock origin right now, and will be able to run ublock origin lite into the future.

No chromium-based browser currently plans to keep MV2 support. It's just not feasible for a small group to keep it maintained ontop of the inevitable breaking changes that will be introduced in upstream over time.

If this bothers you, use a real browser that isn't sourced from an ad company.

Otherwise, you'll be getting exactly what you should expect, and nothing more.

Ungoogled chromium is a good alternative in terms of privacy because all google-related services are gutted and there are no other built-in telemetry things.

There are some downsides, too.

First, you have to do some research on learning to make this browser work conveniently, e.g. finding alternative services to sync and backup your settings, bookmarks, accounts and passwords, etc.

Second, changes pushed by Google like Manifest V3 is still hard to deal with.

How does corporate promises work? Like, I used Firefox when they promised never to sell my data. So I should be grandfathered, right?

There's no such thing as a corporate promise. There are such things as legal contracts and lawsuits, neither of which likely apply to anything Mozilla says about their browser.

There’s also agreements and tos

Interesting that in this thread discussing a new Mozilla EULA/AUP (among other things) banning pornography, not one person has mentioned that their image library was once called libpr0n: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66984

So since last year's debacle with Mozilla being an add-on company plus this ToU was the boiling point for me:

-Removed Firefox from all machines, replaced with LibreWolf.

-Deleted my Mozilla account.

-Changed to brave on mobile

Took about 15 minutes.

When evil shows it's real face and wants to tell me how and for what I can use my software, that's a goodbye Mozilla....so much for your ethics.

The only surprise here is that people are surprised by this. Mozilla is an advertising company, since almost a year ago.

Fully agree, here is a context for those who missed it https://www.adexchanger.com/privacy/mozilla-acquires-anonym-...

Firefox performance has been trash for years, for many reasons. I still stick with it because it was included in my Ubuntu 8.04, which was the first OS I installed by myself, and more recently because of its stand regarding privacy. Now I might as well bite the bullet and move to Chrome or Edge, performance is much much better.

There's Chromium

There's chromium, and then, for those who take their privacy more seriously than the average VPN customer that just wants to do piracy, there's ungoogled-chromium.

It's like chromium, just without feeding heaps of your personally-identifying metadata directly to Google, who give it directly to the NSA, who give it directly to Elon Musk and DOGE.

Remember, ALL mass surveillance by ALL intelligence agencies is ALWAYS a threat to your freedom, because you don't get to revoke it. You weren't consenting to sharing your information with the Obama administration, you were consenting to sharing your information with all future administrations, no matter how far removed from your own worldview those future administrations may be.

There is one solution. We the people demand an end to ALL government surveillance as well as severe legal consequences for all US government employees who ever helped build such systems, even if they were "just following orders", because neither following orders nor ignorance of the larger picture is an excuse for facilitating moral atrocities.

> metadata directly to Google, who give it directly to the NSA, who give it directly to Elon Musk and DOGE

Source?

sources:

- Google's own privacy policy

- Extensive evidence provided by brave national heroes and civil rights legends like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, including training materials for specific named NSA programs like PRISM that offer explicit lists of cooperating partners, including Google, Microsoft, Apple - basically every big tech company, but also smaller but popular ones, such as Skype (pre-Microsoft acquisition); this is well known among technology's civil rights advocates, and isn't hard to find discussion of by credible technologists, including the folks behind Protonmail¹

- Elon & DOGE: see literally every major American news network besides Fox pretty much since the inauguration, large swathes of the internet, several prominent discussions on HN. It's not just illegally mass-surveilled stuff either, they're going through all sorts of classified stuff right now!

¹ Here's one such example literally on the front page as of the time of writing this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43201732

A few years ago Google came under fire for sending extra identifiers to Google's websites in a header named X-Client-Data[0]. I don't remember how many identifying bits that includes or whether they still do it, but it was the tipping point for me.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106

How do you define performance? For my use case I don't see any difference in speed compared to say, Safari.

Time to switch: https://librewolf.net/

They made too many decisions on their own to be a 1:1 replacement. I think there needs to be a new fork, which would just remove all of the spyware bits.

Which decisions? LibreWolf ist exactly that + hardening used in tor browser maybe you mean those but all of them you can change in setting.

Like I need to watch DRM for my job, and it doesn't work at all. I also already ported most of their configs that I actually researched each and every line of myself + Waterfox + Arkenfox's configs into my generic Mozilla Firefox, and it works great.

There is literally a "enable DRM" setting (might also need disable resist fingerprint). Also librewolf is almost 1:1 with arkenfox.

If you think Librewolf is too opinionated, try Waterfox [1]

[1] https://github.com/BrowserWorks/Waterfox

Waterfox seemed a bit too opinionated as well, especially in terms of extra code, weird versioning, patch delays.

These FF forks will all be nonviable within a few years of Mozilla going under. Google and Apple will keep moving the web (for better or worse), and these forks will be unable to keep up for lack of resources.

Whether they get relatively slower, or just can't support some new web tech, the writing will be on the wall.

"A few years" is at least 10 years, though. That's a lot of time to pivot or get morally sounder funding sources (users for example).

A decade seems optimistic to me, personally.

----

I doubt user funding would cover more than a small fraction of the costs. Someone crunched the numbers in the Lobsters comments, and compared it to Wikipedia's funding. They concluded Mozilla would have to be more popular than Wikipedia to make it work, and it almost certainly isn't.

I think an intergovernmental EU funding initiative might work, though.

Is there a “brave” browser that uses Firefox?

There is a Brave browser.

I'd go with Ungoogled Chromium at that point.

I’m kind of addicted to tab containers right now and I have them set up in a way where I can proxy specific containers out different socks proxies that go through different VPN tunnels. Niche I know but it’s keeping me on FF.

OMG do you have a writeup on how you do that?

its mostly a bunch of stuff i whipped together myself, but the short of it is i have a docker container that acts as a "vpn broker", establishing multiple vpn connections and then exposing access to them over socks proxies, and in the tab containers you can natively assign a socks proxy per container group

there's probably software already out there that does this same thing and probably does it better, id be hesitant to open-source what i have without a lot of cleanup and security changes.

so certain tab container groups go out certain proxies which in turn egress specific vpn tunnels

Tab containers are a godsend when managing multiple AWS accounts as well.

Or separating tabs in personal / Work A / Work B contexts. Containers are a poweruser feature.

AWS now supports multi-session logins, so you can log in with multiple accounts simultaneously.

I think what was being asked is if there's something like Brave that doesn't use a webkit derived back-end. Good defaults and a good stance on privacy is one reason to use Brave and historically Firefox, but another is that it keeps the browser ecosystem from being too homogeneous. Firefox is the last browser with over sub-percent market share, and even then it's less than 3%, so it's almost gone.

A case can be made that many of the browsers split from webkit (or split from things that split from webkit) long enough ago that there is competition, but IMO that's a far cry from a fully independent solution.

This exactly! Apologies for not being more clear.

Yes, though I've never used it: https://librewolf.net/

I've had good luck with LibreWolf on Windows

IceCat, maybe?

I too am looking for alternatives.

Official site: https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/

Binary build available here but not official:

https://icecatbrowser.org/index.html

edit:

I linked to a non-official site first, added the official site and made clear that the site offering binarys is non-official.

Zen browser https://zen-browser.app/

For which OS? Waterfox is nice https://waterfox.net

I've been using Mozilla since the browser was literally called Mozilla, and I remain loyal simply because I don't think we should fragment the ecosystem. One company focusing its development resources is a lot better than 3 open source projects.

But fact is that Mozilla is effing up big time. They remain in the bay area where developers are paid super high salaries when they should be a 100% remote company. They have bugs and issues decades old. They keep flirting with big business.

They are also our last big corporate hope against the enshittification of the web.

It's all just part of Mozilla's ebb and flow. Give it until 2027. They will have lost all community support and be trailing in many browser metrics. And then they'll do something that once again builds them a niche of devoted fans.

It has happened before. And before that, and before that.

Sometimes I wish I had the kind of education that allows you to interpret Terms of Use, Privacy Notices and other legal mumbojumbo in a way that answers my questions. It's great practice if you like cryptic crosswords though.

Having access to everyone's ChatGPT sessions does seem pretty valuable as it can now be used for training / fine tuning other AIs. I suspect this is where the business case comes from.

I suppose the main target here is to sell firefox sync bookmark and history data?

It is possible to host your own firefox sync instance but it's too much work. I hope it gets easier with these announcements lighting a fire under people.

Title is inaccurate. Mozilla get a nonexclusive license. That is different from ownership.

The license grant in these terms does not specify the license is irrevocable. The licensor, i.e., the Firefox user, reserves the right to revoke.

The license does not say that Mozilla owns information that the user inputs through Firefox. But the HN title does. If Mozilla owns the information then it would have no need for a license. Further, the license does not specify that it is perpetual. A Firefox user does not grant Mozilla perpetual rights to use the information. These rights can be terminated.

Thanks—we've updated the title to mention licenses now. I think probably we'll end up merging all these threads; not sure yet.

Edit: merging into https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43185909.

Earlier thread (in this case) was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065, which had that title.

(Note to self: Initially points went to -2.)

Does Chrome have a similar policy that says that it owns a license to your data?

> Without it [the license], we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example.

That is EXACTLY what we WANT: DON'T use information we type in Firefox!

If that's a problem for you, let us pay you i.e. $5/month.

if i want to block data collection by Mozilla, what do i configure in pi-hole?

If you don't want this to happen, then a company would need to:

1. Have the capital to build and maintain a browser 2. By selling copies of that browser 3. In sufficient funds to keep the business going and make the owners a profit.

Let's say you can do it with a small team -- if you're forking something like firefox, and pay for the salary of 21 people -- full time, 8 developers, a PM, a manager, Customer support (3 people), 3 sales folks, and 3 testers, and one owner.

If the average salary is $175,000, and the fully loaded cost of each employee (including office space, equipment, benefits) is $250,000, then just to break even -- and not even account for inflation or costs rising -- and not even accounting for capital expenditures, the product would have to sell 105,000 copies at $50 a pop.

If you sold it for $30 a year, that's now 175,000 copies, every year. Realistically, to account for taxes and the fact that Developer salaries are no longer expensible (thanks Trump!), you'd have to sell around twice that number of copies, so around 350,000 copies of this browser, a year. Every year. Just to break even.

When's the last time 350,000 people said, "I want to buy a web browser?". When's the last time 350,000 people bought a web browser?

We've made our own bed in this one, the second folks saw that Internet Explorer was free; and that killed the original Mozilla browser -- that -- by the way -- I happily paid for.

If you want an internet where you're not the product, then that's an internet where the business models have to change, and the customer desire to pay for the software they use has to go up.

And that still -- still -- does not alleviate the problem of capital needing to get started, which is only exacerbated by the Section 174 changes in the TCJA of 2017.

I promise, I will never die.

I honestly don't understand why Mozilla isn't succeeding with a "privacy subscription" where for $100/year (or $20/month or something) you get a full kit of digital sovereignty tools. Password manager, Mozilla, email with privacy features, secure file transfer, ephemeral cards...

I'm genuinely curious if people can comment why this isn't working -- because it seems like they've actually already tried versions of this!

Google pays them south of a $billion/year. Your money means nothing.

> Google pays them south of a $billion/year

Until it doesn't.

Can someone elaborate on what this means? Has Mozilla completely abandoned the "privacy" focus? I.e. should I stop recommending the browser and find an alternative? Deleting sentences like "We never sell your data" is for a long-time fan of the browser very alarming. But frankly I'm confused by the PR/blogs and can't tell from the privacy policy if/how it now allows selling my data.

How does this matter? If it said "never" it cannot be changed by deleting it, because never means for eternity. Otherwise it wasn't a promise.

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.

I would expect half of that is funding developers for their numerous different projects. How naive would that assumption be?

You seem to be in the ballpark : "260 million for 'software development expenses'" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances

Still that leaves ~ 400 million dollars for a privacy policy that doesn't read like it came from a sleazy big-tech company.

Do be aware of the missing security updates if you follow this advice

HN title: "Mozilla owns "information you input through Firefox"

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 to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."

This is a license to use, not ownership. If Mozilla owns the information then it does not need a license.

Licenses to use information can be revoked, i.e., terminated.

Good catch—thanks! I've put that more accurate quote in the title above (or rather, a shortened version that fits HN's 80 char limit).

Edit: merging into https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43185909

Earlier thread (in this case) was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065, which had that title.

Anyone think this is to afford the ability to run a remote AI service which provides services that would be improbable to run locally?

I was pretty confused about why this even exists (it's weird to read a bunch of paragraphs that are semantically valid but don't seem to convey information), and then I read the [Privacy Notice](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox). Looks like there's a decent amount of surveillance / ad tech built in to Firefox.

From "How is your data used?":

> Firefox also shows its own search suggestions based on information stored on your local device (including recent search terms, open tabs, and previously visited URLs). These suggestions may include sponsored suggestions from Mozilla’s partners

> Mozilla's partners receive de-identified information about interactions with the suggestions they've served.

> Depending on your location, Mozilla derives the high level category (e.g., travel, shopping) of your search from keywords in that query, in order to understand the types and number of searches being made. We utilize privacy preserving technologies such that Mozilla only learns that someone, somewhere, performed a search relating to a particular category, without knowing who.

> Mozilla may also receive location-related keywords from your search (such as when you search for “Boston”) and share this with our partners to provide recommended and sponsored content. Where this occurs, Mozilla cannot associate the keyword search with an individual user once the search suggestion has been served and partners are never able to associate search suggestions with an individual user.

> You may be able to opt into an enhanced search experience, which will result in Mozilla processing additional personal data, including your technical data, location and search data. Some of that information may be shared with our partners on a de-identified and/or aggregated basis.

> We use technical data, language preference, and location to serve content and advertising on the Firefox New Tab page in the correct format (i.e. for mobile vs desktop), language, and relevant location. Mozilla collects technical and interaction data, such as the position, size, views and clicks on New Tab content or ads, to understand how people are interacting with our content and to personalize future content, including sponsored content. This data may be shared with our advertising partners on a de-identified or aggregated basis.

> In some instances, when ads are enabled on New Tab, additional browsing data may also be processed locally on your device to measure the effectiveness of those ads; such data will only be shared with Mozilla and/or our advertising partners via our privacy-preserving technologies on an aggregated and/or de-identified basis.

> When you allow us to do so, Firefox sends Mozilla data about the website domain or specific advertising campaign (if any) that referred you to our download page to help us understand and improve our marketing efforts. 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.

I wonder if LibreWolf is of any help with those (and previous) changes. Would love to see LibreWolf maintainers chime in on this.

Is there another browser that can do "container tabs" really the only thing that's keeping on Firefox now

LibreWolf can do it.

Fuck it I am going back to Internet Explorer.

The writing on the wall was there since a long time ago considering the actions of the foundations leadership. They burn money like crazy on some useless stuff, no direction or idea how to bring back FF into the spotlight where it belongs.

Now with the changes with Chrome (basically killing of adblockers) they have a big window to make a play but instead they make the most idiotic move possible. Typical Mozilla - a mix of great tech (e.g. Rust) and detached from reality leadership.

I've been using Firefox since decades, even when it was a slow and buggy piece of crap compared to Chrome but now I think it is time to move to something else. But what will guarantee me I won't get a rug pull when some MBA takes the reins?

To the people that forced their friends and family to switch to Firefox be sure to schedule the tech support visit.

Mozilla lost its missing a long time ago. The previous CEO was a disaster, and it looks like this one is too.

I think it's safe now to call Mozila's management as criminals. They are using old Mozilla's reputation to profit off people's data.

IANAL - does that mean if I, in the UK, get arrested for wrong think on X I can redirect the police to Mozilla?

This seems poorly worded, intentionally or not. Doesn't feel like the Mozilla I've known.

What would complete the irony would be Google declaring they are abandoning ads in the age of AI :)

I thought Firefox sync and VPN was end to end encrypted.

That is a far bigger wtf than dumb unenforceable tos text.

>dumb unenforceable tos text

It is unenforceable by YOU, since Mozilla has reserved all rights to all the data you put through your browser. Which is why I'm currently using LibreWolf for the first time.

It is. The data exfiltration is more through telemetry vectors as they currently use. A VPN can't help you with that and while they can't see your bookmarks stored in the sync service because they don't have the encryption key, they technically could do what they like once that is decrypted and in memory.

Librewolf can use Mozilla's existing Firefox Sync and because of the end-to-end encryption you get the privacy you wanted that way [1].

[1] https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/#can-i-use-firefox-sync-with-...

I'm not using Firefox because it's functionally superior to Chrome. I use it because it's not a surveillance technology and Chrome is. Privacy is the only reason why I'm using Firefox.

The board governing Firefox development has got to be some of the worst. They don't understand the product nor their users.

This is not your computer. This is not your operating system. This is not your browser.

Urgh Mozilla needs to focus on being a good web browser, Id even pay, but you cant

I pay for Relay... I'm sure it's a mistake though bc it'll get ended sometime soon and I'll have to figure out how to transfer all my email aliases elsewhere...

Just installed Librewolf last night and will gladly support the end of Mozilla.

What choice do we have then?

I guess Brave is the best we have until something more complete comes out of this crop of new browser engines like ladybird.

Chromium and a bunch of its forks, all the Firefox forks, Gnome Web (Epiphany), Falkon, Ladybird, probably a bunch of others I don't know about...

I uninstalled Firefox this morning after reading about these sus af changes.

Tried Librewolf and found it to be great,

  - No Pocket bullshit.

  - I forgot I had the start page set to blank only because Firefox was fixed on ruining it while forbidding using a custom one.

Migrating took me 20m, and I'm glad I did it because it left be a backup of something that so far only Mozilla kept for me.

  - Exporting/Importing bookmarks takes 20s. (Ctrl-Shift-o, export/import).

  - Exporting passwords is simple (Preferences, search for passwords. Alternatively just go to about:logins).

  - I had many extensions to install, but the ones that need heavy customisation all had export/import. Migrating passwords was easy through a (totally not safe) csv file.

    - The only troublesome extension was Video Download Helper, but after re-running `vdhcoapp install` I figured I just needed to copy `~/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/` into `~/.librewolf/`.

I'm kind of stuck with Android. I don't know of an alternative, but haven't spent time looking for one yet.

Well that clearly sucks. Does anyone know alternatives for firefox sync?

only if: there was a firefox module that could run continious scatelogical searches in the background , and repost randon grabs to a bot only forum, and mozilla would own, a lot of **

ignore the rage-bait and learn contract law and terminology.

We need an open and independent alternative to Firefox Sync.

Mozilla is going down the path of enshittification. I don't really care what the exact AUP, ToS and other legalese tomes boil down to, I should not need to agree to nothing but the license to use a piece of free software. If they only wanted this shit to apply to the online services, they should state it as such.

I am sad to state this, but this is likely the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I am convinced that there is a huge silent majority of users here that care about the erosion of privacy and data abuse because that's why we were using Firefox in the first place. If I don't have any assurance of my rights, privacy, anonymity and the general assurance of virtues that a capital F - Free Software- should exhibit. If I have to settle for a solution that doesn't respect my rights, I will use something more complete, well supported and user-friendly.

Guess they have to pay the CEO's seven million dollar salary somehow ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

That's all! Thanks for watching folks.

My god people, what a nothing burger. Try clicking the link and reading the actual terms:

> 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.

Most of the comments here are in bad faith or just people jumping on the hype train. Sad.

Adieu Mozilla!

We need an EU alternative to Firefox.

Just sponsor Servo[1], it will be much safer than Chrome or Firefox once ready.

[1] https://opencollective.com/servo

Is it EU based though?

Overseed[1] by Linux Foundation Europe.

[1] https://servo.org/about/

Ask HN: Is Brave an ok alternative?

Brave was never good: crypto-crap, based on Chromium, and was modifying web pages from the start without your consent. I never understood why people use it.

The Youtube adblock always works

People use it because it is essentially Chrome with uBlock-Origin built in (I think the developer of uBlock Origin is employed by Brave) and it removes the stupid cookie modals that are on every website. Between running a pi-hole and Brave, I rarely see an advert on a website.

Turning off the "crypto-crap" can be done quite easily (you literally right click on the BAT icon and it is gone) and the new tab ads are removed again with a couple of clicks. I've found it also runs much better than Firefox on older hardware.

> can be done quite easily

The first and last time I tried Brave, it was injecting links (with a pretty golden picture) in each post of reddit (and I'm not talking about changing the referrals). To turn that off I had to look deep into the settings.

I've not seen it do that personally and I've been using Brave for a number of years now. Not saying that it hasn't happened either.

Depends, but with this news you will probably not be downgrading too much.

Brave really does have a bunch of very nice features, I particularly enjoyed using them on my phone to download videos from youtube for online listening. Built-in adblocking is very enjoyable too.

Do note that there had been several smaller controversies, including one that 'Honey' got recently into hot water for, which was replacing affiliate links with their own. There is currently an on-going lawsuit with Honey for this.

In honesty, look at the controversies page on wikipedia and decide for yourself, I don't think there is a good or a bad choice here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers...

In my opinion, if you care about the open web, then you should not be using a Blink (Chromium) based browser like Brave. The less control Google has, the better for the web.

Well that ship has sailed.

The internet used to be controlled in large by Microsoft. Then it wasn't. It does not have to continue to be controlled by Google in the future. Not using Chromium based browsers is a first step.

I use it. Turning off the ads and annoyances can be done in literally 20 seconds. It has uBlock Origin built in and removes the cookie modal popups.

It has a nice sync feature so my bookmarks / extensions are sync'd. The developer tools are exactly the same as Chromes.

It has some controversies in the past, but generally it has been ok IMO.

Brave is my favorite so far. You can run an HTTP monitor like Charles Proxy or Fiddler in your OS if you think your browser is snooping on you. I do Brave + Ghostery and works great.

It’s just sad that everything eventually comes to this.

Is it an inevitable law that everything eventually enshittifies? Firefox has had a good run, but it still pisses me off.

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

> You agree to indemnify and hold Mozilla and its affiliates harmless for any liability or claim from your use of Firefox, to the extent permitted by applicable law.

Yikes. Good thing i was never informed or agreed to this nonsense.

Isn't limitation of liability part of virtually every open source license?

From MIT license:

> IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

From GPLv3 license:

> ... IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MODIFIES AND/OR CONVEYS THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM ...

The issue is indemnification, not liability. I do not have the funds to defend Mozilla and their partners if someone decides to sue them because they don't like how i use their software.

Mozilla too?

Et tu, Mozilla?

Sell out

i switched to Firefox because of Google's Chrome's nonsense on ublock origin. turn out Mozilla's firefox also have its own nonsense.

Mozilla really keeps making missteps.

So, what are the forks?

"Never" always means "Until we decide otherwise".

Great. We need to sue Mozilla to death for GDPR violation, it seems. I guessed Mozilla would eventually die, but not like this.

Since it’s relevant to the discussion, here’s a repost of their latest response.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms...

On Wednesday we shared that we’re introducing a new Terms of Use (TOU) and Privacy Notice for Firefox. Since then, we’ve been listening to some of our community’s concerns with parts of the TOU, specifically about licensing. Our intent was just to be as clear as possible about how we make Firefox work, but in doing so we also created some confusion and concern. With that in mind, we’re updating the language to more clearly reflect the limited scope of how Mozilla interacts with user data.

Here’s what the new language will say:

You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.

In addition, we’ve removed the reference to the Acceptable Use Policy because it seems to be causing more confusion than clarity.

Privacy FAQ

We also updated our Privacy FAQ to better address legal minutia around terms like “sells.” While we’re not reverting the FAQ, we want to provide more detail about why we made the change in the first place.

TL;DR 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. We changed our language because some jurisdictions define “sell” more broadly than most people would usually understand that word. Firefox has built-in privacy and security features, plus options that let you fine-tune your data settings.

The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.”

Similar privacy laws exist in other US states, including in Virginia and Colorado. And that’s a good thing — Mozilla has long been a supporter of data privacy laws that empower people — but the competing interpretations of do-not-sell requirements does leave many businesses uncertain about their exact obligations and whether or not they’re considered to be “selling data.”

In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. We set all of this out in our Privacy Notice. Whenever we share data with our partners, we put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share is stripped of potentially identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).

We’re continuing to make sure that Firefox provides you with sensible default settings that you can review during onboarding or adjust at any time.

Obligatory GDPR post.

Data of UK and EU users is protected. Why doesn't the USA have such sensible data protection laws; the only hostility I see is from surveillance capitalists spreading their FUD.

Haven't you heard? Protecting liberty is against freedom. Ask Mr. Vance about it. /s

Did you not see all the surveillance capitalists at the inauguration?

I kept getting flagged for calling out Firefox/Mozilla, for years

Now you get what you deserve, folks

I'm sure there is a better source than that culture warrior twitter account.. Like the commit on github itself, for instance.

Apple removed encryption for iCloud users in UK. I don't see the outrage on HN why?

Because you're looking at a thread about Mozilla, the outrage is in the threads about Apple removing ADP for iCloud users in the UK.

Yes. Thank you.:)

It got 1700 points.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43128253

Misleading framing.

Apple removed encryption for iCloud users in the UK rather than pretending to keep it while giving the UK a backdoor.

In this, Apple was the good guy and the UK the bad actor.

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.

I'm genuinely curious about your leverage comment. Lots of people base their browsers on the open source Chromium project. They rely on Google for the source, but they aren't indebted in any way the company. They're essentially just forking the source every time they update.

On the other hand, Mozilla develops their own source code but is almost entirely funded by Google. They are looking for alternative funding, but does receiving all your paychecks from a company give them less leverage over you than freely copying their code? I'm not convinced.

I'm sad to see Firefox take this direction, but they've been going in a bad direction for a long time, and this is a bit too far for me. Deleted it everywhere. Personally, I like Falkon and Vivaldi. Jon von Tetzchner may not release all his source, but he has a great track record over decades of browser development, and that kind of earned trust is something Mozilla has not been fostering lately. He has never demonstrated that Google, Microsoft or anyone else has "insane leverage" over him or his companies and wasn't afraid to walk away from Opera when he didn't like the direction. We need more of that in the browser space.

I think this argument is tired.

Mozilla is making decisions in lockstep with Google around privacy in the browser.

Chromium is also open source software, and you'll note that several forks of that codebase don't have this "we're going to train AI models on literally everything you do online" clause.

Hell - Firefox itself has several forks which are also less invasive.

---

> 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.

No one is entitled to this - yet there are a good number of people who go out of their way to make this available. Use one of their tools instead of pretending that Mozilla is being "the good guy" here. They absolutely are not.

> no one is entitled to having a free, ads free and privacy respecting web browser

I disagree. As governments and society at large are increasingly requiring you to be online for basic tasks we do owe it to make sure people have a user agent that doesn't come with strings attached.

There are valid criticisms to make of these ToS.

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.

So, no, I do not see the hypocrisy.

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.

If I'm using a worse product (arguable, I know--depends on use-case) for their virtue signaling, and they quit even pretending...

I might just choose the best browser, then.

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.

The terms do not mention being limited to uploading stuff to Mozilla.

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 ...

Time to switch to LibreWolf and Mullvad Browser.

> 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.

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 ...

Can you please cite the part that you think corresponds to what you claim?

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.

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

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