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Comment by janci | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

Like - what basic functionality? Does not sound like "browsing" is that functionality and I am not interested in any other functionality. I do not want you (Mozilla organization) to use any of that information.

Moreover, what if I do not have the right to sublicense the content I enter to FF? Am I legally not allowed to use Firefox?

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They literally just mean things like filling out forms. Implicitly or explicitly you have to give Firefox permission to store and reproduce the text you type in this very textarea so that it can submit the form for you.

But I agree with you that this should not require specific legal language. However, I point out that most other browsers have already added that same language, or something similar, to their own ToS. As have programs such as Microsoft Office. If you cannot use Firefox then you cannot use any of them either.

Somehow I use pens, emacs, and curl without sublicensing my IP to BIC, the GNU Project, or Daniel Stenberg.

Why does Mozilla need to be granted a license to my IP to submit form fields, but curl doesn't? These are just tools, used by me personally. I'm not hiring Mozilla. Mozilla is not a party to my use of their tool.

I totally agree with you that this is stupid. But apparently they feel that implicit permission isn’t enough.

At a guess, something to do with "hiring" Mozilla to do phishing protection in forms, perhaps in-browser, more likely mostly-in-browser.

Don't guess. Read Mozilla's Privacy Notice: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/

There's a lot more in there than phishing protection.

Because Mozilla has a dedicated legal team and larger organizational exposure.

Bic had €2.233 billion* in revenue in 2022. Is that not large enough to matter?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bic_(company)

Physical products aren't relevant here.

Do you really, honestly believe that the only reason Mozilla wrote terms of use that way but cURL doesn't is that Mozilla has more or better lawyers? Do you actually find it hard to believe that the legal terms attached to cURL are entirely sufficient an that Mozilla is using different terms because Mozilla is planning to take meaningfully different actions with respect to user data?

Mozilla has "larger organizational exposure" precisely because they're tracking users and packaging up that data for sale.

> Do you really, honestly believe that the only reason Mozilla wrote terms of use that way but cURL doesn't is that Mozilla has more or better lawyers?

Yes. Well, that, and Firefox talks to backend services (updates, safe browsing, etc) to do its job for the user, whereas cURL doesn't.

> Do you actually find it hard to believe that the legal terms attached to cURL are entirely sufficient an that Mozilla is using different terms because Mozilla is planning to take meaningfully different actions with respect to user data?

I've known a lot of Mozilla folks for a long time, so, yes.

> backend services

Except when you actually read the ToU the controversial, unnecessary license doesn't even talk about Mozilla's services at all.

"It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox."

As does Microsoft, yet their VS Code does not require that.

> Because Mozilla has a dedicated legal team and larger organizational exposure

Sorry, this is BS. Nobody was going to win shit from Mozilla for typing a URL into their browser that runs locally on their machine. Where they might have gotten in trouble is with their telemetry (e.g. Pocket), but that’s sort of screaming to the problem that they’re pivoting to spyware.

That's not how browsers work. The data you put into a text field gets sent to the website.

If anyone claims they need to "store and process" this data, it is explicitly and solely so they can spy on you.

There is absolutely zero requirement of any kind for anyone other than the website to even know you're entering text. There is no reason or excuse for Mozilla to claim otherwise. If Mozilla claims they require a license for text you type into a website, they're lying so they can sell the data you're entering on third party websites.

This is extremely cut and dry. What Mozilla is implying is not how browsers work. This is not how websites work. Mozilla is trying to spy on users and there is no other technically valid explanation.

You’re forgetting that browsers store all of the text you type just in case the browser crashes or the power goes out or the website is offline. Later you can revisit the same page and the form data that you already entered will be refilled for you. It _is_ how browsers work.

This data is stored on your computer, not on anyone elses. (or if the website owner decides, it's stored there, but this would be indepdent of the browser used)

This is completely untrue. Do you work for mozilla? Text entered in forms like the one you use to write comments like this one don't get saved. Any logic to do with saving it is a matter for the developer of the website not the browser. This is like saying that ISP need to be granted license to forward the packages that make up your http request.

Have you never noticed this feature before? I’m starting to feel old. I was there, three thousand years ago. I was there when the strength of men failed. I mean, I was there when both the web and Firefox were really unreliable. We realized how much pain it was causing people to type things into the web browser only for it to crash and completely lose all of their hard work. Or for the webpage to throw up an error and cast their comment into the flames. We decided that the browser should save that text somewhere, so that if (and when) the user goes back it can be placed back into the form as if by magic.

But I agree that it’s stupid that Mozilla now feels you need to give it explicit permission to do this rather than implicit permission. But since only you own the copyright to the comments you write, maybe I can see the point.

I find this part puzzling. I don't have to give a pencil manufacturer rights of any sort to art I make with their product. A notebook seller cares not for such rights either, nor does a musical instrument company. The fact that Firefox seems insistent upon securing content rights suggests they're interested in using the content for things other than local browsing, which I find rather unfortunate. I'd gladly buy a support license for the browser specifically but Mozilla's structure seems to prevent that.

Or their legal team is incompetent. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

If there’s a financial incentive involved I think it’s perfectly reasonable to incline towards malice.

Mozilla's legal team is probably competent, but working under unreasonable constraints where their initial advice to the effect of "don't spy on your users" has been rejected and now they need to find a way to shield Mozilla from legal consequences of a decision that their users won't like.

Or, “Lawyers will lawyer.” That said, there is room for both.

> Implicitly or explicitly you have to give Firefox permission to store and reproduce the text you type in this very textarea so that it can submit the form for you.

You don't have to give Mozilla permission to store and reproduce what you type into a textarea on a non-Mozilla web site.

But under current law you cannot grant a _program_ a license to something, only a person or an organization of people.

Firefox is not a SaaS. More so, it's Free Software so you literally own the program you run on your computer. You, the end user, are granted all the rights (well, except for the Firefox trademark) to do whatever you please with the binary or source code, under the MPL terms, essentially with the only restrictions imposed is that you have to do the same if you distribute it further (modified or verbatim).

If you legally need some license to type into a program on your computer (I don't think so, but let's say you do solely for the sake of imaginary argument) you can just give the license to yourself, no need to involve any third parties at any point here.

If Mozilla says they need a license so you can fill a form in Firefox, then they must've literally forgotten what Free Software even means. I hope this is not true, but merely a misunderstanding of some sort.

I agree that an explicit grant of a license is probably not necessary. I don’t grant `cat` or `less` a license, they just do what I tell them to do. I think an implicit grant is sufficient. If you use the software, you grant it the license to store and reproduce your copyrighted creations.

Note that the MPL grants you the user many permissions, but does not grant Mozilla any. If Mozilla feels that they need to be explicitly granted more permissions then they have to add that somewhere else. They cannot easily change the text of the MPL.

You cannot grant a program a copyright license because a program doesn't need a license. It's running on your computer at your behest, so there's no third-party involved, just you the user, and eventually the site you send that POST to.

I buy a hammer from home depot, I don't need to give Home Depot a license for me to use the hammer. I don't need to give that license to the hammer manufacturer either.

The jackhammer does not store text that you write on your behalf. Firefox does. When you type a comment here on HN, you do so in a form field. Firefox stores that text for you and reproduces it on demand. Since you and only you have copyright on that text, you and only you can legally publish it.

I think it is dumb that they want _explicit_ permission to do this, when we grant _implicit_ permission to all kinds of programs day in and day out to do the same thing. `less` doesn’t ask for permission when I tell it to display a file to me, it just does it. `curl` doesn’t ask for permission when I tell it to upload the file to a server. Etc, etc.

But check out the ToS for other web browsers, for desktop publishing programs, office suites, email clients, etc, etc. Many of them have similar language. Not all of them, but many.

That doesn’t make any sense. You’re not giving the license in the ToS to the program but to the company. But the company isn’t processing any data I enter into the browser. I run the browser myself and they never get access to the data.

Right, but under US law you cannot give a license to a program. Only to people, or groups of people that we call a company. You’re giving Mozilla permission to implement the features in Firefox, since you can’t just give permission to Firefox.

But Firefox doesn’t need a license to give me a program that I can use to do stuff on my device. They only need a license if they get access to the data.

As I've said, I totally agree. But Mozilla’s lawyers don’t.

Do you give a license to your typewriter maker? To the manufacturer of colored pencils?

Mozilla doesn’t need a license from me so that their program they give me and run myself can do something. Exactly because the program isn’t Mozilla.

If the org never sees that data why would they need a license for it?

This is not what they mean. My shell doesn't need a goddamn legal agreement to save history or let me mosh into servers (mosh doesn't need one, either), because this is absurd and not a real thing. They 100% do not need a legal agreement for you to use the software on your own machine, even if you're using the software to communicate with 3rd parties, it has nothing to do with why they added this.

> But I agree with you that this should not require specific legal language. However, I point out that most other browsers have already added that same language, or something similar, to their own ToS.

Not so you can submit forms to websites (again, this is absurd) but so they can spy on you and do whatever they want with the data they collect, same as what Firefox is trying to gain the legal cover to do (whether they use that cover or not).

So why did they feel the need to make this explicit for Firefox now?

Why was the previous state of affairs not sufficient? Hasn’t Firefox been letting me type data into a form for nearly 20 years now, _without_ this language?

Wait a minute... Did Mozilla sign an agreement with some AI model company like OpenAI or Anthropic to "help" their hapless users (for revenue like they did with Google and search)?

If so, Tsst. Bad Mozzila! No!

Seriously though, that would be a huge mistake for a supposedly free software company. Especially when people are realizing the "meh" of the value added with most applications of LLMs.

HashiCorp rug pull level mistake.

Local software does not require legal, global permission for the things you type into it.

This is a silly argument.

> They literally just mean things like filling out forms. Implicitly or explicitly you have to give Firefox permission to store and reproduce the text you type in this very textarea so that it can submit the form for you.

If they mean that they should say that.

But also it doesn't seem like they would need permission to store data locally, on your own computer. If it's a matter of using Mozilla Sync, then the TOS would apply to Sync and having a Mozilla account, not for using the browser.

Yes. Firefox. The binary that runs on the computer, not Mozilla somewhere else.

Can you quote and link the relevant part of ToS other browsers and MS Office (the one that runs on your computer, not 365 cloud) ?

Sure, here’s the one for Google Chrome: https://www.google.com/chrome/terms/?hl=en_US

It says “By using Chrome or ChromeOS, you agree to the Google Terms of Service located at https://policies.google.com/terms […]”. The Google Terms of Service at https://policies.google.com/terms?hl=en-US#scope is what you are looking for.

I don’t have the others in front of me.

Yet, Google is a lot more specific im what, how and why you license the content to Google. And it is not for anything that Firefox does.

Plus:

> Some of our services are designed to let you upload, submit, store, send, receive, or share your content. You have no obligation to provide any content to our services and you’re free to choose the content that you want to provide.

This makes no sense. Firefox has been around for ages. The need for a change in ToS makes no sense now.

Put simply, Mozilla are lying.

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