Mozilla reverses course on its terms of use | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla reverses course on its terms of use

lwn.net

66 pointsthangqt27 comments

not a reversal, it's exactly the same as before

> You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox.

"operating" can be siphoning off for ads, telemetry, or AI slop generation

The whole clause is weird because Mozilla doesn't operate Firefox; the user does. So at face value, "you give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox" means you give Mozilla no rights, but obviously that's not the intent. Then they explicitly list a couple examples, but don't say the granted rights are limited to those examples, so the clause could mean practically anything.

I'm curious if any lawyers can comment on how courts would be likely to interpret the clause.

User agents do a lot, even innocuous things like spell check or SafeBrowsing. Pretending like a browser simple retrieves and renders html is either really funny or dishonest

I don't understand your comment. I didn't say or suggest a browser only renders HTML. Are you saying Mozilla did?

I am not even going to read the diff. Temporary backpedaling, small or big, is irrelevant. The people who made the original decisions still steer Mozilla and their intent is clear. I switched to Librewolf (other forks may work just as well) while doing my best to support Ladybird and Servo; more independent rendering engines, more democracy, less centralization of power. We'll see.

Mozilla is done. Organisations can't just lose 80%+ of the revenue they've budgeted around for years... Mozilla has no credible path to recovering their Google revenue without massive commercial monetisation schemes which their core clientele has no appetite for.

Anyhow, for me it doesn't matter. Firefox is open in concept only, it's controlled by a weird NGO. I've switched to Vivaldi which is controlled by a company that only cares about doing a browser, nothing else. It's also got an open-source core, all the front-end code is visible even if it's not officially 100% open source (Firefox has closed source backend bits anyway). Also based in Europe, which matters a lot to me currently due to world politics.

> Google revenue

For those who've lost track of that situation, can you provide a link or two?

Is Mozilla management looking at current national politics and figuring that antitrust pressure on Google is going to be nil for the next four years?

> For those who've lost track of that situation, can you provide a link or two?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/06/technology/google-search-...

I mean, it's the same situation as last year. Google lost the lawsuit, got declared a monopoly, the DOJ said they'll force Google to stop paying Apple and Mozilla for placement on their devices/browser (for Mozilla that means losing $500 million in ARR), Google is appealing but as of right now it'll come into effect in the second half of 2025. Which is the impetus for Mozilla to try find a lot of extra revenue. Also Trump isn't a fan of Google so unlikely he'll save them. Although ironically, Apple and Mozilla are the biggest losers: Apple gets billions from Google and Mozilla $500 million.

A hellish irony then that weakening the near-monopoly on search redounds to strengthening the duopoly of web browsers.

Kind of, yeah. The DOJ IMO is pretty ignorant.

That being said, I also don't think the browser "duopoly" is as entrenched as market share suggests. As Chromium is open source, the cost to the consumer of switching browsers is minimal; Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera and un-googled Chromium all offer very similar browsing experiences and the main difference is small UI things. If Google does something anti-consumer, people can jump ship very easily. Other corporations can also fork Chromium very easily (as some have already done).

Are any of the Chromium-based browsers going to retain manifest v2, or are they all stuck with neutered extensions? A quick search says even Vivaldi is going to lose v2 support later this year. Brave and Edge are non-starters.

Honestly don't know. I've never cared much about extensions. Most people seem to care about ad blockers, which Vivaldi has built in. I don't see many ads because the sites I frequent most often, I pay to see.

I could be wrong, but (after all the appeals are said and done) I don't think this is going to happen under Trump.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-urges-doj-reverse-...

Google kissed the ring and donated $1 Million to his inauguration fund.

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-donates-1-million-tru...

They have to reverse course on so many things. There were countless red flags as Big Tech planted their devs in Mozilla to undermine their privacy value. There's no going back for me, unfortunately.

https://www.osnews.com/story/140247/i-told-you-so-mozilla-wo...

To save you a click: this is just LWN quoting the Mozilla post from a few days ago.

The title is misleading.

I thought this was about Mozilla reverting the TOS to how they were before the whole thing started, because that's what the title sounds like.

But nope. This is about their (failed) damage control. You know, the post where they said:

> Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data”)

Notably, the do not reverse the course on the selling of user data. This is still a non-starter Mozilla. Do you not realize who your core base is? The only people who still use Firefox are people who value privacy and extensibility in our tools. Still a "no" from me dawg

I hope Igalia take over Firefox and start migrating it to Servo, which they are already working on.

https://www.igalia.com/

[dupe]

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612

Dear Mozilla: maybe stop collecting user data, then the legal definition of "sell" will be irrelevant to you.

a weird sold out of open culture lately.

Find a way to skip the overpaid Mozilla Foundation and we'll start contributing to Firefox.

Kind of in a ranty mood today.

I'd gladly pay to support development of Firefox if it were possible to fund it directly via something like a recurring subscription.

Instead my only option is to donate to the Mozilla foundation which lists the following salaries for their executives (according to Charity Navigator):

  Mark Surman, President & Executive Director - $661,886
  J Bob Alotta, Svp, Global Programs - $417,327
  Angela Plohman, Coo, Secretary & Treasurer - $415,549
  Ashley Boyd, Svp, Global Advocacy - $368,445

No thanks. While I don't expect people to work for free there is no way I'm going to make charitable contributions that support those kinds of salaries considering their failed stewardship of Firefox.

Are those supposed to be high? What's a reasonable salary for executives? The same site lists the following salaries for American Red Cross:

Gail Mcgovern, President & Ceo $859,260

Clifford Holtz, Chief Operating Officer $749,814

Chris Hrouda, President Of Biomedical Services $696,337

Shaun Gilmore, Chief Transformation Officer $619,929

Brian Rhoa, Chief Investment Officer $610,239

Is there any indication Mozilla's salaries are too high aside from "higher pay than FAANG engineers"?

  Are those supposed to be high?

Yes, for me they are high relative to the apparent value they bring to the table regarding Firefox.

  What's a reasonable salary for executives?

I won't take a hard position on that. I'd examine the mission of the charity, how well they execute on that mission, what their contribution is to the betterment of humanity, etc to arrive at a value.

  Is there any indication Mozilla's salaries are too high aside from "higher pay than FAANG engineers"?

For me - yes. Exactly for the reasons I stated.

Those are high salaries. I make less than them, and I don't want to donate my hard earned salary to richer people than myself.

I bet if you get rid of those bunch, it will have net positive effect on Mozilla. These people are just leeches IMO. They get paid X number of times of the average Mozilla employee, but they don't really deliver X number of times the value.

The salaries might not be high for the job they are doing. But those jobs probably shouldn't exist at all given that most people here want to see a web browser developed and maintained, and not whatever Mozilla Corp is doing that actually requires an executive director or vice presidents of anything.

Agree. I already pay for Kagi and Proton Unlimited, I don't mind paying for things that worth it, that I can trust.

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