Misunderstanding of legalese may have lead a lot of us down the wrong road.
I don’t believe that anyone misunderstood the wording.
The problem lies within the broad meaning of the chosen words. If you are angry, you have absolutely every right to be.
Regardless of Mozilla’s intent here they have made a rather large mistake in re-wording their Terms. Rather than engaging with a legal team in problematic regions; they took the lazy way out and used overbroad terms to cover their bottom.
Frequently when wording like this changes it causes companies to only be bound by weak verbal promises which oftentimes go out the door whenever an executive change takes place, or an executive feels threatened enough.
Do not be deceived; this is a downgrade of their promise. It is inevitable that the promises will be broken now that there is no fear of a lawsuit. There’s nothing left to bind them to their promises.
The Mozilla foundation wasn’t ever intended to remain “financially viable”; it was supposed to remain non-profit. They should be “rightsizing” and taking pay cuts instead of slipping a EULA roofie into their terms of use.
All that being said; I’m going to be watching carefully.
I still think they have time to backpedal, make it right, and clarify. I don’t permit my installations to talk to their data collection services anyways; via network policies. I have no problem tightening those screws and forcefully disabling their telemetry in other ways as well.
If I have to migrate; well; I already have LibreWolf installed. I might try a few other forks next; to see which ones ‘just work’ with the web properly to protect my privacy while still allowing all websites to work properly as intended so long as I give that website appropriate permissions as I see fit.
May have, may not have.
I learned a new term today that illustrates this move. Warrant canary. When a company disappears a promise it’s like a canary in a coal mine.
Many sites have done this over the years. It’s called a warrant canary because in the footer, they’d say “we don’t comply with law-enforcement requests” … then comes the warrant, and the wording is removed.
Then the words need to say what they mean. At the moment they mean that Mozilla own everything.
They do not get ownership, but a license to do what they want with it. Giving a license does not change ownership, yes they are correct with this.
That’s not going to keep them from selling it.
Their defense is the need to keep Firefox “financially viable”, but if that keeps them from being able to broadly state that they won’t sell our data, it’s better to use a fork that prevents Mozilla from accessing that data in the first place.
Right? The license literally says they have a right to everything - everything we do in Firefox, and that we grant them full access to it. The shit is that? I don’t need a law degree to read and understand that.
No, Mozilla, you don’t have permission to see everything I write and type. You don’t have permission to see the images I upload or even as far as I’m concerned you don’t have the rights to see what webpages I visit. The most you get is when I (used to) submit a bug report.
The browser is the fundamental most basic access to the internet. I get that there’s potential for data brokering profit, but it is a slap in the face to everyone who used firefox for privacy reasons.
They’re trying to backpedal now:
Friday’s post additionally provides some context about why the company has “stepped away from making blanket claims that ‘We never sell your data.’” Mozilla says that “in some places, the LEGAL definition of ‘sale of data’ is broad and evolving,”and that “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.’”
See, you don’t need to ever sell my data - like ever. There is zero reason for a browser to sell my data. I don’t care about the backpedaling.
I spent 20 years on Firefox. Through the good years and the bad, when it was slow and clunky compared to the new shiny chrome through the bad PR. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back. For now I’m on Librewolf - then who knows.
I’ve been using Firefox since its inception. I just want to wait until the dust settles before I decide what to do.
Idk man, at this point I see the hope, but after watching a few videos today of deep dives into their leadership - I don’t have much hope for them anymore. Most of them come from data brokers and ad agencies, Meta, and other big tech. If it’s not today, it’ll happen tomorrow when the dust does settle.
Looking at the PR where they literally removed “We will never sell your data” was pretty much the final nail in the coffin for me.
I certainly understand where you are coming from. If time tells that they’re disingenuous then I’ll move to a fork or something else entirely.
I think that’s wise, just stay frosty my friend.
Are you seriously not using at least three browsers? Don’t concentrate your Web footprint.
I’ve tried this route before, but honestly I don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze for the average person. There’s also almost no way to assess its effectiveness.
I use Firefox as my daily driver, Vivaldi for spicier stuff and the Edge for work. I don’t want any concentrated source having all my history. This is simple internet hygiene.
Alright, seriously considering jumping ship to librewolf now. As someone relying on a Mozilla account to store and sync passwords is it still available in librewolf?
Sync works, but pay attention to the fact that even if you self host it the authentication is still done on Mozilla’s servers.
Not who you’re asking, but I’ll answer nevertheless.
I’ve jumped from vanilla Firefox, to Librewolf, and now to Floorp. I’ve also played a bit with Zen. In all of them (except Zen, which I didn’t go to the process of connecting my Mozilla account), my Mozilla account connected and synced just fine.
I also no longer use vanilla Firefox mobile, but moved on to Mull. I am able to sync my stuff from Floorp to Mull and back without much trouble.
EDIT:
Thanks to a couple of people, I was informed that Mull is now unmaintained, and that IronFox took its mantle. I’ve switched to it just earlier now, and syncing works there too!
Mull is unmaintained. IronFox is the current fork.
Thanks for the head’s up. I’ve switched to IronFox just earlier.
Getting it into my phone wasn’t as straightforward as I expected. I first failed to find it on Fdroid. Then I tried toinstall it via Obtanium, but somehow failed. A bit of more research gave me Fdroid repository link that allowed me to finally install it. Everything after that is a breeze though.
Moving my collections from Mull to IronFox had to be be done manually though (or maybe I just didn’t find out a better way to do it), but it wasn’t at all painful.
Mull is no longer being maintained. IronFox seems to be the go to for mobile now and is what I use. I don’t use syncing so I can’t say for sure, but it does appear to have a sync setup in its settings.
Thanks for the head’s up! I’ll take a look at IronFox and see if it fits my existing set-up (syncing from Linux/Windows PC to mobile). Again, thanks!
I am able to sync my stuff from Floorp to Mull and back without much trouble.
We really need better names for stuff
I also bookmarked the Librewolf Flatpak package. I consider to change my browser (Firefox) for the first time in 20 years or so, since its inception. I do not rely on the Mozilla account, so the switch should be easier for me. Passwords should be compatible I assume. In worst case you can export and import passwords.
The technicality is likely that the application on your PC called Firefox is considered to be Mozilla, so of course the application needs to see everything you write
