Mozilla Introducing 'Terms of Use' to Firefox
Mozilla Introducing 'Terms of Use' to Firefox
Hot off the back of its recent leadership rejig, Mozilla has announced users of Firefox will soon be subject to a 'Terms of Use' policy — a first for the
From the new terms:
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.
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Mozilla updated their post at the top:
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.
We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible.
You have that! It's implied by provision when you distribute your software under eg.: GPL!
We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible
Gee whizz, like what? What "basic" functionality is missing that can only be solved with a ToS saying they're going to track how I use their browser?
Without it, we couldn't use information typed into Firefox
That's what I needed to see. So it's not missing basic functionality, they just want to make it legal to track your browser usage.
That's a nice disclaimer. They should clarify that in their privacy policy directly instead of just saying "oh that's not what we meant guys, pinky promise 😉"
They mean there stupid services such as sync and ai, but the idiots who wrote this should have clarified that this doesn't encompass the browser. They do require your data to provide those afterall.
The way it is worded is just bad they shoudl have specified services that need data like ai in the wording:
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.
Yeah, something like:
When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to provide the following services:
Then list the specific services.
If I don't use any of the services, they have no right to use any of my data.
Seriously Firefox include many services, specifying the TOS for the entire browser is stupid.
What is worse is that people are asking for clarification and there is no response from Mozilla:
https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e
Yeah, they should have a general one that lays out their intentions, and then addendums for each service. It's hard to tell which are intended to apply strictly to Firefox and which are intended to apply to other things, like AI, Pocket, Sync, etc.
Keep the base one small and tight, and then have specific exceptions for services that require them.