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.
I read the article but still don't understand what this means:
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.
I've seen corporate mission statements that were clearer.
I read it as "you type a URL in the address bar, we'll take you there. You want to search for something using the search bar? We got you, we'll forward your search to the search engine of your choice. All free of charge."
It's just worded in such generic legal wording it makes you gag. But them pointing it out so explicitly just makes me more suspicious lol. I think it's fine for now, just another wall of text to keep an eye on for any future modifications.
I think there's a difference between "operate Firefox" and "continue to develop Firefox".
because while operating firefox costs no money (the software runs on my hardware), developing firefox does cost money (mozilla has to pay employees, ...). so, selling your data might be necessary to make mozilla money sothat they can pay their employees, but it's not necessary for "operate Firefox".
That's the more vicious part of it. How do we know what this experience they want to serve us is. A more pessimistic read could be they sell everything we type to ad companies and claim targeted ads are totally enhancing our experience.