Terms of use and privacy changes for Firefox

[Posted February 28, 2025 by corbet]

There is a fair amount of unhappiness on the Internet about the announcement from Mozilla about a new "terms of use" agreement and an updated privacy notice for the Firefox browser.

Firefox will always continue to add new features, improve existing ones, and test new ideas. We remain dedicated to making Firefox open source, but we believe that doing so along with an official Terms of Use will give you more transparency over your rights and permissions as you use Firefox. And actually asking you to acknowledge it is an important step, so we're making it a part of the standard product experience starting in early March for new users and later this year for existing ones.

Specifically, the apparent removal of a promise to not sell users' personal data has drawn attention.

(See also: this analysis by Michael Taggart. "So, is this Mozilla 'going evil?' Nah, prolly not. But it is at best clumsy, and a poor showing if they want me to believe they care about Firefox, rather than the data it can provide".)

User funding

Posted Feb 28, 2025 16:44 UTC (Fri) by rbtree (guest, #129790) [Link]

I am sure there are Mozillians reading this (and other similar discussions): have you tried pushing internally for accepting user donations that would go *only* to web browser development? Thunderbird (and more recently KDE) have proven that it will be successful if you have a large enough and loyal user base (which you still have, but who knows for how long?) Don't wait until you lose the rest of your user base and have no one to ask for money, it surely won't be possible then.

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Feb 28, 2025 17:00 UTC (Fri) by a9db0 (subscriber, #2181) [Link] (16 responses)

Sigh. With Chrome and Chromium killing Manifest v2, and therefore uBlock and the like, and now Firefox using my input (such as this) to train an AI, what is the better alternative? Opera? Brave? Is there a FreeFox out there somewhere that strips out the reporting mechanisms? Do we know all of the domains where FF uploads our data so we can black hole them?

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Feb 28, 2025 17:03 UTC (Fri) by npws (subscriber, #168248) [Link]

I would actually like to use Firefox instead of Chrome, but with all the shady things they have pulled, I might as well give my data to Google directly and at least get a better (I suppose) browser in return. I really don't get what their endgame is supposed to be. No users at all anymore?

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Feb 28, 2025 17:33 UTC (Fri) by NN (subscriber, #163788) [Link] (1 responses)

I used to be a Firefox fan for a long time, but then realized that Webkitgtk was pretty hackable, and then finally moved to Brave, which is just better imho.

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Mar 1, 2025 13:30 UTC (Sat) by MarcB (guest, #101804) [Link]

Brave has https://brave.com/terms-of-use/, in particular the section "Rules and Conduct ".

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Feb 28, 2025 17:40 UTC (Fri) by alspnost (guest, #2763) [Link] (1 responses)

There is LibreWolf and Pale Moon, possibly others still active? Worth a look, easy to install from third party repos.

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Mar 1, 2025 22:45 UTC (Sat) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

Have you heard of Zen Browser which is a reskin of Firefox with some Vivaldi-like features. I've been working with it to see if it's a good fit.

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Feb 28, 2025 18:25 UTC (Fri) by lunaryorn (subscriber, #111088) [Link] (6 responses)

We may live to see Unmozillad Firefox, just as we got Ungoogled Chromium.

Meanwhile, Vivaldi perhaps? It's not open source, but in this case it's probably the lesser evil.

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Feb 28, 2025 18:31 UTC (Fri) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link] (3 responses)

How can "not open source" be a lesser evil? If you can't see the sources and decide for yourself, how can that ever be lesser of an evil?

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Feb 28, 2025 18:58 UTC (Fri) by lunaryorn (subscriber, #111088) [Link]

I'm sorry but that's not a discussion I wanted to start, and, no offence, I don't think it'd be good use of my time. We appear to have fundamentally different ideas here, so let's just not start this okay?

I just wanted to poke some fun at Mozilla, and point out an alternative I haven't seen mentioned so far. If it's not an acceptable alternative to you, so be it, use whatever you like instead :)

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Feb 28, 2025 23:21 UTC (Fri) by rbtree (guest, #129790) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't know about "the lesser evil", but Vivaldi is _the_ continuation of the original Opera (not the nonsense currently called Opera, which has nothing to do with the original project). That team had an excellent track record of respecting its users, certainly better than Mozilla.

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Mar 1, 2025 11:29 UTC (Sat) by jkingweb (subscriber, #113039) [Link]

It's almost embarrassing how user-friendly Vivaldi is. It's still not *quite* as full-featured as the old Opera, but you have a built-in feed reader (and mail, though I use Evolution now), can customize toolbars and menus (and keyboard shortcuts, and mouse gestures) to a fair extent, can put the page bar on the side, and lot of other options. It's unfortunate it's no longer an independent technical base (not to mention non-free), but it's by far the best option out there, in my opinion.

Their privacy policy is straightforward and very detailed, too.

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Feb 28, 2025 20:09 UTC (Fri) by ejr (subscriber, #51652) [Link] (1 responses)

There's always telnet, netpipe, or nc.

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Mar 1, 2025 10:18 UTC (Sat) by jajpol (subscriber, #8044) [Link]

telnet mozilla.org 80
get stuffed

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Feb 28, 2025 18:48 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (3 responses)

At the moment, I'm still hopeful for 1) enough backlash to make Mozilla rethink this, and 2) Debian patching all this garbage out.

But that said, I'm really hoping the Verso browser becomes reasonably usable soon. (And "reasonably usable" is a relatively low bar here; I remember using the early Mozilla milestone releases, way back in the day.)

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Mar 2, 2025 16:12 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

I'm pretty sure the terms of use stuff doesn't apply to rebuilds anyway (which is kind of strange: why does just rebuilding things from source change something like that?)

Rebuild from source making a difference

Posted Mar 3, 2025 10:03 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

My non-lawyer guess would be that if you take a source rebuild, the conditions that bind you are the licensing terms of the source code, and they're not in a position to change those to achieve their goals; when you take a binary build, you're trading agreement to these terms for access to the binary that Mozilla built.

What are the better alternatives?

Posted Mar 3, 2025 12:13 UTC (Mon) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link]

> I'm pretty sure the terms of use stuff doesn't apply to rebuilds anyway (which is kind of strange: why does just rebuilding things from source change something like that?)

I'm inclined to think that the source code does not include the API keys necessary to access Mozilla's *services*. If you grab the official binary, it *does* have access to Mozilla's services, and thus you have to agree to the terms of those services.

Peak software

Posted Feb 28, 2025 17:19 UTC (Fri) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link] (5 responses)

Peak software was 10 years ago.
Security vulnerabilities are the only reason I update most software.

New features added to today's software that I actually need are extremely rare.
99% is just bloat or stuff that actively works against me, like in this example.

For Firefox the count of interesting new features that I actually want/use during the last 10 years is precisely zero for me. The things to turn off in about:config is an ever growing list.

Peak software

Posted Feb 28, 2025 17:35 UTC (Fri) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051) [Link]

I really like your framing. "Peak software" is an excellent concept.

Peak software

Posted Feb 28, 2025 17:39 UTC (Fri) by q3cpma (subscriber, #120859) [Link]

Without even mentioning removal of stuff "we" actually wanted like RSS/Atom feed handling...

Peak software

Posted Mar 1, 2025 22:54 UTC (Sat) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (2 responses)

I too am a grumpy old man who thinks that desktop end user software peaked and the last 10y has not had much useful innovation in the way tools work. Peak Unix desktop for me was MacOSX 10.6 :-) Linux servers were pretty feature complete around RHEL5 and systemd was the only *major* improvement since with EL7, the rest is just tracking supported software versions but not major innovations

Peak software

Posted Mar 2, 2025 6:45 UTC (Sun) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link] (1 responses)

I had positive preconceptions about macos as a desktop OS’ but after I’ve had to use it at work I must say the user interface part is a complete disaster. I wouldn’t _say_ it completely unusable (though I do think it is) because I... manage to use it and somehow to do things in the end, but most of the tasks are painful.

Peak software

Posted Mar 2, 2025 18:16 UTC (Sun) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051) [Link]

I have often had little choice and had to use Mac OS X for FT work. I really only used it as a Homebrew base (be strict! only install via Homebrew, and you'll have a happy time!). But XFCE and Fluxbox on Gentoo are where my heart is. The UI of the Mac OS X is just a mess, as is iOS.

To greener pastures

Posted Feb 28, 2025 17:29 UTC (Fri) by q3cpma (subscriber, #120859) [Link] (2 responses)

I guess it's time to finally put my money where my mouth is and support true alternatives, even if I'll probably miss uBlock+LocalCDN. Donating to https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/ this week-end!

To greener pastures

Posted Mar 1, 2025 12:18 UTC (Sat) by elw (subscriber, #86388) [Link] (1 responses)

Never heard of this one before. I’ve been a long time Qutebrowser user and this seems like it could be another, keyboard driven option with some extra goodies builtin such s as fuzzy search.

Do they have a plugin engine or support for scripting like Qute does?

To greener pastures

Posted Mar 1, 2025 21:11 UTC (Sat) by q3cpma (subscriber, #120859) [Link]

Actually, I used to use Qute too. Here's a post I made comparing both on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42356235

From what I understand, Nyxt is basically like Emacs, in that it's just a graphical shell for web browsing, everything can be scripted because it's just functions being bound to actions.

Debian bug against firefox-esr

Posted Feb 28, 2025 17:31 UTC (Fri) by alx.manpages (subscriber, #145117) [Link] (1 responses)

I hope Debian will consider this both a DFSG violation and a security vulnerability, and package a fork instead.

<https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1099130>

Debian bug against firefox-esr

Posted Mar 1, 2025 10:50 UTC (Sat) by rrolls (subscriber, #151126) [Link]

As a user of Debian and Debian-packaged Firefox, I wholeheartedly agree.

Especially with this part:

> I hope you'll also develop a general policy for dealing with free software that actively exposes its users to harmful click through agreements. That this is happening to such a core component suggests that bug #690495 should have had a different outcome than it did.

Having looked up bug #690495, it looks like it only had any discussion for a single week back in 2012, and it was closed due to inactivity in 2017. But we really should have the guarantee requested in its OP:

> Software in Debian should not prompt users to explicitly agree to licenses, disclaimers, or terms of service in order to run that software.

Firefox is not a service

Posted Feb 28, 2025 20:48 UTC (Fri) by algesten (subscriber, #153363) [Link] (3 responses)

The best argument I found against needing a Terms of Use, is that Firefox is a tool, not a service. You use it to access services.

> Firefox is a web browser, a product, when I use Firefox, I'm using a browser. Mozilla manufactured the browser, and in some cases it distributed it to the users, and that's it. When Firefox users are using the web browser, Mozilla isn't doing anything on their behalf. It's the user that is directly doing. Just like when I get a hammer, the hammer manufacturer is not hammering the nails on behalf of the those that swing the hammer towards the nails, Mozilla isn't doing anything when we use Firefox, it's the user, those who have Firefox installed on their computer, who are doing something, Mozilla isn't doing something, and certainly not something on their behalf.

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/information-ab...

Firefox is not a service

Posted Feb 28, 2025 21:12 UTC (Fri) by fraetor (subscriber, #161147) [Link] (2 responses)

It is a user agent.

That it to say, it should be serving the interests of its user.

Firefox is not a service

Posted Mar 1, 2025 4:38 UTC (Sat) by mikebenden (guest, #74702) [Link] (1 responses)

> it should be serving the interests of its user.

There's an unfortunate recent trend, of "FOSS in name only". The source is available, but it's so complex and convoluted that it's damn near impossible for regular users to build, much less actually comprehend.

And this state of affairs is fully leveraged by the providers of such software, when they add (fully freely and in the open) all sorts of mis-features designed to screw ove^h^h um, *monetize* their users. Network effects make it a "take-it-or-leave-it" proposition, as it is impractical and an uphill battle to maintain a fork or patch out the misbehaving anti-features.

Enshittification has finally caught up with FOSS. Eh, at least we had a good couple of decades... :(

Firefox is not a service

Posted Mar 1, 2025 9:18 UTC (Sat) by fraetor (subscriber, #161147) [Link]

While I wouldn't go as far as to call it enshitification just yet, I do notice that most bugzilla tickets now seemed to be linked to tickets in a private Jira instance ofr the actual development discussion, which widens the information asymmetry between internal and external contributors.

Some of the broader claims have been walked back

Posted Mar 1, 2025 13:31 UTC (Sat) by fraetor (subscriber, #161147) [Link] (3 responses)

Some of the more extreme claims have now been walked back, and the policy documentation has been updated to reflect that. I'm still a bit sceptical about the necessity of this however.

Source: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-te...

Some of the broader claims have been walked back

Posted Mar 1, 2025 18:27 UTC (Sat) by algesten (subscriber, #153363) [Link] (2 responses)

> The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving.
> ...
> In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar.

I would prefer that this broad and evolving trend would make them go the other direction and stop sharing data instead. 85% of the revenue is Google anyway, how much can this data sharing possibly be worth?

Some of the broader claims have been walked back

Posted Mar 1, 2025 21:13 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> I would prefer that this broad and evolving trend would make them go the other direction and stop sharing data instead. 85% of the revenue is Google anyway, how much can this data sharing possibly be worth?

FWIW, that "85%" has a strong possibility of being forced to "$0" by courts in multiple jurisdictions.

Some of the broader claims have been walked back

Posted Mar 3, 2025 14:56 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

So that’s the usual advertiser weaseling; don’t be evil, doubleclick-style