Mozilla responds after terms of usage, privacy policy change
www.theregister.com
Open source browser maker ties itself up in legalese and explanations

The answer to “what is Firefox?” on Mozilla’s FAQ page about its browser used to read:

The Firefox Browser is the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit that doesn’t sell your personal data to advertisers while helping you protect your personal information.

Now it just says:

The Firefox Browser, the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit, helps you protect your personal information.

In other words, Mozilla is no longer willing to commit to not selling your personal data to advertisers.

A related change was also highlighted by mozilla.org commenter jkaelin, who linked direct to the source code for that FAQ page. To answer the question, “is Firefox free?” Moz used to say:

Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it, and we don’t sell your personal data.

Now it simply reads:

Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it.

Again, a pledge to not sell people’s data has disappeared. Varma insisted this is the result of the fluid definition of “sell” in the context of data sharing and privacy.

  • verdigris@lemmy.mlEnglish
    58·
    22 hours ago

    Exactly what I expected: a restatement of the terms, pointing out that they’re not onerous at all, and a link to jwz’s blog, the single person on earth with the biggest hate boner for Mozilla.

    They need money and they don’t get much from donations. I’d love to hear everyone’s ideas for how they can generate enough revenue to keep the lights on without either making deals with Google or engaging in any form of advertising or data trading.

    There’s absolutely a line where I would start looking elsewhere, but this ain’t it.

    • lemminator@lemmy.todayEnglish
      16·
      20 hours ago

      2 options:

      1. Ask their users for money. It’s a tried and true system that works for a lot of projects.
      2. Stop spending their existing money on dumb things that nobody is asking for. A good start would be to cut out the CEO’s pay.
        • lemminator@lemmy.todayEnglish
          6·
          11 hours ago

          Sure, but can I spend money on just Firefox? or does it go to unrelated activities? I’m OK spending money on FF, I’m not OK paying for the CEO.

          • ArchRecord@lemm.eeEnglish
            3·
            10 hours ago

            Well, no, you’re funding the foundation itself, but to have the foundation let you pick to solely fund Firefox would require additional management and technical changes to actually make the accounting work the way it’s intended to, that probably just isn’t worth their time, given the small donor base.

            I’m sure if more people donated, they could actually be incentivized to make such an option available, but they barely get any donations compared to the revenue they make from the Google subsidy, so it’s just unreasonable to expect them to put in that additional effort, especially when the primary thing the vast majority of the money goes to is Firefox staff, development, and related server hosting anyways.

      • verdigris@lemmy.mlEnglish
        11·
        17 hours ago

        So… Donations but more, and cost-cutting measures. That’s not a new revenue stream, unless by “asking the users for money” you mean charging for the software…

        • lemminator@lemmy.todayEnglish
          21·
          11 hours ago

          Yeah, donations. And yes, more cost-cutting measures. They need both, to gain more revenue, and to cut costs. They seem pretty bloated to me.