Am looking forward to explore some of the alternatives. And no, I don't want a just a correcting/updating/informing follow-up blog post of how we the users got it all wrong. In fact, the current UPDATE makes it worse:
"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."
vs. the ToS:
"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."
No - you don't need a license for my input. Just pass the butter, it's not your job to "use that information" in any way, form or shape. How did you survive 26 years without any license to our input? What did legally change that would require that license? No one asked you to: "We use data to make Firefox functional and sustainable, improve your experience, and keep you safe." (from the blog). What does that even mean? If you have specific use-cases in mind state them clearly, instead of this overreaching general license, that may or may not be misused now or in future. As of this ToS you may very sell my data to AI companies to "help me navigate the internet" which is not even part of the Privacy Notice protection.
Reinstatement your privacy guarantees in the ToS and be transparent about explicit use-cases.
Meanwhile, so long, and thanks for all the fish.
> That clearly indicates some "other" future motive
It's training data, isn't it?
(It's always training data).
To me that and the new ToS add up, why else would they remove the FAQ entry.
Might be a case of covering their asses in the context of services they provide for search suggestions etc. Those are not mere programs users run on their own devices, and they rather make use of services run by Mozilla, which probably leads to their lawyers seeing the need for legally covering Mozilla ass.
A less charitable interpretation is that they actually want to introduce terms for using the software itself, in a way that conflicts with the no-nonsense "no restrictions on use" approach of open source, and thus ignoring open source principles in preference for covering their asses against hypothetical risks, while somehow still trying to look like open source.
In any case I agree the blog post or the update don't make anything better. I don't think the post says anything substantial about the terms of use or their introduction. It doesn't, in concrete terms, clarify anything about the seeming conflict between the introduction of terms of use and the commonly accepted definition of open source (which includes no restrictions on use). The post rather seems like a classic case of trying to make things better with nice-sounding words rather than owning up and actually clarifying any ambiguity.
But they already have a separate policy for the services. Why do they also need a policy for the browser itself?
Firefox is still the lesser of two evils when compared to Chrome with all of its telemetry turned on. And at least it supports a proper implementation of uBlock origin, which Google just broke in Chrome.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
previous discussion from mid 2023 on low firefox market share: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36759162
Don't worry, EU regulators (and other countries soon I suppose) are doing their best to fix that "bug".
Users generally don’t know about Chrome’s privacy issues or what browser engines are. Apple simply hasn’t done enough to promote Safari and keep it a strong competitor against Chrome. Relying on their monopoly over their platform is them accidentally doing something good in the wrong way. You know why Chrome attracted so many customers when it first launched in 2008 or so? Because IE, and yes Firefox, were incredibly bloated and slow. Apple hasn’t presented a similar performance jump or another compelling reason for Safari over Chrome. And in open-source land, so many hotshot alt-browsers from Arc to Brave all use Blink. Orion uses WebKit, and it’s the only one. Apple clearly doesn’t care to promote it as a Blink alternative other than for their monopolistic mandate of WebKit on iOS.
Not to mention, they killed Safari for Windows. Apple apparently doesn’t care about privacy as much as HN thinks they do, see mini-thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39975620
Finally, the EU change should in theory be liberating for Mozilla, who can now provide a proper mobile Firefox for iOS that uses Gecko. Instead, from what I hear that isn’t even on the roadmap, because this is the state of modern Mozilla. Here’s hoping that Zen will instead bring Gecko to iOS.
If it was 98% chrome and 2% firefox that's basically 100% chrome.
Instead safari on ios (and to a lesser extent desktop) means the web isn't 100% chrome (or chrome skins like brave)
“The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
- T.S Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
[0] iOS Application Security: The Definitive Guide for Hackers and Developers by David Thiel, pg. 8-9
"Jailed Just-in-Time Compilation on iOS" by Saagar Jha https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22401146
Check out webkit.org:
https://www.webkit.org/downloads/
Browsers for Linux are right there.
For all of Apple's contributions for WebKit, you don't exactly see them doing something like this:
"Supporters of Chromium-based Browsers" https://blog.chromium.org/2025/01/announcing-supporters-of-c...
Huh. That WebKit site links to a Mastodon account that doesn't even say anything. Maybe it's for queries.
https://www.igalia.com seems to the other major contributor. Sony is in there a little too.
https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/Companies%20and%20Organizations... too but that's 12 years out of date.
I would love to see a WebKit browser for Windows that's released, but https://docs.webkit.org/Ports/WindowsPort.html does exist too.
As for the Mastodon link, I'd ask https://front-end.social/@jensimmons
> Monthly Active Users (MAU) measures the number of Firefox Desktop clients active in the past 28 days.
> February 10, 2025: 163,203,913 clients
> February 17, 2025: 163,742,671 clients
"simple yet powerful tools" (derogatory) is how i would describe the windows popup that gives you the choice between setting up a microsoft account now or being nagged about it later
Chrome is removing µBlock origin, I and probably a lot of other users saw this as a good moment to promote Firefox to our relatives, you are missing a chance and alienating your user base here.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/fi...