Thanks everyone for your active participation here. We knew this would have a lot of interest and so we’ve waited to dive into the conversation because we see some themes emerging that I’ll respond to broadly here. The main concerns I’m noting are around the license agreements we declare, our use of data for AI, and our Acceptable Use Policy. Below are a few clarifications to each of these areas.
We. Don’t. Want. AI.
Great, what other good Gecko Engine Browsers are there?
Waterfox is the safe bet, it’s basically just regular Firefox repacked with better defaults and telemetry turned off, but it isn’t harden or has add-ons included.
LibreWolf is what I switched to over a year ago, The team behind it have been pretty thorough in scraping out spyware and it comes pre-hardened out the box (but that can break more invasive websites).
They’re opt-in by default, it’s not like they’re forcing AI on you.
… yet
idk why people are downvoting, it’s exactly what has happened with literally every bad policy online anywhere. They beta test it to gauge how bad backlash would be, then if it’s acceptable go ahead with it, if too much backlash just use the “oh it was just a beta! we would never do that 🥺” excuse then in 6 months try again
Edit: the Lemmy hive mind has reversed their decision. It was at +4 | -4 when I replied
Because they said multiple times they don’t plan on making it a default. From the very beginning Mozilla announced their AI extensions will not be forced on people. I don’t understand the “but what if they do” comments. “What if elon musk bought firefox?!??! It could happen!”
Also said “we will never share your data” and now they’ve removed that from the terms. I assume you’re aware that they just had a change in leadership? These decisions come from whichever is in charge. New leadership might still agree enough with it to not change it, but what about the person after, or the one after that? As they say “never is a very long time”.
I’m also not saying it will definitely happen, but my confidence in it not happening is now low enough that I switched to LibreWolf.
Even the mere existence of AI which usage is opt-in is a so called slippery slope.
Not really. Other companies forced AI to appeal to investors and look for new ways to trap consumers in subscriptions. Mozilla added free, privacy-friendly addons because people asked for it. Big difference.
We’re already seeing other companies shoehorn in chatbots into everything to try to make up for the fact that the trend didn’t really catch on.
zen, i guess
Zen is not another browser, it is just reskinned firefox with some tweaks.
Well that’s kind of all any gecko based browser can ever be. The way gecko’s written, it’s a lot more locked into the rest of firefox than Chromium’s web engine
Too recent to trust, I feel like. Have you been using it? What do you make of it?
i haven’t. i use hardened firefox
Orion
Last I checked it was webkit based, did they change it?
Hmm, not that I know of.
“It does NOT give us ownership of your data”
Then why did it say that it does?
“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.”
If we insist on having terms at all, then GOOD and user-respecting terms are ones which list clearly, precisely and exhaustively exactly what data will be used for what purpose under what circumstance.
BAD and corporate-favouring terms are ones which make broad, sweeping statements which can be interpreted any way the company likes in their favour - and where changes to how and what data is shared and transmitted can be made any time without updating the terms, because the terms are so broad they cover just about anything.
Pretty clear which one of those things the new terms are.
This is exactly why I don’t believe a single word they say about this new TOS.
Their MPL2 was perfectly fine. Moving their executable to a proprietary license with less freedoms was not going to go well.
K. In that case, explicitly guarantee it in your terms and conditions.
It’s clear now that they don’t care, and they will use whatever we type to train their AI.
That’s the end of Firefox for me, it’s disgusting that they don’t care about privacy anymore.
Thank god for forks
What are some of the forks?
Well you got the cheese fork, oyster fork, crab fork, spaghetti fork, dessert fork, Neptune’s fork, carving fork, fish fork, table fork and the fork in the road that leads you to Librewolf, waterfox, pale moon, I just learned about Floorp today. I haven’t switched desktop yet, (this weekend project), but I switched my phone over to Ironfox and so far its all good.
+1 for Waterfox! Water beats fire.
I feel for Ashley here. She likely had no say in the matter and is being tasked to defend this change.
There is only one way to fix this short term which is to roll back the TOS.
Long term would be to guarantee to keep the MPL as the governing license for both the source code and executable.
Acceptable solution would be severely limit the license users would have to give to Mozilla, both time bound and use bound.
you hereby grant us a
nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwidelimited, royalty-free license, used for the duration explicitly necessary to allow Firefoxto use that information to help younavigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicatewith your use of Firefox, not to exceed execution duration of the browser, or one day, whichever is shorter.But again, absolutely no license should be necessary. The browser is not a legal entity and I should not need to give Mozilla a license for my data.
The ToS hasn’t gone into effect yet, so it would be postponing rather than rolling back. One thing that hasn’t been answered yet, though, is why this change is needed now - possibly, there’s a legal reason why postponing isn’t an option?
I feel for all the dollars that will get wet with her tears as she wipes her eyes with them.
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Waterfox migrator here too. I’m considering a monthly $ membership to Waterfox because it’s getting harder to find a browser that doesn’t want to cloud capitalise my usage.
Do you think Librewolf is a valid alternative? I’d like to keep using it but obviously I wouldn’t want to if it doesn’t live up to it’s name.
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February 19, 2025.
As I have said many times over the last few years, Mozilla is entering a new chapter—one where we need to both defend what is good about the web and steer the technology and business models of the AI era in a better direction.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growth-planning-updates/
Apparently there is new era.
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How are y’all feeling about icecat?
