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.
“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.