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.

    • lemminator@lemmy.todayEnglish
      8·
      16 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·
        15 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.

        • lemminator@lemmy.todayEnglish
          3·
          5 hours ago

          “…you’re funding the foundation itself…”

          But that’s what I don’t want. I don’t care about the foundation, as it doesn’t share my values.

          “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.”

          This is the problem though. How many people don’t donate because, like me, they don’t want to pay for a bloated CEO salary, or unrelated projects? I don’t find it unreasonable at all, rather it would help them focus on what their base actually cares about. They have a lot of fat to cut, and this would point out where their resources should be spent, compared to how their resources are currently spent.

          Are they going to make as much money from donations as Google gives them? no, but that’s a good thing. It’ll help them focus.