From the new terms:
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.
Yes, it absolutely is. I do not say this lightly. While I’m not an attorney, I review FOSS licenses regularly for my personal projects and for work. Consider:
They all take user actions and user content. None of them have anything like this.
This is very worrying because each of these points can be refuted with the same quotes. I’ll add my own emphasis:
If Mozilla wants to limit their use of my input, why the do I need to give them a full, non-exclusive license? This is the very language that LinkedIn, et al have used to train their LLMs and said that we all gave them permission to do so. While the letter of the law that may be true, we know that if we had the option to opt out, we would have.
I’m sorry but the license does not say that is the only way they will use this data. It’s not explicit, like you claim. It’s implicit. The explicit part is “nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license”. They say that it will be used to “help you navigate the internet” but what the does that mean?!
“Navigating the internet” does not require me to grant a license. Much of this would fall under fair use and to this day, it’s fallen under fair use. And even if it did require a license, why have it be nonexclusive? Language that specifies the length of the license shall be limited to the amount of time necessary to make the connection to a website, provide the necessary services of a website, etc. would all that would be needed.
And this is even BEFORE we get into the whole reasoning of even needing a license. The only reason you need a license from anyone is if you plan on storing, transmitting, transferring, or otherwise utilizing a right protected under copyright law. The only reason why Mozilla could possibly need a license is if they plan on storing or processing your data outside of your device. Best case scenario: they are using your data to “speed up” connections by processing it through their servers. Worst case (and more likely scenario): they want the data to train AI.
While you are factually correct, Firefox is explicitly stating here that they have the right to terminate an individual’s use of their browser, a freedom that was protected under the MPL.
This part really made my brain itch so I had to dig deeper. This is worse than I initially thought: Mozilla is replacing the MPL as the governing license for their executable and replacing with their TOS.
I’m not sure how I can read their TOS as anything but “terms of use = Firefox bad now”. You are losing your freedom under the MPL to use Firefox however you see fit. What concern does Mozilla have if I decide to use their browser for crimes? They aren’t facilitating it and under the MPL, they were protected from it. Since the TOS is now replacing the MPL, introducing an “Acceptable Use Policy” no longer makes this FOSS. It makes it Source Available.
As an avid Firefox user for decades and a former supporter of the Mozilla Foundation, this is the last straw for me. I will not agree to use a browser where my data is going to be used by them without any exclusions.
I hope you are right and I’m wrong. But given the current landscape, Mozilla likely feels the pressure to “do something with AI” and we’re their products. You can continue to use it, but I’m spending the weekend figuring out alternatives.
Shit, just noticed this. This means Firefox stops being FOSS and can’t any longer be distributed by several distros, right?
I wonder if Debian is going to restart Iceweasel…
I’m not 100% sure how Firefox gets included into distros (e.g. licensing, etc.).
I think it’s worth me making a clarification on this because I was thinking about it early this morning.
Mozilla is making a similar distinction to their pre-built executable as Microsoft does with VS Code. Microsoft distributes VS Code binaries under a non-free (libre) license whereas their source code is licensed under MIT. VSCodium fills that gap by taking their source code and compiling it under MIT. The two versions are more-or-less the same and extensions work without any compatibility issues.
I suspect in the near future, we’ll have something similar for Firefox where someone forks the project and keeps up with the upstream, releasing libre versions of it without the TOS.
So to clarify: Firefox source code is still fully FOSS under their MPL2 license. Firefox executable is source available.
Those are licenses for you to use the software. They aren’t licenses for the software maintainer to use your information.
There’s an important fact you may not know: Politicians often have no understanding of things they are regulating. Why is this important? A future privacy law could easily be written such that a browser doing browser things (like submitting a comment on an unrelated website) could be construed as the maintainer using user data. They are getting ahead of that possibility by requiring that you give them permission to do the things you want them to do.
I agree that politicians are idiots but we’re not talking about politicians.
And even if we were, the case law around privacy pales in comparison to copyright law.
There is no reason why a browser that sits on devices under my control requires me to give an unrestricted license to the software maintainer.
If Mozilla wishes to bundle their AI slop and issue a separate license for that where I can disagree to my use of it, that would be one thing. But the TOS, as currently written, allows for any use of my data.