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.
So for the last 20 plus years before this new wording, Firefox has not been a functional browser?
That’s not what I said. But making a policy explicit rather than implicit seems to me like a good move for privacy. Isn’t it better to know exactly what Firefox is doing with what you type, rather than just assuming?
If they make it more exact such that it’s not ambiguous whether they can use our data for whatever, that would be fine.
I agree, and so does Mozilla. From the linked blog post:
Here’s the Privacy Notice referenced above. While I agree with you that they are vague about their “Partners, service providers, suppliers and contractors” they supply data to (read: Google) they do provide ways for you to request that data.
Does Notepad need a license to interpret your keystrokes and save them to a file? Interpreting my keystrokes and formatting them as an HTTP request to the search engine should not require any online service, and if the data does not leave my machine, it doesn’t need a license nor privacy policy. They have done just fine without a license for decades, because it would be absurd to require a license for fully local operations.
Oh look at that, a privacy policy in Notepad that tells you how Microsoft uses the data you type into Notepad.
It doesn’t. The policy covers what happens after that. Sure, open up Firefox and type whatever you want in the address bar and you can be as private as you want. The second you press Enter is when Firefox does stuff with what you typed, and Mozilla is saying that when you push Enter you give them permission to do that stuff. You’re giving Mozilla permission to send your search to Google for midget porn, or to post your pro-Trump rant to Facebook, or email your great-Grandma’s secret oatmeal raisin cookie recipe to your ex-wife.
It’s turning an implicit use of a web browser (“Of course we’re sending your search to Google and nowhere else wink”) into an explicit use (“When you provide data to Firefox, we’re gonna do this with it, cool?”)
Except the terms don’t promise that. The terms don’t really say anything at all about what Mozilla (the corporation) or Firefox (the software) won’t do with data I enter into Firefox. They do however say that I grant Mozilla a license to use data that I enter into Firefox for several purposes, which means Firefox could reasonably send the search request I intended for Google to Mozilla as well.
I admit, not the best example. I was implicitly referring to Notepad from Windows 10 and earlier, which didn’t have any online functionality yet, and thus would be excluded from large amounts of the license terms. The linked License Terms and Privacy Policy are written to apply to any and all Software from Microsoft.
In order to make our interpretation efforts easier, let’s use a non-Microsoft example, Notepad++: During the installation, you are presented with the GNU GPLv3 license, which pertains only to the distribution of the (parts of the) program. Even after the installation, the only mention of a license is the GNU GPLv3. There is no Notepad++ Usage License or Privacy Policy, because there is no other party i interact with.
If I use cURL to send a request to Google, cURL doesn’t need a license to pinky-promise it actually does what I tell it to do. cURL is not a party, it is a tool. I do need a license for Google, because they process, store and use my provided information beyond the search itself.
The web request is sent by Firefox, not Mozilla. Mozilla is not acting on my behalf when issuing a web request. One might argue Firefox is, but that is no different from the Linux kernel acting on its behalf to issue that request to the Ethernet card, and the cards firmware to act on the kernels behalf to do what it says. None of these parts have license terms that restrict, let alone mention these processes.
There is no reason why Firefox needs these license terms to operate.