I don’t understand how they are supposed to “sell your data” if you just never use a Mozilla account and uncheck all the telemetry. Its not like they can secretly steal your data, since its Open Source.
It seems to me like just more FUD that Google is spreading to undermine our trust in free software.
DNS is fine as the exchange has to be for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration” to be considered a sale. The issue seems to be that Mozilla were profiting off of things like adverts placed on the new tab page, and possibly from the translation service too.
I’m not a lawyer, but “other valuable consideration” seems very broad. For DNS, getting the returned IP address is valuable. Ditto for http, getting the returned webpage is valuable?
I only suggested the translation thing because it (imo) fell under a “transfer of data for value provided”, which makes it a sale?
Getting an IP address or the HTTP payload is valuable to the user, not to Mozilla, so there’s no sale there. Likewise with translation data, but if the translation company then send Mozilla a kickback for sending users their way, it would become a sale. Adverts on the ‘new page’ tab would definately be a sale.
I think they’ve removed the clauses about not selling your data from the ToS for the reasons they’ve stated, but it leaves a wide open hole in their promises and a huge temptation to add more advertising/data-mining in the future. I would have prefered them to instead leave the browser ToS as it was and move the questionable aspects into optional extensions that were licenced separately.
The angle I was thinking along was that if Mozilla was prevented from making those data transfers, then their browser becomes worthless. So in reverse, by making the transfers, their browser gains value. The obvious problem with that interpretation is that its basically impossible not to make a sale, as every transfer provides value - which very much defeats the purpose of the definition. (Not a lawyer, just an internet idiot, and I very much hope your definition is correct)
Spinning them out would have been preferable to me as well, and tbh, at this stage, I think I would prefer if firefox was spun out of Mozilla entirely. It really deserves to be managed by something like the Linux foundation or some other not-for-profit steward.