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.

  • Lena@gregtech.euEnglish
    111·
    22 hours ago

    That’s like calling Linux on the server a monopoly. It’s open source, with many distros (forks). Anyone can fork the engine.

    • coldsideofyourpillow@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      5·
      6 hours ago

      Distros are not kernel forks. Distros simply take the kernel, and bundle it with many utilities for the end-user. It is the equivalent of taking a puzzle set and assembling the pieces together. Sure, many distros maintain their own programs (such as a package manager), but it is an entirely different thing to maintain pacman than to maintain the freaking kernel.

    • cm0002@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      21 hours ago

      Anyone can fork the engine.

      Even the Linux kernel is not as much of a beast that a browser engine is, I’ve seen estimates that a dedicated small team could build a new modern Linux kernel from scratch and generally usable in about 2-3 years

      A browser engine takes years more, again, ladybird’s engine is built from scratch, and it’s currently in year 3 targeting an alpha release in 2026 or Year 4. With it projected to be generally usable in 2028 a full 6 years later.

      And there are actually a couple different independent kernels, so no it’s not a monopoly