Updated privacy policy will also apply
Updated: Mozilla is Introducing ‘Terms of Use’ to Firefox
by by Joey Sneddon · omg! ubuntu · JoinHot off the back of its recent leadership rejig, Mozilla has announced users of Firefox will soon be subject to a ‘Terms of Use’ policy — a first for the iconic open source web browser.
“Although we’ve historically relied on our open source license for Firefox and public commitments to you, we are building in a much different technology landscape today. We want to make these commitments abundantly clear and accessible,” say Mozilla.
This official Terms of Use will, Mozilla argues, offer users ‘more transparency’ over their ‘rights and permissions’ as they use Firefox to browse the information superhighway1 — as well as Mozilla’s “rights” to help them do it, as this excerpt makes clear:
You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox, including processing data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice, as well as acting on your behalf to help you navigate the internet.
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.Excerpt from Firefox’s new ‘Terms of Use’
Update Feb 27th
Mozilla’s since added an addendum to its announcement (12 hours after I published this article) to clarify its wording in the above excerpts. It says it needs a “…license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice.“
These new ‘terms’ will be shown to new Mozilla Firefox users (presumably that means new installs and downloads) as of next month. Existing users (or installs/downloads) will see them ‘later this year’, according to Mozilla’s Ajit Varma.
— exciting! /s
Also about to go into effect is an updated privacy notice (aka privacy policy). This adds a crop of cushy caveats to cover the company’s planned AI chatbot integrations, cloud-based service features, and more ads and sponsored content on Firefox New Tab page.
Out-Firefoxed
A lot of software, operating systems, and online services have with terms and conditions and privacy policies attached. We’re supposed to read them but, often, don’t (‘cos big tech will big tech, regardless of what we choose).
Related Story
Orbit: Mozilla’s New AI Assistant for Firefox
Mozilla Firefox joining the fray by adding a ‘terms of use’ of its own was not on my bingo card of things I was hoping to see the browser to do this year—’terms of use’ aren’t common in open-source, though nothing precludes their use (but IANAL).
That said, it’s perhaps not a surprise it’s adding one since Firefox’s lack of ToS made it something of an outlier, and it notes that the new terms ‘only apply to the Executable Code version of Firefox, not the Firefox source code’.
That should mean downstream Firefox forks won’t be roped in to these terms against their will.
And there is an upshot in this: despite the new ‘terms’ and the default configuration of Firefox favouring Mozilla’s commercial needs, the browser itself has plenty of opt-out settings to allow users to control what happens to their data2.
Both of the new policies are available to read online, and they are easy to read too – not full of jargon, legal speak, or self-referring clause numbers and parenthesises.
Chances are you’re curious about what you’ll soon be having to ‘agree’ to, so you go read at the links below, or check Mozilla’s announcement post for a lick more spin/detail.
• Read Firefox’s Terms of Use & updated Privacy Notice