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.
Soon the only private option left will be to curl the website, read the html and picture it in my head.
stallman was right
said Ajit Varma, veep of Firefox Product
Pack up your shit, and get the FUCK out. You’re a fucking disgrace.
Soo… where do we go now? What open source alternative exists that is on the side of its users?
Just keep using Firefox. Nothing in the code has changed, and if it does you can switch to forks. You all are evangelizing about how important FOSS is to prevent this exact scenario and yet you keep switching browsers for no need at all.
Note: I love Foss, I just think this is an overreaction
Oh sure, but browsers are an entirely different beast.
Eventually, they’ll take it closed source, now I know what you’re thinking “Then one of the forks will just become the dominant one!”
But here’s the thing, the browser engine is very complicated just to keep up with. The W3C spec that all engines must follow is thousands of pages long. So all those forks will wither and die once the engine has been cut off from upstream updates.
None of those forks touch the engine as-is
Do tell how something like Zen or Ladybird has a better chance at doing so. It would be better if instead of this fragmentation the Zen and Ladybird would work in a Firefox fork.
Ladybird has some serious backing and employed developers working on their engine and has been worked on for years (Ladybird started life as the SerenityOS browser)
And even after all that time and money, it’s still not even ready for general use. Their roadmap has them having a public release ready in 2028 iirc
And fragmentation? Really? LMAO there needs to be some competition in browser engines, if there was we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.
There are only 2 modern, open source and fully working engines. Chromium and FF, that’s not fragmentation, that’s a duopoly
That’s like calling Linux on the server a monopoly. It’s open source, with many distros (forks). Anyone can fork the engine.
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
Even the Linux kernel is not as much of a beast that a browser engine is
A browser engine takes years more [than a kernel]
That’s cool, I didn’t know that. !til@lemmy.world
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.
how something like Zen
Zen is a Firefox fork.
I mean, FOSS doesn’t prevent this on its own. We should probably all switch to LW and try to keep an eye that those telemetry settings don’t become disabled upstream.
Also of concern would be anyone using Firefox accounts and sync.
Zen Browser
Librewolf
Ladybird looks promising.
Depends on where you stand on misogyny and transphobia.
I think it is overblown
Also we don’t exactly have a lot of options
I feel out of the loop on this one. Is there a particular individual on the project that this is about, or is this a company policy issue?
There is a link on another FF post to GitHub where someone changed “he” to “they” in the documentation. All references to a user being able to do anything in the documentation only uses “He”.
The main dev told them to “keep their politics to themselves” and refused the fix.
I think that’s a pretty cheap PR. Ideally it should be rewritten to not to use pronouns. The PR is low effort and feels like it was deliberately done for attention.
I think that’s a pretty cheap PR.
And?
Ideally it should be rewritten to not to use pronouns.
Why? Linux kernel docs use pronouns and they, and they’re fine. What’s so special about Klingland that they need to keep pronouns out?
The PR is low effort and feels like it was deliberately done for attention.
Have you ever seen the piles of “good first issue” tags on github? Most newcomers start with simple changes, and documentation improvements are high up in being a user’s first contribution. Do you have anything that suggests the person behind the PR had such intentions, beyond you thinking it’s low effort?
In which context? If it was referring to a man I get why he’d say that answer
Parent comment says “a user.” Reading the docs, it clearly wasn’t referring to a man, but any user, as in “the average Lemmy user interacts with many instances, and they have the option to block those they’re not interested in.”
Essentially, someone submitted a PR on GitHub changing a “he” in the build instructions to a gender-neutral “they”, to which the main dev of Ladybird (Andreas Kling) replied:
This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics.
This next part’s just my opinion; that’s an insane response to someone suggesting neutral language. As a non-binary person, I wouldn’t feel comfortable around this person after such a reply, and I certainly wouldn’t donate to Ladybird or anything of the sort.
That being said, we all likely use tons of software developed by people way worse than Kling. As long as it’s FOSS and is privacy-respecting, I’ll run code that’s been written by bigots. However I definitely won’t support them by recommending their software to others, or by donating time or money to the project.
Honestly it seems blown way out of proportion. You are leaving out the part where he said he thinks that they sounds weird. I believe he is still open to rewriting the docs to not use pronouns at all
You are leaving out the part where he said he thinks that they sounds weird.
That doesn’t help. Also, his main reason remains “keep politics out of my project,” completely missing the point that his stance is also political. It’s the old “my politics aren’t political because they’re normal.”
I believe he is still open to rewriting the docs to not use pronouns at all
That’s even more political, and ridiculously so. Linux kernel docs refer to users as “they.” Should they change it? Are they bringing in unnecessary politics into the sanctity of one of the world’s greatest collaborative technical projects? Are they too fucking woke?
Documentation shouldn’t have pronouns since that’s the wrong tone
I think the dev probably just hasn’t been exposed much to transgender people. Reacting with hate immediately doesn’t help at all.
I don’t think that’s just opinion anymore, it’s a fairly accurate analysis. Countless serious projects use pronouns and “they,” and that’s fine, but for these few specific groups they’re somehow political and a bad thing.
I’ve heard Andreas’ twitter likes were telling, before those went private, but that information’s out of reach now. That said, I’ve seen the people who frequently interact with him there, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable around them either. He seems to really like it, though. Make of that what you will.
Still, good point on the reality of “moral software use.” For all its issues, I do hope Ladybird succeeds as a new browser engine because the internet needs more of those. I’m just not touching it unless they get their shit sorted.
It also now is against the terms of service to use Firefox for illegal activity or to use it to watch porn.
It also now is against the terms of service to use Firefox for illegal activity or to use it to watch porn.
I’ve seen this mentioned a few times in the past week, but I don’t see anything about pornography in the ToS.
Can you link me a source?
“Flamed”, that’s a new one
Tim’s an old one, actually. Back in the old internet forum days, flaming was the act of going off on someone during an argument. Most forums even had “no flaming” rules, that could result in warns or outright bans if a mod thought an argument had gotten out of hand.
To be clear, flaming is the act of insulting the user, not the act of arguing against them. You can argue against a user without attacking the user directly.
That’s an OLD one. Wow I haven’t heard that term in like 20 years
Appropriate callback too given the pun.
Its pretty accurate
I wanna hear them get SLAMMED
Come on and SLAM and welcome to the JAM
Does this actually surprise anyone?
The split between non-profit and for profit corporation and the amount the ceo earns should have warned anyone that they are not saints and will sell out their community if it makes them money.
Until now it was just smart for them to be the wolf in disguise. I guess selling the data makes them more money than keeping false front.
I mean people would rather have Firefox propped up by Google (an ad company)'s donations then?
Actually? Oh my God yes. We got to have our cake and eat it too. Google, in an effort to skirt monopoly laws actually paid for the open source browser we were using.
I personally love the idea of Google’s ads paying for our untracked browsing
I’d rather just use Google if we are throwing privacy out the window
Also why is my business how they make money? I just want privacy and to be Google free
No, that’s a bullshit false dichotomy.
People would rather have Firefox developed ethically by a proper foundation that’s supported by grants and donations even if its total operating budget is vastly lower. (It wouldn’t be able to have a grossly overpaid CEO like Mozilla does now. Oh noooooooo…)
Where are these grants coming from? They already take in donations and it’s not nearly enough to pay the engineers. Sure I’d love it if the c-suite took a pay cut but the truth is that a modern web browser is a big enough project that it basically requires an enterprise-size team dedicated to its maintenance.
“They already take in donations…”
Where can I dontate to Firefox? Not Mozilla, and not a fund that goes to CEO-pay or other expences, but straight to Firefox
If you donate dire tly to firefox then mozilla would just contribute less and reserve more for CEO.
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/donate/
The Mozilla Foundation is the parent non-profit of the for-profit Mozilla Corporation.
But that’s not donating to Firefox, that’s donating to Mozilla, which I don’t want to do, because they seem to be wasting their money.
If your concern is that the money goes to efforts for an open internet, and not too enriching any executives, then you want to donate to the non-profit, not the corporation.
But I don’t want to donate to the “open internet” or the non-profit, I want to donate directly to Firefox. How can I ensure that the money I spend gets spent on that and only that?
Mozilla shares your data under certain circumstances. This helps people realize that Mozilla is able to share your data, regardless of ‘selling’ potential. Some people assumed ‘we dont sell your data’ meant ‘we dont share your data’ when that was impossible for the definition of how some built in features work.
They literally purchased an ad company
I could give you some very long stories related to this. In the end of it, it comes down to how can they ‘sterilize’ the avenues of data collection and allow more opt-out scenarios, and more nuanced potentials that would provide comfort in your browsing habits and privacy desires. It remains to be seen how the situation pans out, but this isn’t a 100% done with them action. They have opportunities here, and we’ll see if their course turns evil or not.
They make money from targeted advertising
It is hard to misunderstand that
They have many gains from the data they shared. This also includes witnessed data by internal employees to even discover what had to be trimmed down or censored before public release. And then some of those employees moved to other companies and copied the strategy into something profitable. Their ethos was not appropriately measurable and auditable to the degree necessary going forward; it needed to be axed. It’s like Google saying do no evil; the sands of time revealed these points unsustainable and limiting to even achieve their objectives in a vacuum. Funding is a security issue. Easy privacy is nice, but the industry needs a lot of work and people have to eat while we test the risky innovations that will make the future shine. Mozilla is still providing great steps to ensure someone somewhere can still make achievable best practices available for all, and when they fail we’ll be there to clean up the mess.
Just because “some people” can’t words, that doesn’t mean that you should change the words to suit the people who can’t them.
The premise of ‘sharing’ and then receiving something from who you shared with IS a form of selling. If Mozilla .never. shared data, are you sure you ‘can words’?
Well, now, I guess all the people who like to lecture me every time the topic of Brave comes up will just chill the f*** out now.
Nah, fuck brave.
no, see, while mozilla may be monetizing its user base, we know brave is.
But we’ve always known that Brave is and if we put any information into it it was because we were okay with that.
Now you’ve got a whole lot of people that have a whole lot of information swimming around and MOZ changes their business plan…
They both are pretty bad.
Its a sad day for sure, when the example of privacy and user respect just… Isn’t anymore.
People are just largely naive. Your privacy, at least since 2001, has always been in your own hands. (Not unlike how, if you don’t want to get a virus, you’re stuck moderating your own behavior, as the community around you is largely careless.)
A comparison to malware isn’t quite accurate because in this case, the software itself is already attacking you when it ideally should be neutral.
Or we could just not use either? Just a thought.
Naw brother (or friend if I’m being too presumptuous), they’re just going to double down on being hypocritical.
Now theyll pull out all the things that Brave did most of a decade ago to stay afloat and laud it over you like it’s not something mozilla’s got on the table right now.
But their crypto… but their search… But that seven-million dollar moz CEO isn’t going to pay for himself either.
Brave is going to sell my shit. That was never in question. But knowing that up front I don’t give them anything that I want to play close to the heart.
Firefox has a fuckton on everone that they’ve had for ages that they can now sell because they changed their business model.
And sure we can turn telemetry off if we haven’t already, But how long do you think that feature is going to work as intended once it’s the only thing paying their top man to stay.
It would be hypocritical if they said something is not an issue when Firefox does it, that they criticise Brave about.
What I’m seeing here is everyone is up with pitchforks against Firefox, so looks like they are applying their rules consistently.
I see so that’s why this person has negative 30 upvotes for mentioning they hope people will leave them alone for using a different browser…
My guess is that they got downvoted because their comment makes no sense, while being angry about it.
If people were criticising their usage of Brave, why would they stop now? It makes no sense. Firefox getting worse doesn’t make Brave any better. People who disliked it will still dislike it and people who liked it will still like it.
He is right to be annoyed about getting lectured, but it’s silly to think that this news about a different, unrelated browser has any bearing on it.
Person A->Person B: Doing X is stupid you shouldn’t do X you should do Y
Person A: Y is now X. Person A is now doing X.
Person B:-> I can finally stop having people bitch about me doing X
Person A: Nuh uh X is stupid
How’s that comment makes no sense break down in logical terms?
Discovering that arsenic ingestion is bad for you doesn’t make your ingestion of cyanide better.
lololololol
Are you saying that Brave does not sell you out?
No, they’re saying that people have been shittong on them for years for using Brave, now that the Firefox people are in the same boat maybe they’ll stop shitting on them.
Looks at thread Nope, people are just going to shit harder.
The thing is: it’s going to happen to Firefox, it has been happening to Brave.
It has always been the case with brave it’s not that it happened or didn’t happen They never alluded that it wouldn’t so we knew not to put anything there. People have been adding stuff to Firefox for ages and now the business model is changing.
Hell if anything that puts Firefox a little worse off at the moment
While Mozilla is in a worse place at the moment, Firefox has been forked many times.
As has Chrome. Right now it’s a simple matter to undo any telemetry changes done, But just like Chrome, what’s the code basis diverge as they try to make it more complicated to keep the telemetry going it’ll be harder for the forks to patch.
Well, a browser is extremely complex, and hence super expensive to make. So if Mozilla doesn’t find any other way to monetize, I guess they have to do something about user data?
Mozilla payed their last CEO seven million bucks a year. Seems like they were doing just fine without the ad tracking gravy train to afford that salary.
Holy wild speculation pulled right out of your arse, Batman!
https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Mozilla
Scroll down to Excessive Executive Pay.
Mozilla has zero financial issues. Mozilla is a non-profit that is actively investing, and receiving dividends and interest in return. A nonprofit that is generating millions in revenue for essentially nothing and paying their executives fat stacks. They have zero reason to need to do this beyond greed and disregard for their user base.
Stop citing this dude like he knows anything. Many of his videos he says he’s just yapping and doesn’t know why anyone watches. He’s not a citation of any value
Exactly what I expected: a restatement of the terms, pointing out that they’re not onerous at all, and a link to jwz’s blog, the single person on earth with the biggest hate boner for Mozilla.
They need money and they don’t get much from donations. I’d love to hear everyone’s ideas for how they can generate enough revenue to keep the lights on without either making deals with Google or engaging in any form of advertising or data trading.
There’s absolutely a line where I would start looking elsewhere, but this ain’t it.
2 options:
- Ask their users for money. It’s a tried and true system that works for a lot of projects.
- Stop spending their existing money on dumb things that nobody is asking for. A good start would be to cut out the CEO’s pay.
So… Donations but more, and cost-cutting measures. That’s not a new revenue stream, unless by “asking the users for money” you mean charging for the software…
Yeah, donations. And yes, more cost-cutting measures. They need both, to gain more revenue, and to cut costs. They seem pretty bloated to me.
They do already ask their users for money.
Sure, but can I spend money on just Firefox? or does it go to unrelated activities? I’m OK spending money on FF, I’m not OK paying for the CEO.
Well, no, you’re funding the foundation itself, but to have the foundation let you pick to solely fund Firefox would require additional management and technical changes to actually make the accounting work the way it’s intended to, that probably just isn’t worth their time, given the small donor base.
I’m sure if more people donated, they could actually be incentivized to make such an option available, but they barely get any donations compared to the revenue they make from the Google subsidy, so it’s just unreasonable to expect them to put in that additional effort, especially when the primary thing the vast majority of the money goes to is Firefox staff, development, and related server hosting anyways.
“…you’re funding the foundation itself…”
But that’s what I don’t want. I don’t care about the foundation, as it doesn’t share my values.
“I’m sure if more people donated, they could actually be incentivized to make such an option available, but they barely get any donations compared to the revenue they make from the Google subsidy, so it’s just unreasonable to expect them to put in that additional effort, especially when the primary thing the vast majority of the money goes to is Firefox staff, development, and related server hosting anyways.”
This is the problem though. How many people don’t donate because, like me, they don’t want to pay for a bloated CEO salary, or unrelated projects? I don’t find it unreasonable at all, rather it would help them focus on what their base actually cares about. They have a lot of fat to cut, and this would point out where their resources should be spent, compared to how their resources are currently spent.
Are they going to make as much money from donations as Google gives them? no, but that’s a good thing. It’ll help them focus.
They could offer services that people want with paid tiers.
Are there any specifics about this? It all seems fairly theoretical to me. What do they [want to] do that contradicts “doesn’t sell your personal data” within the context of the fluid definition of “sell”? Do they sell my personal data or don’t they? What definitions of “sell” are relevant here?
It’s all sounding a bit Bill Clinton to me: “it depends on your definition of ‘is’.”
One thing to keep in mind is thar mozilla is now an ad company and can use this data itself for whatever advertising it wants to sell, so they dont even need a third party they can just sell targeted ads directly to companies while not technically “sharing” the info they gather to anyone.
Basically, why sell the data to other people when you can profit from using it directly?
They get access to everything to do in Firefox
The ambiguity is the smoking gun.
Orion is much better. Vote with your computing power.
Man! I’ve been out of touch for just a few weeks. I just switched from Mull to IronFox a few weeks ago. I use FF sync. I use Libre
FoxWolf on my PCs.This fight against surveillance capitalism is exhausting…
Edit: I’m more awake now. LibreWolf strips out tracking and dumb features (like PPA), buy I dont know if IF does the same. In short: Anyone using LibreWolf is still fine.
On your edit, how do you know this?
Edit: I’m more awake now. LW strips out tracking and dumb features (like PPA), buy I dont know if IF does the same. In short: Anyone using LW is still fine.
I was looking here: https://librewolf.net/
What is LibreWolf?
This project is a custom and independent version of Firefox, with the primary goals of privacy, security and user freedom.
LibreWolf is designed to increase protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, while also including a few security improvements. This is achieved through our privacy and security oriented settings and patches. LibreWolf also aims to remove all the telemetry, data collection and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM.
I thought you meant lemmy world.
That’s my fault.
Nah, I just misunderstood.
Orion is a closed-source browser for MacOS and IOS only.
Another year another browser to avoid. It’s an endless cycle…
Use their privacy friendly forks.
