We’re introducing a Terms of Use for Firefox for the first time, along with an updated Privacy Notice.
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.
ok, I guess I’ll find a different browser…
If you want to stay on the Firefox fork I personally recommend trying out Zen Browser
That seems to be a good recommendation. It works and what they say about themselves sounds good!
Thanks a lot!
What if I do not accept the terms? Can I disable whatever features (or antifeatures) necessitate these terms?
Can I compile from source to avoid the terms? If not, then Firefox non-free software, so I’ll use a fork of the last free release. If so, then I will compile it from source, disabling the terms if necessary.
When do the terms become effective? Can I use the previous LTS version to avoid the terms?
I want to ask them all these questions, but I don’t know where.
I’m fairly sure you’ll be able to avoid accepting the “terms of use” just as you can avoid all the other usual Firefox bullshit — telemetry, pocket, A/B testing, sponsored links, ad attribution, and so on — by messing around with the configuration in one way or another.
Switching to one of the forks for me is just a statement that I don’t trust Mozilla any more and want to put a little more distance between me and them, not really of immediate practical benefit. It’s also only a temporary respite, at the rate things are going Mozilla might not exist at all in a few years. Hopefully Servo will be ready by then.
Hello from librewolf. It’s been my secondary browser for a while. Guess it’s time to move all the passwords and css over.
I just switched to LibreWolf (desktop) and IronFox (Android) as a result of this news yesterday and today. LibreWolf has no Android version and IronFox has no desktop version, so they complement each other quite well. It’s pretty much been a drop-in replacement, with the only real friction being configuring my settings all over again. IronFox is quite new, being forked off from the discontinued Mull browser, which was previously the go-to privacy-conscious version of Firefox. There was a discussion among LibreWolf contributors about forking Mull and maintaining it themselves, but IronFox ultimately filled that gap instead.
Both LibreWolf and IronFox err on the side of caution as far as privacy and security. The defaults are very strict, e.g. LibreWolf deletes all cookies and history on exit by default, IronFox disables the JavaScript JIT compiler–in English, a potentially exploitable way to make browser go fast, etc. It’s somewhat counter-intuitive to switch to a privacy-focussed browser then go through rolling back privacy features, but I’ve reached a happy medium that suits my needs. The IronFox readme (at the link above) has a section Issues inherited from Mull that still apply to IronFox which I recommend checking out as it lists off a few
about:configsettings you can change to trade functionality for security/privacy as much as you are comfortable with doing so.On that note, I believe Firefox Sync to be minimally concerning from a security perspective. It’s end-to-end encrypted, so Mozilla can’t see what you have in Sync to sell it even if they wanted to. If you are worried, Firefox Sync can also be self-hosted. Both LibreWolf and IronFox will happily sign in to Firefox Sync (option must be enabled in LibreWolf settings first; on IronFox it’s already available), which will provide you access to your synced extensions, history, passwords, etc. You can also share tabs between LibreWolf for desktop and IronFox for Android, just as you would with mainline Firefox on each. Pretty good time.
