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this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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The problem isn't what the TOU says, it's the fact that there's a TOU at all. The browser isn't a service that needs terms, it's an application that shouldn't have any.
Bookmark and password syncing are services, as is pocket. Whether you choose to utilize them is up to you, but they are integrated into the browser as distributed.
And when you opt-in to those services, you should be presented with their terms.
There are in fact a ton of services that browsers interface with on behalf of a user. Always have been. For example, Firefox uses the Google Safe Browsing service to protect against phishing. They use location services to fulfill the Geolocation API. They call DNS servers to find the website you want, etc, etc.
Applications do have terms, they're called EULA's. It's the same idea. Also nothing new, I've been clicking through that shit since the year 2000.
Firefox doesn't need a TOU to access those. Those aren't owned or operated by Mozilla. And there hasn't been anything that has been added to Mozilla which would require such a change over the non-terms the application was provided under for twenty years.
Yes, and Firefox had one until 2014. They then replaced it with the MPL2.0, "a free software license, which gives you the right to run the program for any purpose, to study how it works, to give copies to your friends and to modify it to meet your needs better. There is no separate End User License Agreement (EULA)."
So clearly not required.
The article goes into the first point though.
Using those services on your behalf is, potentially (in a legal sense) use of your data. By providing some information to a third party, even if Firefox itself doesn't itself use it. This may come from the fact that you don't directly agree to terms with the third parties when you start using the browser, with safe browsing for example. So Firefox is in a sense using/sharing private information. And in the changing legal landscape this usage may fall under modern privacy laws, such as the one mentioned in the article.
I agree the old wording was bad, but I do see the reasoning behind the new one.
Counterpoint: curl
It can hit all the endpoints and services you mention.
It has a license but it is very different: https://github.com/curl/curl/blob/master/LICENSES/curl.txt