Mozilla’s Terms of Use Update
The Future Of Firefox, Mozilla, And Of The Open Web
Introduction:
Not too long ago, Mozilla rolled out an update for Firefox. This was probably the most consequential update made to the browser in its entire history. This is because of a bunch of changes made to not the browser, but rather, some other important points surrounding it.For the first time, the Mozilla website included a ‘terms of use’ clause. What makes this surprising is the fact that Firefox has been classified as free and open source software (FOSS) since its inception. This clause means that Firefox may no longer be part of the open source community, who constitute a major chunk of Firefox users. There were changes made to its privacy policy as well. All of this comes in the midst of major rejigs in the offices of Mozilla. There is a good chance that Mozilla might lose its major source of funding due to the ruling of the Google Antitrust Case. Mozilla’s new CEO, Laura Chambers, has called for a decisive pivot to the company towards two main directions - advertising and artificial intelligence. Such major changes have put the very existence of Mozilla in doubt. The aggregate of all these changes can have negative implications for the future of Mozilla and the future of the open web.
Classification of FOSS:
Being classified as FOSS, according to the Free Software Foundation, entails 4 basic freedoms. These are:
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Addition of The Terms of Use:
The mere addition of the terms of use to Firefox means that Firefox is no longer FOSS. While most of the terms are intended to protect Mozilla in the event that someone decides to use Firefox for nefarious and illegal activities, there is one section that has irked many of its users.
The termination and updation clauses, as mentioned above, are the causes of concern. Continued usage of Firefox without a review of future changes to the terms of use will be taken as an acceptance of said changes. Why this is important will be understood later.
The second is the termination clause. Where it can deny firefox to anyone. How Mozilla can try to enforce that is a big question.
The pivot to AI and Advertising:
Off late, Mozilla has stated its intentions to pivot to Artificial Intelligence and Advertising. The pivot to advertising is at least a decade in the making. The pivot to advertising is not really that new. In 2014, Mozilla changed the default search engine on Firefox from Google to Yahoo in North America. This deal with Yahoo was terminated after Verizon Inc. took over Yahoo in 2017 and Mozilla realized that it had relied too much on Google for its revenue. To diversify its revenue, Thunderbird, which is Mozilla’s Email client, was spun off into a separate company. Pocket was taken over in 2017 and sponsored posts and placements in the search bar and the home page were introduced in 2018. Mozilla said that advertisers wouldn’t be able to see who visited their website through sponsored placements, but only an aggregate number of clicks and impressions. The advertisements themselves would be based on the local web history of the user, and the data would only be processed locally, not sent off to a server in some remote part of the world. There was an uptick in Mozilla's advertising revenues from 24 Million USD in 2020 to 64 Million USD in 2023. This is nowhere near the revenues from royalties (about 500 Million USD / year), but after the Google Antitrust case, Mozilla is set to lose most of these royalties. Even if other search engines step up, nobody will match Google’s offers. Microsoft would much rather push its Edge Browser and Bing Search Engine. Mozilla’s experience with Yahoo’s search deal was extremely sour, hemorrhaging users left, right, and center. With a browser and an advertising platform, Mozilla seems like it aims to become a mirror of Google. The acquisition of Pocket in 2017 also played into this, helping Mozilla classify its users by interests, and hence helping target advertisements. Mozilla also started a VPN service, whose backend was operated by Mullvad VPN. Mullvad has a lot of options and configurations that makes it a truly private VPN, thus making it a good partner for Mozilla’s historical branding as a privacy champion. However, buying a Mullvad subscription directly is a much better proposition for anyone who needs a VPN. A concerning thing in this regard was the acquisition of Anonym,a privacy preserving ad platform. Anonym was founded by former executives at Meta, and the one thing Meta and its platforms aren’t known for is preserving privacy. It first collects data from several users, anonymizes it, and then uses it for targeted ads. There is no clarity on how this exactly works, but apparently it does. The pivot to AGI is another step towards ensuring the survival of Mozilla, but at the cost of alienating a part of its core user base. Mozilla’s sole differentiator is that its data collection for Firefox would be minimal, but now that has gone by the wayside. Mozilla now has all the blocks in place for collecting user data willy-nilly and utilizing it for their AI project. While they have been championing Open Source AGI for now, it can change just like the clause about Mozilla not selling user data to data collection companies. This will be covered in the next part.
Privacy Not Included:
What is just as interesting, if not more, is what was NOT mentioned in the update. The clause, which mentioned that Mozilla had never sold and promised to never sell user data, had been removed. Given the aforementioned pivot to AI, and specifically, Generative Intelligence, the removal of this clause becomes more and more concerning. Mozilla has, since its inception, championed itself as a bastion of privacy on the internet. The removal of this clause is deliberate, and in the wake of Mozilla’s new directions, at the very least, a very questionable move, and at the worst, it means that anyone who used Firefox to maintain some semblance of privacy in the current age of the internet will have to switch to another browser. At this point, default Firefox is nothing but a mirror of Google Chrome, minus web compatibility for a lot of websites. At least on desktops, browsers that use the Gecko rendering engine, (which is Firefox’s Browser rendering engine, akin to what the Chromium Project is to Chrome) based browsers are widely available, including Zen, Librewolf, and Floorp, among others. However, there is no Gecko-based alternative to Firefox.
Reactions from the Community:
This move by Mozilla has been perceived as a stab in the back by the Open-Source community. Firefox and Mozilla’s politics have anyway cost it a lot of goodwill in the community, with indications of its users migrating to alternatives slowly but surely. This is not a good sign. Mozilla and Firefox have been the pioneers for a community-led web, rather than one led by corporations. The teams behind a few Linux Distributions have decided to switch Firefox for other browsers. Zorin, for instance, has switched to a stripped-down version of Brave. Brendan Eich, cofounder of Firefox and Brave Software, and the inventor of JavaScript, reacted with 3 letters “W T F”, Co-tweeting (or rather co-X-ing) Mozilla’s announcement of terms of use. Bryan Lunduke of the Lunduke Journal expressed a great deal of concern over the terms of use in a few videos and articles. He is one journalist who has been quite consistent in his criticism of Mozilla over the lack of clarity and its refusal to wean itself from Google’s grip.
Conclusions:
This new direction taken by Mozilla adds to a long line of mis-steps taken by the company. Mozilla has nobody but to blame itself for digging itself into a deeper and deeper hole with time. There are no signs of corrective measures either. However, Mozilla’s continued existence is quite important for the Open Web to survive. The problem is that if Firefox dies, it will take an entire browser ecosystem with itself, leaving the world to a Chromium monopoly. That is good for absolutely no one. What replaces it may be far worse. A closed, silo-ized, corporate controlled internet is good for absolutely nobody. This is why it is important for Mozilla to take corrective steps and focus on bringing more transparency to its communications, otherwise it risks losing the few people who still use the browser.