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Mozilla is Introducing 'Terms of Use' to Firefox | Also about to go into effect is an updated privacy notice (www.omgubuntu.co.uk)

submitted 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Hot 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.

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 superhighway — as well 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.

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.

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[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Librewolf, Servo looks promising but is very far off and just an engine I think? Idk I keep looking at it and want it.

[–] orclev@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Servo isn't a full browser, it's a tech testbed for Mozilla to test out their various rewritten Rust components. I wish they would have promoted it to full browser status, but I think intention was always to take pieces of Servo as they were completed and drop them into Firefox.

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Damn, maybe I can't read but I didnt find that info on their page.

[–] orclev@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

Hmm seems like it's only partially true these days. Looking at their webpage they have a screenshot of their Wikipedia entry (why they didn't just link to it I have no idea) that provides some more up to date info. It was a testbed and they mention a project Quantum where the tech was added into Firefox's Gecko engine. In 2020 Mozilla laid off all their Servo devs and handed the project over to Linux Foundation Europe. It seems like since then they've reenvisioned the project as an embeddable rendering engine similar to WebKit or V8.

Edit: Further details available on the Wikipedia page. In particular this last paragraph seems highly relevant:

In January 2023, the Servo project announced that new external funding had enabled a team of developers to reactivate the project.[23] The initial roadmap focused on selecting one of the two existing layout engines for further development, followed by working towards basic CSS2 conformance.[24] In February 2024, at FOSDEM 2024, the Servo Project team outlined their plans for a 'reboot' of Servo.[25]

It seems like the 'reboot' is focused on turning it into a competitor for WebKit/V8. Looking at the projects roadmap it seems there are currently no plans in the works to make it a proper standalone browser.

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

Oh, well thank you for the info. I guess its a good thing Librewolf already exists.