[terom]

Wait, Mozilla is banning the use of their Firefox browser for porn? That's going to hurt adoption.

What's with the mixup of their browser and services policies?

[1] Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations.

[2] You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to:

* Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that includes graphic depictions of sexuality or violence,

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/#you... [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/

[ziddoap]

That, or some variant of that, has been there for ages.

2018: https://web.archive.org/web/20181223004526/http://www.mozill...

Wording was slightly different earlier than that, e.g. 2015:

"Upload, download, transmit, display, or grant access to content that:

[...]

Is inappropriate such as obscene or pornographic materials, graphic depictions of sexuality or violence, or images that exploit or harm children"

https://web.archive.org/web/20150331013034/https://www.mozil...

[terom]

Yeah, and that makes sense in the context of an acceptable use policy for Mozilla services that are not your use of the Firefox browser.

But the same AUP for the services is now explicitly referenced in the TOS for the browser. How are you supposed to read it - the AUP only applies to your use of the browser to access the services? Isn't that already implicit if you're using the services? Surely it can't be attempting to apply the services AUP to any non-service use of the browser?

Very confusing, it seems badly written to me.

Same thing with the "Some Services in Firefox Require a Mozilla Account" and then the "Termination" with a notification to the (optional) account. Somewhat disconcerting.

[1] Mozilla can suspend or end anyone’s access to Firefox at any time for any reason, including if Mozilla decides not to offer Firefox anymore. If we decide to suspend or end your access, we will try to notify you at the email address associated with your account or the next time you attempt to access your account.

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/#moz...

[ziddoap]

>Mozilla services that are not your use of the Firefox browser.

The 2015 policy I quoted applied to "Mozilla’s services and products". The 2018 version just references "services", leaving out the "products" part.

I don't know. They've muddied the water and I'm disappointed with recent changes.

[MaxBarraclough]

That strikes me as very odd. How does that gel with Firefox being Free and Open Source software?

Firefox is released under the Mozilla Public Licence 2.0, a Free and Open Source licence approved by both the FSF and the OSI. Both those organisations require that in order to be approved, a licence must not forbid any particular kind of use. The FSF calls this Freedom 0, The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose, and the OSI calls it Criterion 6, No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor. [0][1]

Is Mozilla's position that Firefox is actually subject to the union of the MPL2.0 and their other terms? If so, that disqualifies it as Free and Open Source software according to the usual definitions.

edit I see I'm not the first to point this out on HN. [2]

[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html#four-freedoms

[1] https://opensource.org/osd

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43205721

[LegionMammal978]

From the Firefox Terms of Use: "These Terms only apply to the Executable Code version of Firefox, not the Firefox source code."

From the MPL 2.0 text: "If You distribute Covered Software in Executable Form then: [...] You may distribute such Executable Form under the terms of this License, or sublicense it under different terms, provided that the license for the Executable Form does not attempt to limit or alter the recipients’ rights in the Source Code Form under this License."

If you compile Firefox yourself, you can do whatever you want with it, subject to the MPL's terms. You can even put your own Terms of Use on your own executable copy. Though if you do this, Mozilla may demand that you rename it so that it doesn't use their trademarks (see: the whole Iceweasel story).

[MaxBarraclough]

Thanks, good spot.

So Mozilla, an organisation that commends itself for working to put control of the internet back in the hands of the people using it, [0] is creating a situation where the FOSS community needs to maintain its own 'cleansed' builds, akin to VS Code/VS Codium [1] and, to a lesser extent, Chrome/Chromium. [2] (The Chromium case is somewhat different; Google maintains both the FOSS Chromium builds and the non-Free Chrome builds.)

4 years ago I commented that It's just non-stop with Mozilla, isn't it? They have the curious pairing of technical excellence, and a long history of awful non-technical decision-making. Little seems to have changed. [3]

[0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/about/

[1] https://vscodium.com/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26873740

[logicallee]

>Mozilla is banning the use of their Firefox browser for porn? That's going to hurt adoption.

If you'd like an alternative, the State of Utopia[1] could eventually finish building one.

Our browser does not currently have any usage terms (we are still writing our code of laws so it is too early to have terms and conditions), you can use it to browse whatever you want right now, but it barely works:

https://taonexus.com/publicfiles/feb2025/84toy-toy-browser-w...

(Read it, install the required libraries and run it with Python.)

The browser can access URL's and can load and display images. It currently doesn't include all of html, css, and JavaScript because that is too difficult for AI to do.

If there is interest we will continue to use state resources to create our state-run browser. It doesn't collect any analytics of any kind.

You might want to see some proof that State of Utopia will actually be able to make useful things for you:

- A complete free implementation of chess, it is fun for people and has no analytics or ads:

https://taonexus.com/chess.html

- a fun version that shows blunders, so you can practice not making serious mistakes:

https://taonexus.com/blunderfreechess.html

- an alternative rendering of it, with heatmaps on the squares:

https://taonexus.com/blunderfreechess2.html

- infrastructure:

here is a Skype/Zoom replacement that is free, peer-to-peer, has no analytics or terms of use, and supports video, audio, and chat via WebRTC. It is the Utopian communications infrastructure at the moment:

http://taonexus.com/p2p-voice-video-chat.html

If you want us to continue to put resources into a working browser, we believe that html, css, and javascript are very well-defined and AI will be able to autonomously make a complete state-run browser eventually.

At the moment the State of Utopia owns $221/month in AI and $180/month in compute. We are exploring the possibility of letting people get to Utopia faster by donating computing resources, but so far the feedback has been mixed. People would like to get free stuff without contributing anything themselves. This is fine, the State of Utopia will still happen, but since the State owns such little infrastructure at present, it will be a bit slower than if people contribute their GPU's.

Let us know if you are interested in the State completing our browser, and if so, we will put additional resources into it.

[1] a sovereign state where AI controls everything and owns state-run companies, giving out free money, goods and services to citizens/beneficiaries. It will be available at: https://stateofutopia.com or https://stofut.com when ready. Citizenship is free (compare Form N-400 to become a U.S. citizen which costs $640 plus an $85 biometric services fee, totaling $725). The difference between a company and a country is that companies exist to maximize the value of their shareholders whereas countries exist to maximize the welfare of their citizens.