|
|
|
|
|
|
by LegionMammal978
478 days ago
|
|
|
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). |
|
|
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