[wtallis]

> Implicitly or explicitly you have to give Firefox permission to store and reproduce the text you type in this very textarea so that it can submit the form for you.

You don't have to give Mozilla permission to store and reproduce what you type into a textarea on a non-Mozilla web site.

[db48x]

But under current law you cannot grant a _program_ a license to something, only a person or an organization of people.

[drdaeman]

Firefox is not a SaaS. More so, it's Free Software so you literally own the program you run on your computer. You, the end user, are granted all the rights (well, except for the Firefox trademark) to do whatever you please with the binary or source code, under the MPL terms, essentially with the only restrictions imposed is that you have to do the same if you distribute it further (modified or verbatim).

If you legally need some license to type into a program on your computer (I don't think so, but let's say you do solely for the sake of imaginary argument) you can just give the license to yourself, no need to involve any third parties at any point here.

If Mozilla says they need a license so you can fill a form in Firefox, then they must've literally forgotten what Free Software even means. I hope this is not true, but merely a misunderstanding of some sort.

[db48x]

I agree that an explicit grant of a license is probably not necessary. I don’t grant `cat` or `less` a license, they just do what I tell them to do. I think an implicit grant is sufficient. If you use the software, you grant it the license to store and reproduce your copyrighted creations.

Note that the MPL grants you the user many permissions, but does not grant Mozilla any. If Mozilla feels that they need to be explicitly granted more permissions then they have to add that somewhere else. They cannot easily change the text of the MPL.

[wtallis]

You cannot grant a program a copyright license because a program doesn't need a license. It's running on your computer at your behest, so there's no third-party involved, just you the user, and eventually the site you send that POST to.

[mitthrowaway2]

I buy a hammer from home depot, I don't need to give Home Depot a license for me to use the hammer. I don't need to give that license to the hammer manufacturer either.

[db48x]

The jackhammer does not store text that you write on your behalf. Firefox does. When you type a comment here on HN, you do so in a form field. Firefox stores that text for you and reproduces it on demand. Since you and only you have copyright on that text, you and only you can legally publish it.

I think it is dumb that they want _explicit_ permission to do this, when we grant _implicit_ permission to all kinds of programs day in and day out to do the same thing. `less` doesn’t ask for permission when I tell it to display a file to me, it just does it. `curl` doesn’t ask for permission when I tell it to upload the file to a server. Etc, etc.

But check out the ToS for other web browsers, for desktop publishing programs, office suites, email clients, etc, etc. Many of them have similar language. Not all of them, but many.

[echoangle]

That doesn’t make any sense. You’re not giving the license in the ToS to the program but to the company. But the company isn’t processing any data I enter into the browser. I run the browser myself and they never get access to the data.

[db48x]

Right, but under US law you cannot give a license to a program. Only to people, or groups of people that we call a company. You’re giving Mozilla permission to implement the features in Firefox, since you can’t just give permission to Firefox.

[echoangle]

But Firefox doesn’t need a license to give me a program that I can use to do stuff on my device. They only need a license if they get access to the data.

[mitthrowaway2]

Do you give a license to your typewriter maker? To the manufacturer of colored pencils?

[echoangle]

Mozilla doesn’t need a license from me so that their program they give me and run myself can do something. Exactly because the program isn’t Mozilla.

[from-nibly]

If the org never sees that data why would they need a license for it?