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by mariusmg 3995 days ago
Mozilla is not a merry band of hackers anymore. They're a bona fida corporation with its own agenda. Their agenda depends on having as many users as possible so they're trying to make everything they can for that. The free web, choice and all that become second place now.

PS : Look at their corporate HQ.

4 comments

At least it means Mozilla has reviewed the Pocket code embedded in the browser and it doesn't send every single keystroke to GetPocket. It's good, because I don't usually install browser extensions for the very reason that I don't know what parts of my privacy I'm giving up.

Btw, just a question because I'm not sure. They've reviewed the Pocket code, right?

The Pocket integration is open source, and it went through the same peer review process all code goes through before being pushed to the repositories.
Is the code on the Pocket servers open source? Can I point Firefox at my own Pocket server (or a Pocket server run by any organisation other than Pocket)?
You currently cannot point Firefox to your own Pocket-compatible service. The Firefox integration uses non-public parts of the Pocket API. A Mozilla employee opened a bug for this: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1179699
The Mozilla Corporation is completely owned by the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit with a manifesto https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/ that reads in part, "Individuals’ security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional."
Somehow the part about privacy seems to refer to a 'special' form of privacy... look at FF hello:

Mozilla about FF Hello [1]: "Firefox Hello is provided to you in collaboration with TokBox, Inc. ("TokBox") and sends data to TokBox as a part of the function of the service."

Tokbox (Telefonica)[2]: "We neither rent nor sell your information to anyone. We don’t share your information with other organizations or individuals outside of TokBox, except as described below"

below: - "With our affiliates and trusted business partners that cooperate with us to provide you our services" - "We may share Aggregate Data publicly and with our partners."

Please try to contact Mozilla and tell me who these 'trusted business partners' are. I tried and did not get anywhere...

I am a former customer of Telefonica and they sure tried very hard to appear as a 'will mug you for money' type of company.

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox-hello/ [2] https://tokbox.com/support/privacy-policy

What worries me more is that freedom isn't mentioned as fundamental.
How could Mozilla restrict your freedom? I guess they could hire lobbyists or something but that seems unlikely.
I assume they are referring to software freedom as described by Richard Stallman: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Mozilla used to champion the hacker ethic.

Until a group of outsiders on social networks with no stake in Mozilla came in with shame tactics. Even people with little connection to them would use them as a vehicle for their own benefit.

Bring back Eich.

if they continue like this, people will use 'm$' for mozilla, not for microsoft anymore.