Thunderbird "won't be adopting the firefox terms of use"
@_marco_@masto.pt @ponda @thelinuxEXP@mastodon.social We also wanted to additionally clarify that we won't be adopting the Firefox Terms of Use for Thunderbird, either on desktop or on mobile.
Thought this was interesting and worth knowing about
Who is the moron at Mozilla that thought it would be a good idea to sell user information, and how much does he make a year?
$6M, but if you look at the California law that spurred this change, the Privacy Policy that hasn't changed since July 2024, and the revised ToS, this looks mostly like a really, really, really stupid communication error.
It's one of those cases where legally, "sell" includes things that most people wouldn't consider a sale in normal parlance, but Mozilla has to comply with the overbroad legal definition; meanwhile, they don't appear to be fundamentally changing anything about how they're operating.
ETA: I'm still moving to LibreWolf (and maybe Ladybird later on). I'm not a lawyer, and expecting people like me to parse legal definitions of commonly understood words is just asinine.
The thing is, I don't want Mozilla to be "really this shouldn't be called selling" my info either. This was my call to jump ship to a fork that doesn't give any data to Mozilla in the first place by adopting a downstream fork.
I probably already wasn't giving Mozilla any data to "not sell" in the first place, since I've got telemetry disabled and used about:config to strip out all of their non-browsing functions. But why trust a "probably" that also inevitably needs more attention when they roll in some AI assistant nonsense I don't want (or whatever) when I can just find a fork of their FOSS product that's run by people that don't want my data in the first place?
legally,"sell" includes things that most people wouldn't consider a sale in normal parlance
Like what, any specific examples?
I have been hearing this repeatedly as a talking point from people defending Firefox but without any specific example of what they do and don’t allow themselves to take and sell, it rings quite hollow.
Thunderbird May Disclose Information To: Mozilla Affiliates: Thunderbird is a project of MZLA Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation and an affiliate of Mozilla Corporation, and as such, shares some of the same infrastructure. This means that, from time to time, your data (e.g., crash reports, and technical and interaction data) may be** disclosed to Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation**. If so, it will be maintained in accordance with the commitments we make in this Privacy Notice.
DNS servers, Standard Autoconfiguration URIs, and Mozilla's Configuration Database: To simplify the email set-up process, Thunderbird tries to determine the correct settings for your account by contacting Mozilla’s configuration database as well as external servers. These include DNS servers and standard autoconfiguration URIs. During this process, your email domain may be sent to Mozilla's configuration database, and your email address may be disclosed to your network administrators.
Amazon Web Services: Thunderbird uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host its servers and as a content delivery network. Your device’s IP address is collected as part of AWS’s server logs.
Email address providers (Desktop Only Legacy): Prior to version 128, Thunderbird partnered with Gandi.net and Mailfence to allow you to create a new email address through Thunderbird. If you choose to use this feature, your email address search terms are sent to Gandi.net and Mailfence to return available addresses. In addition, your country location is also shared to provide the correct prices. You can learn more about Gandi.net’s and Mailfence’s data practices by reading their privacy notices.
Always good to read TOS and PP of an service.
I'm always confused when people are surprised by something like an account sync meaning that the operators have to store your data
Makes me wonder if they understand how Lemmy works...
Not a counterpoint, but to extend a bit on how it could be done: encrypted data. Or, self-hosting server part available, like Mozilla's (i.e. GarduaLinux has a fork of Librewolf/ Floorp, called Firedragon which uses their own firefox server for account sync)
your network administrators
What does network administrators mean in this context? Your ISP?
The person who manages your router
I mean, for now...
If terms of use aren't regulated in any way apparently companies can change them whenever they fucking want to.
They can say this today and then a month from now completely backtrack just like Mozilla did....
Terms of use do not mean fucking anything.
lol, what a shitshow. A product from the same company is distancing from the stench. Good on them, but it shows who did some things wrong.
If I remember correctly, Thunderbird isn't a Mozilla product anymore but it's maintained by the community. Mozilla just hosts it.
It was community maintained, then MZLA Corp was formed under the Mozilla Foundation. Deals to house Thunderbird under other foundations fell through, which is why it’s still under the Mozilla Foundation.
MZLA is a different subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation.
It's a different piece of software. It makes no sense for them to adopt the Firefox Terms of Use, no matter how they might think of them.
Wasn't sure if there were better places to post this, feel free to cross-post if you know other fitting communities :)
Thank you for posting it by the way. This is both good, and important news
Cross posted to !opensource@programming.dev, and looks like someone already shared it on !thunderbird@lemmy.world
This whole thing is concerning. Are there other real alternatives to FF or Chromium?
Forks.
I finally switched from Firefox to librewolf, which is a privacy focused fork of it. It’s basically Firefox with some of the iffy stuff ripped out, and with good default settings.
Firefox with proper settings is probably “fine” still, but the transition is super easy since it’s basically the same thing.
Creating a browser from scratch is a monumental task, ladybird is such a project which has been in progress since ~2022, and will probably take another couple before it's at beta. Optimistic release is 2028, or ~6 years of development.
I've moved to schizofox (NixOS) but there are plenty of other forks available which remove telemetry and other default behaviours from Firefox.
Chromium forks are another alternative however due to chromiums dominance in the browser space I'm reluctant to shoutout any forks.
Only other alternatives I know are either Safari if you're on an apple device or something like Links/Links2/Lynx if you don't mind text based browsers. Neither are convenient for their own reasons, but it's not like we have any other choices. At least not that I'm aware of.
Great! I'm very happy with Thunderbird and with all this Mozilla nonsense i was worry that I had to leave it.
Based.
I understand why people are so mad at Firefox/mozilla but honestly? I just don’t know of any viable alternative right now. Chrome, Safari, edge, etc are all categorically worse offerings because of their parent companies/policies.
Can someone please give me a non-chromium, Mobile and browser desktop suggestion? Firefox has so many QoL things I depend on. I need something that can use major extensions and such.
Edit: iOS is the real issue here for me
Mozilla's new TOU only covers pre built Firefox executables, not the source code.
Librewolf and Waterfox are good forks that would not be bound to the TOU.
Yes, but the problem isn't really the browser itself, it's Mozilla which has turned in an advertising company, supported by Google and another ad company. If you need to sync your data and want to stay private, you have to do it with an third party or selfhosted cloud service, independend which FF fork you use.
Librewolf is a fork of Firefox.
From their site:
LibreWolf also aims to remove all the telemetry, data collection and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM.
In the future, Ladybird or a browser built on top of Servo might be alternatives, but both projects are pretty far from being usable right now.
Any downstream fork of Firefox. All the good of Firefox and Gecko (including addons), none of the Mozilla corporation. The most popular ones seem to be Waterfox and Floorp (for "most users") and LibreWolf for privacy diehards.
You can copy your Firefox profile folder directly into a fork's profile folder and have everything exactly as you left it (though doing this to Librewolf will likely overwrite some of Librewolf's privacy-first default settings like purging history every time the browser closes)
On iOS you are already stuck with every browser being a Safari+Webkit skin. Even Chrome "Isn't chromium" on iphones. But mobile iOS "Firefox" can still use Mozilla (or self-hosted) sync to desktop Waterfox (etc).
The only alternative is the Konqueror browser (KDE) for the Linux user, it has it's own KHTML engine by KDE (Grandfather of WebKit and Blink)
I am trying Floorp as of yesterday. I like Zen Browser, but their github contributers list makes it look like it's mostly the effort of one person and that always gives me pause until somethings been around a while. Floorp seemed more spread out so I decided to try it despite its silly name.
I'm interested in how ladybird shapes up.
Worth noting that you may have DRM issues on some forks with video content. I don't think you will on Linux, and someone clear this if you can, but I think the alternate used can't do 4k video? I'm not a big web media consumer so idk. Has something to do with Widevine I think.
I am also rooting for ladybird but yeah sadly not ready yet
Oh good. Though I already tried switching to something else. Maybe I'll switch back on some platforms.
No one uses Thunderbird anymore anyways, which doesn't matter as the ToS changes to Firefox are a nothing burger and won't dissuade millions of people using it daily despite what the neck beards on Lemmy would have you believe.
Thunderbird actually had a big resurgence a little while back, I use it as my mobile client 🤷♂️ If I understand correctly it's not actually a directly Mozilla project anymore.
Personally I'm less bothered by the terms of use changes specifically than the bigger picture of mozilla consistently making choices that confuse or raise eyebrows with their core audience, letting their browser languish from a technical standpoint, and making confusing business choices that don't seem to help their financial future at all while paying executives huge salaries
I use it as my mobile client 🤷♂️
Same here and I'm glad you posted this info
No one uses Thunderbird anymore
You pulled this out of your ass?
Thunderbird currently has millions of users.
Good to know that they'll be training AI on its users only on their browser. What a relief /s
Thunderbird's been isolated and isolated itself from wider Mozilla from sometime, so this doesn't surprise me. It belongs to a different subsidiary and everyday it becomes more separated from other Mozilla products. It's just there.