@mxk

Linux got adoption due to its features, not because of politics.

Not quite so simple. You skip why Linux was created in the beginning. It was because there was no affordable Unix alternatives available to students.

All the features we take for granted in Linux today was lacking in the beginning. It was a pretty limited OS in the beginning, only supporting a very limited set of hardware.

But Linux got adoption because it was a community wanting to builds something better, which happened to happen in the open. And it gained features through open collaboration. It was not a commercial drive itself which gave Linux the adoption.

What gave adoption was the freedom it delivered. You can call freedom a feature in this context. And others have tried to stop Linux from gaining success over the years; from Microsoft calling it a cancer, to SCO suing it for copyright issues.

The reason more and more companies decided to bet on Linux, support it in various ways, the reason some companies tried to fight Linux ... they are all based in (corporate/business) politics.

What Mozilla is doing is contrary to this. And Firefox is the immediate collateral damage, which makes the whole browser scope more difficult unless a sustainable alternative surfaces. The Chrome/Chromium dominance today is therefore a considerable threat for an open, free and sustainable browser experience.

We have already been down this path before, with Internet Explorer. We don't need to repeat these mistakes. In that sense, the Chrome browser "saved us" back then. Now Chrome/Chromium has become the new threat.

@mxk It's naive when you stand alone. Just as it is naive to call a single waterdrop a sea.

When individuals unite, it becomes a movement which can cause a change.

How else do you think Linux became the dominant server OS on the Internet? It all started with with a single individual saying:

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.

Now it is available for lots of platforms and used "everywhere". There are tons of such examples.

People must unite. And even "going with the flow" of what "everyone else uses" is exactly the same thing. You've just joined a different movement.

If nobody does nothing, nothing will ever change.

@mxk Well, what to say ... Ignorance is bliss, perhaps?

The same arguments can be used about any type of politics. If you don't care about the details of the politics, you have not much to complain about when reality hits you.

Your arguments are common. And most users just want "something that works". Everyone gets that. Everyone, even I, want that. But if nobody fights for freedom, the freedom will eventually be taken away from everyone - also those who didn't care to join the fight. That's the reality.

But there must be room for some pragmatism. Sometimes you need to use what works while fighting the good cause. But that is not the same as ignoring there is something to fight for.

@flod Hah, very good point! I'm still stuck in 2025 - and this was exactly one year ago when I posted that.

But I'm not calmed at all by the latest privacy faq.

We strive to only collect the data we need to make the best products

They say clearly they collect data, but not what they use it for in practice. «[...] make the best products» can mean sell data to get funding for development.

We work to put people in control of their data and online experiences.

Really? Just after lots of users push for a change, like the by default enabled AI engine. It took them a few releases to add the needed toggles. And do we still trust there are no more switches needed to be toggled via about:config - or can't be disabled at all? If Mozilla would have had credibility, yes, then we could trust this more. But they've done so much user and privacy hostile moves over the last few years their trust and credibility is vanishing fast.

We adhere to the “no surprises” principle, meaning we work hard to ensure people’s understanding of Firefox matches reality.

Just like enabling AI by default .... taking lots of users by surprise when they realised that Firefox suddenly became a huge resource hog. I wonder what kind of reality Mozilla lives in. It sure is not aligned with what most of the privacy aware Firefox users live in.

We don’t know your age, gender, precise location, or other information Big Tech collects and profits from.

While that sounds good, they say earlier that they do collect information. And data being made anonymous or being pseudo-anonymous are still not good enough. There are plenty of stories where it's been possible to reveal the identity of persons based on anonymous data. Like having GPS tracking data for thousands of users and correlating that information with time stamps. Then patterns appears and you can start identifying where people live and work easily.

But ...

Mozilla does collect a limited set of data by default from Firefox that helps us to understand how people use the browser.

I don't think more is needed to be said.

This whole faq is just trying to make Mozilla look nice. Google has also had similar claims back in the days, when they had the "Don't be evil" slogan. But it turns out that wasn't enough.

The best way to preserve users privacy is to start by not collecting any data by default. In Firefox, any data collection need to be disabled explicitly by default. And they still do not dare to say explicitly "we don't benefit financially from your data" (since "sell" was a too broad expression for them).

The fact is, we don't really know what or how Mozilla really uses the data they collect. All we know is that they do collect data, that it is being used and that they have removed any statements about "selling" data completely.

It's just to connect these dots. There is nothing I've read lately which says there are no connection between them.

@mxk @EdCates @graves501 @theorangetheme

What "gives me headaches" when a browser render engine gets a monopoly, we easily end up with the complete chaos we had with Internet Explorer roughly 20 years ago. Web sites had to account for IE3, IE4-5 and IE 6 version plus the "minority others". A web page would end up behaving completely different across all these aspects. The Opera browser was at that time one of the engines which was close to most compliant to the web standards.

Microsoft extended IE without caring about standards and since it was the dominating browser at that time, they didn't care much about the standards. They had their own standards. But they also didn't care about compliance between their own versions even.

Web developers at that time focused on getting the IE experience as best as they could and then came the minority browsers.

This can easily happen again if Chromium ends up without real competition. Then Google can do whatever they want with Chrome, drop caring about standards since it "owns" the browser scope. And by doing that, websites starts to adopt to make sure web sites renders best on Chrome, resulting in people being locked in with Chrome. And somewhere along this path, Google can ditch the open source Chromium - just as they try to squeeze out the third-party Android apps these days.

By not having a real competition in any market space, we users/consumers ends up as the losing part sooner than later.

@swordgeek Hah! I'm clearly forgetting we're in 2026 ... But then it's even clearer that Mozilla deserves no trust at all.

@EdCates @graves501 @theorangetheme

Agreed! We don't need to repeat the Internet Explorer fiasco.

#Mozilla has lost their ground and is now in a free fall into a sinkhole. I doubt they'll ever get out if this again unless they do a 180-turn within the coming days. Mozilla has lost a lot of trust and credibility over the last couple of years. This accelerates that distrust even more.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/

It looks promising, until you hit the last paragraph (my highlight)

In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. We set all of this out in our privacy notice. Whenever we share data with our partners, we put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share is stripped of potentially identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).

In my book, that's indirectly selling data.

Goodbye, #Firefox.

#privacy #ads #foss #opensource #web

The discussions are heated ...

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/information-about-the-new-terms-of-use-and-updated-privacy/m-p/87735

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/an-update-on-our-terms-of-use/m-p/88320

This is sad

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e#diff-a24e74e4595fa85440a2f4e7e5dcfe68aba6e1e593aef05a2d35581a91423847

#firefox #privacy #mozilla #foss #opensource #web

@randahl

«Let that ....»

@arildsen Norske BankID fungerer fint på /e/OS og har gjort det over mange år ... Så det er mulig!

@privacyguides A better name for LastPass is LostPass

@atlefren Har brukt Proton Lumo litt på oversettelser mellom språk. Der er den bedre en mye annet som ikke er LLM basert.

Men så har jo LLM mer nærhet til språk enn andre ting, så kanskje ikke så overraskende

@fredrik Flott du tar opp dette! Har gjort det selv tidligere, men fikk ikke en gang svar

Vi må kunne dokumentere at appen og telefonen den brukes på ikke er manipulert, og at brukerne er beskyttet mot skadevare og misbruk.

Det er så bullshit. Med den påstanden så ville det ikke vært en eneste nettbank som kunne fungert i en nettleser. I tillegg til den enorme mengden med bank- og betalingsapper som finnes, som ikke ser ut til å ha noen som helst problemer med sikkerheten.

For eksempel, CurvePay som er et Europeisk selskap underlagt EU's lovgivninger er i stand til å lever en app som fungerer med NFC for betaling i terminaler.

Vipps påstår at de kan ha kontroll på klientsiden med deres metode, noe som også er bullshit. Vipps fungerer (periodevis) med @microg (jeg bruker selv @e_mydata) - helt til Vipps oppdaterer appen. Med det resultat at jeg må "nullstille" appen ("Clear Storage") og logge inn igjen nesten hver gang jeg vil bruke Vipps.

Klientsidesikkerhet er en utopi så lenge man ikke selv leverer klientene og sørger for at de er så nedlåste at brukerne ikke kan gjøre noe annet enn å bruke tillatt funksjonalitet.

Prøver å stoppe der nå.

</rant>

@giacomo

And all of this starts with the data itself. It is the data you want to access which has the real value. Data you should own from the beginning.

If the data is in an open standard format, there is a possibility to break free.

If you cannot control the data, there are no baseline for digital sovereignty. If you cannot have access to software being able to make use of the data in a meaningful way for you, there are no baseline for digital sovereignty. If the software cannot be written, because the data format is unknown or too closely tied to the service provider generating the data, there are no baseline to achieve digital sovereignty.

With open standards, there can be built open source software using those open standards. Thus, you can decode and extract meaningful information from the data.

There are also no requirements anywhere that there must be more implementations for open source project from more countries. They key point is that source code must be open and available for all. That takes away the chances of someone talking full control of the software and restricting the freedom otherwise possible. Without a source code available, the path to extracting meaningful information ends up incredibly hard.

Open sourced software is one piece of the digital sovereignty puzzle, data in an open standard is another piece in the same puzzle.

Having access to the data files containing your information is yet another piece in the same puzzle. You cannot achieve digital sovereignty without all of these three pieces;then someone will still have control of your information.

Likewise, if you use a service with a proprietary API - you are bound to that service as long as that service uses the same API. If more service providers provide the same standardised API, you can more easily switch between services. Again, open standards is a key component for digital sovereignty - otherwise you will not be able to process your data as you want.

@jwildeboer

@giacomo

If you're concerned about the US controlling open source - you can fork it. But a fork won't be successful if it doesn't have users and contributors.

Remember OpenOffice.org? What do you think people talk more about - that one or the fork LibreOffice?

Android has forks as well. The main problem with Android isn't the problems forking the OS itself. It's the Google Play layers, which is not open source and fully controlled by Google - which way too many apps depends on, making it much harder to break free from Google's Android implementation.

You are equally not forced to use or implement protocols you don't deem needed in your own code. Use the alternatives, HTTP is well established and can do most of what QUIC can do. And the HTTP standard can also be extended and improved.

Protocols not being based on open standards - they are a pain to support outside of its origin software stack. Reverse engineering is the only viable path if there are no other open alternatives available.

So open source and open standards can help you break free of evil empires; the capability of digital sovereignty is built into open source and open standards.

@jwildeboer

@jwildeboer

If you can't manage your own data, you're locked in.
If you can't have access to the software processing your data, you're locked in.
If you can't access you're data due to the data being stored in a service which is down or has blocked your access, you're locked in.

It's as easy as that. Don't put your data in a place where you can't access it when you need it.

Open standards avoid this, your data format is documented and there are more implementations of parsers

It starts with open standards, as then there are less reasons to protect the software inside a proprietary blackbox.

Open source and free/libre software is the natural extension of open standards.