TL;DR: Mozilla is now enforcing data collection as a pre-requisite to access new features in Firefox Labs. This is backed by the Terms of Use that Mozilla introduced a few months ago.
I am 100% on board with the author until they question it being open source, immediately after noting that users can take the source code and remove the telemetry function from it. They try to reconcile that contradiction by seemingly saying that since Firefox has the telemetry, a non-telemetry Firefox wouldn’t be Firefox, and that somehow makes FF not open-source?
Is Firefox really open source if we have to submit to data collection to access features distributed under an open source license?
Yes, ordinary end users can create a patch set to enable these features without needing to submit data to Mozilla - but that would clearly no longer be Firefox.
Plenty of OSS licenses have rules baked into them about how you can use the code, or lay out obligations for redistribution. That does not negate their OSS-ness.
“Is it really open source if I have to edit the source code I was given to remove a feature I don’t like?”
I mean, yeah? What a program does is completely orthogonal to the rights granted by its source code license, which determines whether something is open-source.
I am also not sure why they seem to think that this move either is meant to or is likely to push away technical users in favor of some supposed group of non-technical users who will go into the settings to manually enable a beta testing feature (Labs).
Yes, (as the author notes) the purpose of a system is what it does, but the author isn’t presenting any evidence of what it’s doing vis a vis their claim of making technical users quit FF.
Mozilla has plenty of issues, but I just don’t see “forces you to agree to telemetry if you want to participate in beta testing” as some canary in the coalmine of enshitiffication.
Plenty of OSS licenses have rules baked into them about how you can use the code, or lay out obligations for redistribution.
“Is it really open source if I have to edit the source code I was given to remove a feature I don’t like?”
I’m really not being aggressive about this position and I tried to express the ambiguity here. I think what irks me most are these things:
- Forking Firefox means it isn’t Firefox - yes, this means that the original was OSS, but you really need to be an expert to get at all the OSS code running on your machine. I mean that it is literally not Firefox, since your fork doesn’t have permission to use the trademarked name.
- If we think of the enabling functionality in Firefox as a virtual lock, breaking that lock is illegal under the DMCA. That seems very weird for code that is ostensibly open source.
- The addition of the Terms to Firefox seems like an additional restriction (a la Grsecurity, as I mentioned in the post) to the existing license in Firefox. Indeed, Mozilla says that the existing license isn’t “transparent” enough for Firefox users.
Yes, the purpose of a system is what it does, but the author isn’t presenting any evidence of what it’s doing vis a vis their claim of making technical users quit FF.
The purpose of the system being what it does is Firefox being spyware - you can’t escape it if you want to use Labs features.
Love the feedback, and I while I think Firefox is open source, I do see the addition of software locks as backing away from OSS.
I also went ahead and posted a small update with some additional clarifying thoughts - I don’t think it will satisfy you, unfortunately - but it might help people understand where I am coming from.
