As promised, here is an interview with @ryanleesipes from #Thunderbird, on the whole #Mozilla and #Firefox terms of use situation.
We talk about why this had to happen, how Thunderbird will handle their own Terms of Use, what's happening at Mozilla, and what's changing.
“Why this had to happen”? Well, that's certainly ominous and gaslight-y (because no, it didn't have to happen).
Will #Mozilla next be asserting the right to scrape and sell the contents of our emails as well?
@argv_minus_one @ryanleesipes It actually did have to happen, du to regulator pressures. How it was done isn’t good, IMO, but they did have to add terms of use.
@thelinuxEXP @argv_minus_one @ryanleesipes FWIW, these changes make Firefox not really a viable option anymore in the current political environment, independent of whether the changes "had to happen."
Such a big change should merit reconsideration of the contract with google rather than the drastic widening of TOS on behalf of all users (esp considering one of the first things I do is disable google as the default search engine).
@ryanleesipes@mastodon.social@johnmarianhoffman @thelinuxEXP @argv_minus_one I can understand that perspective. Bear in mind that the Privacy Policy is still in effect and serves as protection as well. There are also a number of privacy settings that you can further fine-tune how you want Firefox to behave. Because it's all open source, you can verify that these settings do, in fact, do what they say they do. There are many layers of protection for user data beyond the ToS.
@ryanleesipes @thelinuxEXP @argv_minus_one and also, I have so much love for Mozilla and Firefox and all the work that you all do. Trying to share my perspective in the hopes it can be constructive to the conversation going forward. Thank you!
@johnmarianhoffman @thelinuxEXP @argv_minus_one I appreciate that. I welcome it. Like I said in the video, without these thoughts and these conversations - we're not going to succeed. So I think it's great!