Starting in Firefox 138, Mozilla started gating Firefox Labs features behind data collection.
Mozilla had announced that some new Firefox features would be released via Firefox Labs.
It is now a few hours since I posted, and there is reason to celebrate – Mozilla is updating Firefox Labs to let people access features without needing to enable data collection.
I know everyone likes to bash ff, but it’s still a great project.
It’s still much better than chrome and most other mainstream browser and it works.
All the “better” options require serious effort to use. Sites will break, features you used will be removed, and so on.
The computer world is fracturing in a weird and annoying way
Agree about the fracturing. I’ve been using Librewolf for months and it’s basially Firefox without the telemetry nonsense. Most sites work fine and it’s not that hard to setup. Just import your bookmarks and your good to go.
Lol, how many times have they done this now? They are obsessed.
A gentle reminder that the Firefox Binary is no longer open source. It is source-available. You license the binary under their own proprietary Terms of Use, which explicitly grants Mozilla to use your data in a manner they seem fit to “operate Firefox”.
They say they are using your data for research purposes but they also say they can modify the license at any time.
Still better than Chrome.
I wonder if you will get excoriated for this opinion, since I had to respond to people in my last post with an update because people were adamant that Firefox was open source. 😼
There are two "Firefox"s:
- Firefox, the code base.
- Firefox, the compiled binary of that code base.
The codebase remains open source under the MPL while the binary explicitly, by Mozilla’s own admission, is not. They are source available.
From the very brief skim I did of your post, it looks like we’re on the same page. I had a few people who don’t understand open source licenses come at me in my Lemmy replies when this was first unfolding. Ultimately it’s on them to understand their agreements.
