Comment 249 for bug 269656

Revision history for this message
Andrew (fishpie) wrote :

I was originally firmly against the EULA, it seemed as pointless as it was annoying. I was fustrated by the lack of a reasonable explanation that I could understand. However, I now strongly suspect that the Mozilla Corporation have no choice but to insist on the EULA because of an agreement that they have with Google. Firefox binaries were originally covered by a EULA because the MPL is difficult for users to understand[1]. When Firefox 2 was released, the privacy policy clause was the only clause added to the Firefox EULA[2]. Every half hour the fishing filter introduced in Firefox 2 downloads a site blacklist from Google, this slightly compromises the firefox users privacy because Google know that someone at the users IP address is browsing the web using Firefox[3]. So I suspect that Google wishing to protect themselves from allegations of spying on Firefox users have insisted on the privacy policy being prominent and, agreed by Firefox users. However, no one who knows about it can talk about it, because of non disclosures agreements. I am not suggesting that there is anything sinister going on, just cautious lawyers keeping everyone quiet.

The Mozilla EULA states "Nothing in this Agreement will be construed to limit any rights granted under the Open Source Licenses" so the EULA does not make Firefox any less free.

[1]http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2004/11/08/firefox-end-user-license-agreement/
[2]http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/legal/eula/firefox2-en.html
[3]http://www.internetbusiness.co.uk/26102006/firefox-2-releases-privacy-storm/