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.
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.
We’ve been through this with Canonical when they tried to shove something into Ubuntu that would’ve only benefited them and nobody else. And I think this is the point. You’re suddenly not all about keeping the web free and open anymore. Suddenly this is a byproduct of your endeavors at best. And for anyone who does mind that shift you really have no other option but to switch to another browser. Today it may be just their beta-programme. Who knows about tomorrow.
We don’t delete our Xitter accounts because the core product has changed, we leave the platform because nothing good can come from morally bankrupt leadership. Comparing X and Mozilla in that regard might be a stretch, but like you said, “Mozilla has plenty of issues”, these don’t get talked about nearly enough.
I understand it’s a slippery slope argument, which is why I didn’t find it particularly convincing.
And if you’ve done bugfixing of software, you know that the data that users give you in reports is 90% of the time less useful than what you get out of crash reports or telemetry (yes, there are rockstar testers out there, but they’re the vast minority of users). Not all beta programs are there solely for the developers’ sake (some are there for e.g. third party devs to update integrations, etc), but this one seems to be, and that isn’t evidence of malice.