[Bug 269656] Re: AN IRRELEVANT LICENSE IS PRESENTED TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE ON STARTUP

[Andrew]

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/

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AN IRRELEVANT LICENSE IS PRESENTED TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE ON STARTUP
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/269656
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