Madmanmcp Posted November 17, 2004 Share Posted November 17, 2004 Firefox not freeware anymore? h_tp://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=164892&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight= Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Thomas Posted November 17, 2004 Share Posted November 17, 2004 Looks to me like someone made an extension and tries to make money out of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LisaJill Posted November 17, 2004 Share Posted November 17, 2004 Yea, the head of Mozilla Europe, if you go to page 7 you'll see there is a rumour that the Mozilla Europe board approved said extension. Plus, it is an official extension, included in all builds - so their responsibility; unlike the third party extensions. I have no opinion on this right now, but it will be interesting to see it unfold. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
borfast Posted November 17, 2004 Share Posted November 17, 2004 (edited) Yes, it was the head of Mozilla Europe, Axel Hecht, but that extension is not included in all builds, only the German (de-DE) build. It seems Axel already admitted he messed up and it seems that the redirection link has been deactivated. Just in case someone doesn't want to read the whole thing, the problem is that the German (de-DE) build of Mozilla, made by Mozilla Europe, includes an ebay search plugin that takes the search query through a third party ad server, which keeps track of some info regarding that search - not the individual user, just the search. So it's not quite advertisement, it's more like spyware (yeah, I know it doesn't make things any better... ) This is a bit disapointing but I do hope people realize this was a decision taken by one person, not the whole Mozilla Foundation, that not every build of Firefox is "contaminated" by this problem and that Firefox is still a very good web browser (the best? ). Edited November 17, 2004 by TCH-Raul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Bruce Posted November 17, 2004 Share Posted November 17, 2004 Raul, I agree with you but this quote taken from Mitchell's blog leaves me with a bad feeling. We provide access to search services from a range of sources including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and others you can see in Firefox. We expect to see some funds come to the Foundation as a result of our integrated search. We'll use any funds that result to help support the Mozilla Foundation's non-profit operations. When finances are involved questions often arise about their influence on an organization and we'll spend some time talking about this as we go forward. To me they are trying to find a way to generate some revenue. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing, but the way they are doing it is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deverill Posted November 18, 2004 Share Posted November 18, 2004 You know, if they had an option to use advertiser-spiked search engines I'd probably turn it on to support Firefox and Mozilla.... but if it is "snuck" in there I'd hate them forever. I'd probably use Firefox anyway though. It's just that darn good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
borfast Posted November 18, 2004 Share Posted November 18, 2004 Yep, I totally agree with you, Bruce. And with you too, Jim. But I just don't get it why they would do something like this... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Bruce Posted November 18, 2004 Share Posted November 18, 2004 greed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
borfast Posted November 24, 2004 Share Posted November 24, 2004 It seems the thread Bob pointed us to has, according to one of the MozillaZine forums' moderators, "[...] degenerated into name calling, and is basically going in circles." and so he closed it. Does anyone have any more info about this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThumpAZ Posted November 24, 2004 Share Posted November 24, 2004 We provide access to search services from a range of sources including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and others you can see in Firefox. We expect to see some funds come to the Foundation as a result of our integrated search. We'll use any funds that result to help support the Mozilla Foundation's non-profit operations. When finances are involved questions often arise about their influence on an organization and we'll spend some time talking about this as we go forward. Just the thought of this makes me nervous... it is basically stating that, if they are not spying on searches through the program, then they are outsourcing the searches to other servers over which they have no control. To me, this rerouting is suspect. I just don't like the idea that their "integrated" search is actually not that, it is just served by a third party. One that the producers expect to receive money for... something's fishy to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
borfast Posted November 25, 2004 Share Posted November 25, 2004 I'm not that bothered as a user, because I don't use the Geman version (I don't even use ebay, so... ). But I am bothered by what has been done with a great piece of software and the consequences it may have on it's public image. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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