Mozilla enabled ads in Firefox and they're active in Fedora

[Matěj Cepl]

On 2014-11-20, 16:17 GMT, Petr Viktorin wrote:
> Every piece of Fedora is like that, and yet I don't see any 
> other software doing useless-for-me opt-out tracking.
> (Also, who am I paying? All authors of Firefox, or only the Mozilla 
> employees?)

How many multizillion LoC end-user applications able to compete 
with their proprietary opponents we have in Fedora? I know about 
one: LibreOffice, and a) as much as I like LibreOffice and its 
developers are for me one of the biggest heroes of the FLOSS 
universe, the reality is that they don’t keep that neck-to-neck 
run with Microsoft Office, b) I think it is possible we still 
wait when the development of LO gets to the similar state as 
Firefox and they will need to get some money to keep going.

“End-user” is there because other large pieces of Linux are paid 
by companies (not least by Red Hat) who spends tons of money on 
their development. However, not enough people buy end-user 
software so the resources are distributed accordingly. How many 
people Red Hat employs for kernel and how many for Firefox?

> Is there now an *obligation* to give back? Because there never has been 
> such a thing.

Of course, there always was and is. “You were freely given, 
freely give away”. But no “obligation” doesn’t have to mean 
“legal obligation” so nobody will sue you, if you are 
a free-rider. There are such things as “moral obligations”. If 
the only limit on your behavior is the letter of law, I am sorry 
for your friends and relatives.

And of course, if you really insist on non-monetized purely 
FLOSS-driven browsers, they are there as well. Go and use the 
browser formerly known as Epiphany or something else. I believe 
they are more or less useful, and if the freedom is so important 
for you, you will gladly sacrifice some functionality, won’t 
you?

Matěj