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.
Is this post more about trying to discredit/bash Mozilla/Firefox, than it is about explaining what’s happening and why? It seems that way.
I’m not worried at all, about this. Firefox is still Open Source. You can be OS, and still collect some data.
You can collect data AND be open source.
Also, I would suggest that Mozilla is turning away from open development rather than turning away from open source.
I talk a little about this in the post, but it feels very weird to think of the new Labs features as being open source but not being accessible unless you are giving Mozilla data – OR you are compiling your own copy of Firefox (which is also no longer Firefox).
I think it is a very weird situation, but of course I do see the ambiguity.
Orion by Kagi is a great replacement imo.
Orion isn’t open source.
