Firefox 3 RC1 forces you agree to EULA before usage

Posted on Sat, 05/31/2008 - 3:52pm

I decided to upgrade my copy of Firefox 3 Beta5 to the recent Release Candidate today and was greeted with something quite unexpected.

Instead of my browser window opening as it was supposed to do I was given a End-User Software License Agreement (EULA) screen which would not let me use Firefox until I agreed with the terms and conditions.

While Mozilla has had a EULA since Firefox 1.5 or so they have never brazenly shoved it into the end-user's face until now. It immediately set me on edge because this behavior is indicative of proprietary software and not something you would expect to see when using something that is open source.

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Sat, 05/31/2008 - 5:13pm — James (not verified)

Re: Firefox 3 RC1 forces you agree to EULA before usage

So what? It's the same ELUA you've agreed to by installing and using Firefox before.

Remember that previously when installing Firefox on Linux, you don't have to accept any ELUA; it was implied that you did by your use of the software. Well, thanks to awareness and increasing acceptance of open source, stupid obnoxious users are no longer confined to any particular platform.

I'm guessing Mozilla's legal department wanted the ELUA thrown in because of the limitation of liability clause; anyone suing Mozilla because Firefox supposedly broke their computer now has even less of a case.

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Fri, 06/20/2008 - 12:50pm — Anonymous (not verified)

Re: Firefox 3 RC1 forces you agree to EULA before usage

It states quite clearly in the GPL that "acceptance is not a condition".

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Fri, 06/20/2008 - 5:55pm — James (not verified)

Re: Firefox 3 RC1 forces you agree to EULA before usage

That's all very fine and good, but the executable distribution of Firefox isn't licensed under the GPL.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/legal/eula/firefox-en.html

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Fri, 06/20/2008 - 10:47pm — Moparx

Re: Firefox 3 RC1 forces you agree to EULA before usage

Hi James,
Sorry for the _extremely_ late reply. I kept getting side-tracked and subsequently forgot to respond.

I completely understand what you are saying and why they would want to do something like this as their browser becomes more popular.

However, I dislike being forced to accept an non-free EULA when I compile Firefox myself and don't even use their pre-compiled binary or enable their branding/trademarks in .mozconfig.

It should not be showing at all because I am not using an official end-user build (which as you stated is governed by the EULA) and as such is a bit contradictory in regards to the philosophy behind free and open source software.