Mozilla phancies doing a Phorm

[beavenburt]

Hi guys and gals. My first post, so i'll start by saying that ubuntu rocks. I just love it. And, this community has a fantastic wealth of information and support. Respect to you all.
Anyhow, I've not seen this posted yet and wanted to get some opinion. The two articles talk of Mozilla using Firefox to gather browsing data from it's users and selling it on. To my mind this will be a hugely contriversal move by Mozilla. I just wanted to gauge peoples opinion. Will this be a huge own goal?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05...ox_data_snoop/
http://john.jubjubs.net/2008/05/13/m...-firefox-data/

[cdenley]

I think they're trying to hype a story. If there's an optional add-on that sends anonymous usage information, I don't really care. Since it's open-source, we can look at everything the browser does, and nothing will ever happen without our knowledge. If they ever make changes that upset their users, people will just use a forked version.

[cammin]

The thing is that they may do it slowly, through a bunch of gradual changes. Each incremental move will be subtle enough that it won't shock the majority of users enough to switch browsers.