Firefox is a commercial product. Is it not?

Well, it’s partially a matter of semantics. Perhaps different people have different understandings of the word ‘commercial’. For me, I’d say that Firefox is not something a user pays for. It’s existence is not about making a profit, or strengthening a business, or anything to do with money at all - and therefore it is not a commercial product.

I agree that the engineers should be paid, and that browser development is very difficult. But nevertheless, Firefox historically has not been about maximising a profit - or even making any kind of profit at all. (Although it does seem Mozilla leadership are looking to change that.)

The text you quoted sounds like a reasonable and normal definition of a sale to me. i.e. transferring to another business in exchange for something else of value.

So yeah, Firefox previously promised not to do this, “not ever”, and now they say they need to do sell your personal data “in order to make Firefox commercially viable”.

But hang on a second… Firefox is not a commercial product. So making it ‘commercially viable’ is highly questionable in itself.

It’s a shame that Mozilla’s current leadership is more interested in self-enrichment than in the past. But Firefox is still the very best option by far. I hope that the Ladybird project becomes strong the future, if for no other reason than pressure Firefox into staying good.