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Firefox 42 will not allow unsigned extensions

wiki.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox 42 will not allow unsigned extensions

#71

Post by kpcyrd »

Animats wrote: post #20
brighteyes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There can be a decent turnaround lag (sometimes on the order of a few days) Actually, the link says > Files submitted for signing will go through an automated review process. If they pass this review, they are automatically signed and sent back to the developer. This process should normally take seconds You may be thinking of a different type of review process, the signing one sounds almost instantaneous.

That's for non-public add-ons. If you submit a public add-on, even a minor update, it has to go through the AMO bureaucracy. I currently have an update that was uploaded on July 10, 2015, and is at queue position of 64 of 137. There are no code changes; it's just being updated because Mozilla changed their build system. This seems to be part of Mozilla's effort to be more like the Apple and Google stores. Mozila AMO…

Actually, it's their effort to prevent AMO from ending up as malware riddled as the Chrome Store.

Addons are running in the chrome context and are thus pretty powerful. It's trival to compromise the whole computer if they aren't reviewed.

Re: Firefox 42 will not allow unsigned extensions

#72

Post by 0x0 »

dtech wrote: post #43
kragen wrote: post #30

This is deeply disappointing. Two details: the extensions need to be signed by Mozilla , and only US English speakers will be allowed to disable this requirement. The point of free software is that users, individually and collectively, are free to modify it as they wish, without requiring approval from third parties. (And of course to use, copy, and redistribute.) This is a sharp turn away from the free-software etho…

> only US English speakers will be allowed to disable this requirement Do they assume that non-English speakers are just drooling baboons who cannot decide this for themselves unlike English speakers?...

This sounded super weird. But I guess what you are referring to is that the will only release en-US-localized builds of the "unbranded firefox" editions. That I can understand, the logistics of building and shipping all the i18n editions for an off-brand build is probably significant.

Re: Firefox 42 will not allow unsigned extensions

#74

Post by jsingleton »

nathanb wrote: post #11

It's the "no override" part that concerns me. I created and maintain an extension that is used by visually-impaired people around the world (it has been translated by volunteers into Dutch and Chinese, for example). Occasionally a Firefox update breaks this extension. OK, fine, that's the cost of doing business. Of course, the automated compatibility report that Firefox creates is utterly useless; it almost never cat…

I don't use many extensions but I'm finding I have to use more as Mozilla remove features from Firefox.

For example you can no longer set the User Agent string on a per site basis natively in Firefox preferences [0]. This would be very handy to force HTML5 video on BBC News when you don't want to install flash [1]. I only discovered this setting was deprecated by finding that bug report whilst researching the blog post.

[0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=933959

[1] https://unop.uk/dev/how-to-watch-bbc-news-videos-on-a-deskto...

Re: Firefox 42 will not allow unsigned extensions

#76

Post by yoz-y »

gnaritas wrote: post #27
mveety wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't we teach people the don't understand so they can make informed choices instead of preventing it entirely?

They can't be taught, nor do they care to be. Education is not the solution to the problem of users who don't want to know.

This. Most of the people do not care about this stuff and they do not wish to learn it. Also, like with vaccines, it is important that sufficient number of people are protected for the malware/viruses to not spread.

Re: Firefox 42 will not allow unsigned extensions

#77

Post by realusername »

dtech wrote: post #43
kragen wrote: post #30

This is deeply disappointing. Two details: the extensions need to be signed by Mozilla , and only US English speakers will be allowed to disable this requirement. The point of free software is that users, individually and collectively, are free to modify it as they wish, without requiring approval from third parties. (And of course to use, copy, and redistribute.) This is a sharp turn away from the free-software etho…

> only US English speakers will be allowed to disable this requirement Do they assume that non-English speakers are just drooling baboons who cannot decide this for themselves unlike English speakers?...

This requirement is ridiculous, a lot of developers can't speak English at all. And what about British English ? Is it not as good as American English for development ?

Re: Firefox 42 will not allow unsigned extensions

#79

Post by jsingleton »

I wonder if this will mean that all the extension version numbers will stop ending in -signed. I'm used to having any build number with -label in its name denote it's a pre-release and isn't stable [0].

I was recently searching for user agent switcher add-ons as part of a blog post [1] and almost all have -signed in the name. To some people it could look like the un-signed ones are more stable and better.

[0] http://semver.org

[1] https://unop.uk/dev/how-to-watch-bbc-news-videos-on-a-deskto...

Re: Firefox 42 will not allow unsigned extensions

#80

Post by icebraining »

tomjen3 wrote: post #16
brighteyes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There can be a decent turnaround lag (sometimes on the order of a few days) Actually, the link says > Files submitted for signing will go through an automated review process. If they pass this review, they are automatically signed and sent back to the developer. This process should normally take seconds You may be thinking of a different type of review process, the signing one sounds almost instantaneous.

If it passes. Nobody knows what it checks for or how it works.

https://github.com/mozilla/amo-validator
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