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Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

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Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#201

Post by shadowgovt »

politelemon wrote: post #193
4bpp wrote: post #53

If I understand the timeline correctly here, it seems that gorhill overreacted, and I say that as someone who is usually harshly critical of everything Mozilla has done in the past 5+ years. It's hardly practical for Mozilla to manually review every add-on revision for safety in a timely manner, so they had the choice between automation and delays that would make add-on development a slog; automation though inevitabl…

I don't think the author has overreacted, but your first paragraph doesn't seem to match the timeline, so maybe the article didn't portray it correctly. For a better understanding have a look at the Github issue: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197 It was not an automated review, it was a manual review, poorly done. The author then explains that they don't want to deal with the stress (there are also…

Sometimes, people apparently forget how much of this ecosystem is built on volunteers: their time and their talent.

You can lose a volunteer army fast if you don't provide them the warm fuzzies of the experience they don't get working with a faceless corporation.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#203

Post by shadowgovt »

bitfilped wrote: post #119
TiredOfLife wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is not a single person in a basement with a 20 year old second hand computer. They spend hundreds of millions $ per year. uBlock origin has 8+ million installs. The second extension by install count has 4 (four) times less. If if anything to do with gorhill and their extensions is not priority one in their review system, then something is really wrong at Mozilla.

This was for uBlock lite, a much lesser used plugin

And behind the scenes is one human being maintaining both.

If you make maintaining one of them more stressful than the other, the maintainer dropping one to focus on the other is a predictable consequence.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#204

Post by wtallis »

chimeracoder wrote: post #147
zdragnar wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why Apple implemented the precursor to Chrome's v3 manifest in Safari (not to mention the performance implications). It's a lot easier to just accuse Google of acting in bad faith, and Mozilla of being their lapdogs, and ignore any possible evidence to the contrary.

> It's a lot easier to just accuse Google of acting in bad faith, and Mozilla of being their lapdogs, and ignore any possible evidence to the contrary. There are two issues at play here. Manifest V3 is, undeniably, a security improvement over Manifest V2. Providing full read/write access to all websites is a huge security risk, and the fact that we're willing to do it is really a testament to how bad the state of the…

> Providing full read/write access to all websites is a huge security risk, and the fact that we're willing to do it is really a testament to how bad the state of the web is without adblockers.

That seems to be completely ignoring that extensions aren't just independent self-contained programs. They're intended to extend and modify the capabilities of your user agent to better suit the needs of the user. Trusting the user agent with full read/write access to the data it's fetching is fundamental to the purpose of a user agent. Sure, it's nice when you can sandbox a helper, but it's irresponsible to suggest there's anything wrong or unusual about having the kind of powerful extensions that Google doesn't want you to have.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#205

Post by mort96 »

EasyMark wrote: post #191
sunaookami wrote: post #75

It's very annoying you have to submit your extension to gatekeepers to even distribute them to normal users. As gorhill said on GitHub it took days for a self-hosted version to be approved - that's unacceptable. Imagine you would need approval from Microsoft to distribute software. Not even Android is this closed. Enforcing signatures and removing XUL were the worst things Mozilla has ever done. And yes, Google does…

What?You can install extensions in Firefox easily without going through the Firefox extension store. XUL had to go.

No, you can't. Extensions must be signed by Mozilla for Firefox to let you install them.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#206

Post by Arnavion »

Zak wrote: post #118
sunaookami wrote: post #75

It's very annoying you have to submit your extension to gatekeepers to even distribute them to normal users. As gorhill said on GitHub it took days for a self-hosted version to be approved - that's unacceptable. Imagine you would need approval from Microsoft to distribute software. Not even Android is this closed. Enforcing signatures and removing XUL were the worst things Mozilla has ever done. And yes, Google does…

On desktop Firefox, you can download an extension from anywhere and install it. All they're gatekeeping is their own repository, which I think most of us would like them to do. I think mobile requires using a nightly build to install extensions from outside Mozilla's repository, and that suggests their thinking is becoming contaminated by the rest of the mobile ecosystem.

To add on to the other replies, you *can* load unsigned extensions with desktop Firefox if the build you're using disabled the signing requirement at build time. A bunch of distros' FF packages do that, for example, and is why I use a bunch of extensions I wrote myself (and thus trust) for myself without having to deal with Mozilla. (Zip up the files, change the file extension to `.xpi`, drop it in `$libdir/firefox/browser/extensions/`)

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#207

Post by Rinzler89 »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #171
open-paren wrote: post #117

I manage a medium-sized browser extension at work. We also offer(ed) it on Firefox. But I have spent the past year struggling to get back into Mozilla store after a manual review. As far as I can tell, there are maybe two reviewers that are based in Europe (Romania?). The turn around time is long when I am in the US, and it has been rife with this same kind of "simple mistake" that takes 2 weeks to resolve. "You need…

That's not just mozilla. Google's review team all are in India and they cannot write clear English. It's a mess.

>Google's review team all are in India and they cannot write clear English.

Which is ironic considering the reason they went to India and not other countries with cheap labor is that English is an official language there.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#208

Post by Semaphor »

pxc wrote: post #186
Semaphor wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the normal version blocks (at least permanent) installs. You need the developer version to install unsigned extensions.

What release made this change effective?

That was many years ago, there was a bit of a public complaint.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#209

Post by BenjiWiebe »

jjice wrote: post #158
bogwog wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla has been trying to become an ad company for a while now. A built-in ad blocker would mess that up for them.

Have they? I haven't seen this. They have a lot of tracking protection built in, but no ad blocker. I'm not doubting you, I just haven't seen any action or posts on their part about this.

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