Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

neowin.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 442 posts

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#101

Post by seba_dos1 »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #85
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…

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.

...and the extension this article is about had about 5000 (five thousand) installs before being taken down. That doesn't really scream "priority" to me.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#102

Post by cholantesh »

free_bip wrote: post #20
Freak_NL wrote: post #5

I really hope Raymond Hill won't do the same for uBlock Origin (the manifest v2 version). I'm not too comfortable recommending others to install a self-hosted extension. It's a shame Mozilla and Raymond Hill can't/won't solve this together. I get that the review he got simply should not have happened for an extension like this (see the Github thread¹) and that he is simply done with bothering, but I worry about how t…

Latest update from the link you provided: The Mozilla review team acknowledged their error and rectified it. Hopefully that allows it to continue existing.

Hill seems intent on self-hosting, so I mean it will exist, but will be a lot harder to discover and as GP mentions, probably harder to convince people to install.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#103

Post by slig »

busterarm wrote: post #95
seneca wrote: post #56

Mozilla is an absolute joke of an organization, and it's tragic that they are still the primary alternative to Google having a total monopoly on browsers. I suppose you shouldn't expect much from a company that is just there to maintain a facade to fend off regulators.

We're at a really dangerous point with browsers at the moment where there's really no consumer-friendly option available. I'm scared to say that Safari comes closest but you're just in Apple's walled garden then instead of someone elses'. Our only hope seems to lie with Ladybird, if that even ends up being good and it seems extensions aren't on the agenda at least for a while.

I'd say we're past that point. Less than 5% of global users (and going down) and NO mobile presence at all. The newer generation of devs and power users won't even care.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#104

Post by cholantesh »

busterarm wrote: post #94
pdpi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which brings us to: It's unclear why the author of the article decided that the reviewer was not acting in good faith.

Maybe it's the fact that 80+% of Mozilla's revenue comes directly from payment by Google who are extremely hostile to ad blockers (and UBO in particular) at the moment. That should be obvious, honestly. The extension is a threat to the reviewer's paycheck...

UBO isn't even the extension that was scrutinized, and besides how do you even know that the reviewer (if they are a human which seems open to question) is a Mozilla employee rather than a volunteer, and that they were not acting out of sheer incompetence?

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#105

Post by SuperNinKenDo »

abhinavk wrote: post #66
SuperNinKenDo wrote: post #45

Fair play. uBO is THE killer extension, and apparently it never occured to Mozilla that if they were going to insist on using some hideous, Google style, machine led review process for extensions, perhaps they should at least make a carve out for one of the single most important extensions that exists. I can totally understand gorhill becoming completely insensed by the whole thing and refusing to play ball when Mozi…

This is about uBOL. I haven't seen much delays for the main extension. It is always more up to date on Firefox compared to Chrome/Edge.

OK? So you support Mozilla's actions or something? What is the purpose of your comment?

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#106

Post by JimDabell »

busterarm wrote: post #95
seneca wrote: post #56

Mozilla is an absolute joke of an organization, and it's tragic that they are still the primary alternative to Google having a total monopoly on browsers. I suppose you shouldn't expect much from a company that is just there to maintain a facade to fend off regulators.

We're at a really dangerous point with browsers at the moment where there's really no consumer-friendly option available. I'm scared to say that Safari comes closest but you're just in Apple's walled garden then instead of someone elses'. Our only hope seems to lie with Ladybird, if that even ends up being good and it seems extensions aren't on the agenda at least for a while.

The issue is bigger than that. The web standards process relies on two independent implementations for something to become a web standard. This just about works when there are three big players, but if Mozilla drops out, then it’s just Google and Apple arguing. It’s bad enough that two out of the three rendering engines that participate in the web standards process are funded by Google. We really need another independent rendering engine to step up. Hopefully Ladybird will get some traction.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#107

Post by Dkuku »

This again shows the problem of automatic reviews. There should be a person name in every review that was responsible for it, currently it's blamed on our automated system. If the law would require someones name on it then I'm pretty sure the review process would be much better and the explanation would include more than an apology.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#108

Post by SSLy »

ForHackernews wrote: post #99
yencabulator wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, half of what you say matters seems to be missing.

They restored his extension (until he removed it again), what more do the Mozilla-haters want?

An apology, a post mortem, and lessons learned and implemented so it doesn’t happen again.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#110

Post by busterarm »

slig wrote: post #103
busterarm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're at a really dangerous point with browsers at the moment where there's really no consumer-friendly option available. I'm scared to say that Safari comes closest but you're just in Apple's walled garden then instead of someone elses'. Our only hope seems to lie with Ladybird, if that even ends up being good and it seems extensions aren't on the agenda at least for a while.

I'd say we're past that point. Less than 5% of global users (and going down) and NO mobile presence at all. The newer generation of devs and power users won't even care.

You're absolutely right, but I'm trying to retain a shred of optimism, especially with a high amount of focus and interest on this area lately with projects like Ladybird and even new Gopher and Gemini clients.

If the vast majority of endusers want to live in the moat, I can't stop them, but at least I'd like an alternative to explore interesting content even if my bank, etc will never support it.

At least banks are regulated enough that I don't expect their websites to be running full-page video ads anytime soon.

Post reply on HN