We need an industry movement of just saying no to app stores.
Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store
221–230 of 442 posts
Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store
#222Earlier 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.
They developed Privacy Preserving Attribution with Facebook to collect data from browsers. It's enabled by default in fresh Firefox installs. They also acquired an advertisement subsidiary, Anonym, earlier this year. So when Mozilla makes a statement about advertisements, it's worth a little extra scrutiny.
Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store
#223This is why app stores / extension stores are simply an antipattern. The intent is to make usability easier, but it's actually useful functionality.
Get rid of the app and extension stores and let users just install software they find on the internet. Safe and secure software is found on websites dedicated to reviewing them, like the Freshmeat of old, Tucows, etc.
Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store
#224If 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 think it’s reasonable to expect that one of Firefox’s most popular extension publishers gets a higher tier of review service. Gorhill (and other top extension devs) are providing real value to Firefox, and have demonstrated good behavior for years. This doesn’t mean they should get to publish whatever they want, but if a reviewer is about to reject a high profile plugin, they should get a second set of eyes on it.…
Good point, they should be on the phone "Mr G how can our developers help you getting this extension approved"
This developer one of the main reasons for many people to use Firefox, especially in this current chrome controversy manifestV2 vs V3
And ironically this uBOL success should be of very interest to Mozilla because if it had gained more success than the main one uBO then it would be one less reason for the company to invest resources into maintaining manifestV2
Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
>uBOL is not an important extension on Firefox. Perhaps you should read some earlier comments then you wouldn't say such things? Hints: Firefox mobile; range of privileges required.
I did, it does not change what I said. uBO works perfectly fine on Firefox Mobile and doesn't use much battery. People can prefer uBOL, but that doesn't make it important to the ecosystem.
Out of all the criticism Firefox fans make of the mobile version, excess CPU usage and excess RAM usage are at the top of the list. Maybe high-end phones run Firefox decently now, but not everybody has a high-end phone. If uBOL has a place on Firefox, mobile Firefox is where it's best.
Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, you can't. Extensions must be signed by Mozilla for Firefox to let you install them.
This is simply not true. I've been using unsigned extensions for years. You drag-drop a zip file into the extensions window and it will let you install it.
You must be using either the Developer Edition, ESR, nightly or some unbranded version. Vanilla Firefox doesn’t allow to install unsigned extensions permanently.
Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But this is not about a high profile plugin. The high profile plugin is "uBlock Origin", and this is about "uBlock Origin Lite", which is a big thing for Chrome, but not for Firefox. Why would anyone want to use uBOL, when they have the option to use uBO? uBlock Origin requires giving the extension full read and write permissions on every site you visit, which is a huge liability, security-wise. uBlock Origin Lite…
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.
Last I checked google didn't remove the read-only access to network requests in v3, so an extension that wants to track everything can still do that. It just can't block anything with custom code.
Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But this is not about a high profile plugin. The high profile plugin is "uBlock Origin", and this is about "uBlock Origin Lite", which is a big thing for Chrome, but not for Firefox. Why would anyone want to use uBOL, when they have the option to use uBO? uBlock Origin requires giving the extension full read and write permissions on every site you visit, which is a huge liability, security-wise. uBlock Origin Lite…
To have a reviewer under your employ that doesn’t know what UBO is or it’s dev, makes me feel pretty confident in siding with gorilla on this, but I hope that he does calm down a bit and put the extension back up.
> To have a reviewer under your employ that doesn’t know what UBO is or it’s dev, makes me feel pretty confident in siding with gorilla on this, but I hope that he does calm down a bit and put the extension back up.
FYI, it's UBlock Origin Lite that is affected here, not UBlock Origin. Same developer account, but a tiny fraction of the installation base. I think I still have an extension that has more users than UBlock Origin Lite did on Firefox (only 5000 installations at the time it was taken down).
To be honest, neither party looks good here. It reflects poorly on Mozilla that they don't have guardrails in place to prevent adverse action on the developer account that publishes their most popular extension. Gorhill's reaction (particularly his most recent comment from an hour ago) comes off as petty and vindictive. Yes, it's his prerogative to spend his unpaid time how he wants, but expressing that sort of aggression and directing it at your users doesn't win over many allies in the long run.
Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store
#229Is it even possible to connect to the public Internet in a way that isn’t completely compromised by a corporation or state?
TOR is busted at this point
DNS have been MITMed
Almost all hosts are under the control of a few players who are compelled by their respective states for ubiquitous and server monitoring
Any advertised IP has to have tons of routing info and local pointers so local hosting is just as risky if not more
What are the remaining options for a free (as in speech) internet?
Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store
#230Earlier 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
If they piss off a dev they risk losing all the plugins of that dev. So they must not look at uBOL, the subject of the review, but at uBO, the most popular plugin of that dev. And it turns out that it's Firefox's most popular plugin among all its plugins. They should immediately escalate the review even if gorhill submitted a plugin to log Hello World in the console.