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Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

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Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#271

Post by Endy »

oconnor663 wrote: post #244
JadeNB wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moz has a ton of data about how harmful to users it was to have an ecosystem full of trashy spam extensions. I wish that this data were available somewhere—not this specific data, but in general. Mozilla's response to community push-back is always "trust us, the data show that this is what's best". If you trust them already, then that might be good enough; but, when this is always their first, and often their only,…

That's fair, but I want to highlight the world of difference between "dubious behavior" and "it would be nice if we had your data to check your conclusions." I'm not with Mozilla, but when I've been in a similar position, it's deeply frustrating to read stuff like this on the internet. (So the healthy thing is really to just stop reading it, which is a shame.)

I consider the fact that they're hiding the data and using it as a smoke-screen to do whatever the corporate side would like to do at the time or an excuse to play with whatever side project the head dev en vogue was playing with, regardless of what the userbase wants and needs to be 'dubious' from the start. So the world of difference is a non-starter in my book.

Frankly, there needs to be more community input, more opportunity to speak & act against wrongheadedness. It's part of why I prefer Pale Moon. If something is asinine, I can talk to the head dev and the team. They'll either show the community their sources for making a change or put it to a vote of the active users.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#272

Post by Endy »

rrix2 wrote: post #255
rhizome wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the whole story, but I'm inferring that the signing change affected the ability for people to sideload plugins.

That had nothing to do with the move to WebExtensions and the associated compatibility issues though...

I feel that Mozilla's misdirection is one very large issue encompassing many problems.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#273

Post by boomboomsubban »

Aissen wrote: post #53
soapdog wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes!!! people don't realize that volunteers review the addons and that sometimes they make mistakes. They start acting as if Mozilla sent an internal memo to kill something when it is usually not the case.

If you read correctly, it was removed 15 days ago, and we have no idea what's the status since then.

The project creator doesn't appear to have been active for twelve days, and it took fifteen days for a press outlet to notice and report on it. Many things could be causing a delay, it's a busy season and I doubt this is anyone's priority.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#274

Post by ubernostrum »

the8472 wrote: post #193
kbenson wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it's essentially just another dialog or control to be scripted or socially engineered around. You can make it more onerous because it's basically a one-time action that's not something most users will do, but to what degree is adding a signing key before install different that a dialog asking you if you really want to install this third party extension? Until you have different access levels and c…

UAC is already in place. Piggyback on that. Root on linux. And whatever osx does to protect application packages. And I really dislike the "can be socially engineered around" buldgeon. If taken to its final conclusion you would have to lock-down systems and give users no freedoms at all because they could be convinced to do something bad with enough effort.

If taken to its final conclusion

And yet you don't take the "freedom" argument to its final conclusion, which is that you must grant Freedom -1. That's the freedom for anyone, anywhere, to run any software on your hardware, at any time and for any purpose.

And this is only half-joking: all access restrictions, even ones as basic as filesystem permissions, impinge on freedom in some fashion. You can work around them, of course, but you can work around Firefox's extension signing (and Apple's app signing, and lots and lots of other systems that people insist are objectively reducing "freedom"). Which means that to be consistent, you either have to be against even those basic access-control mechanisms, or you have to compromise on absolute "freedom" and begin arguing about how difficult or complex a workaround can be before you personally would rule out allowing a system to require it.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#275

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

mkirklions wrote: post #128
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I develop for iOS on a secondhand Mac mini and commodity keyboard, mouse and monitor. Total cost well under £600, let alone “multi-thousands of dollars”.

That sounds like a potential solution to me. Still costs more than any other development. Where'd you get your's second hand?

Just eBay.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#276

Post by djflutt3rshy »

soapdog wrote: post #70

Lots of heat in this thread... So, Addons are mostly reviewed by volunteers. Sometimes people make mistakes. The best course of action is to try to reach out for the AMO team on IRC or their mailing list. - Addons forum is at https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/add-ons - All contact info for AMO dev stuff is at: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons#Con... - Developer Hub for addons is at: https://addo…

What happened is Mozilla got a complaint and pulled multiple pay-wall bypassers.

Source:

https://github.com/nextgens/anti-paywall/issues/109

"It appears that your Add-on violates the Firefox Add-on Distribution Agreement and the Conditions of Use. Both prohibit Add-ons that violate the law. Your Add-on appears to be designed and promoted to allow users to circumvent paywalls, which is illegal.

...

We are responding to a specific complaint that named multiple paywall bypassing add-ons. It did not target only your add-on."

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#277

Post by zeta0134 »

Semaphor wrote: post #248
zeta0134 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was just distribution through the add-on app store, that would be one thing. As of Firefox 48 however, in stable builds of Firefox, unsigned addons (which haven't gone through Mozilla's review process) cannot be installed. Period. The about:config setting meant to override signature checks (and allow third-party extensions), `xpinstall.signatures.required`, is plainly ignored in stable versions from this point…

You skipped over a part: > Anyone can sign and run their own add-ons, or offer those add-ons for others to use. And this is consistent with what Mozilla says here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Dis...

The specific pain point we ran into was a security consideration: my company needed to sign and distribute a private internal extension whose code betrayed the layout of an internal API. The signing process for stable Firefox requires uploading the extension to AMO, which our management was not crazy about. Sure, anyone can technically do it, but the dependence on a third party service is still there. Ultimately we decided to do it anyway, figuring that the cost of having our support floor run a non-stable browser outweighed the risk of a code leak at Mozilla. But the whole process left a bad taste.

I get where they're coming from, really I do. Malware is a huge problem and the average user has zero clue how to vet extension code. I dunno, I have mixed feelings about the solution. I'm not sure if there's a middle ground to be had.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#279

Post by Semaphor »

zeta0134 wrote: post #277
Semaphor wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You skipped over a part: > Anyone can sign and run their own add-ons, or offer those add-ons for others to use. And this is consistent with what Mozilla says here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Dis...

The specific pain point we ran into was a security consideration: my company needed to sign and distribute a private internal extension whose code betrayed the layout of an internal API. The signing process for stable Firefox requires uploading the extension to AMO, which our management was not crazy about. Sure, anyone can technically do it, but the dependence on a third party service is still there. Ultimately we d…

> figuring that the cost of having our support floor run a non-stable browser

Firefox Developer Edition is stable but supports unsigned addons.

But I can certainly see your point.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#280

Post by Sylos »

avian wrote: post #33

> Release and Beta versions of Firefox do not allow unsigned extensions to be installed I'm really disappointed at Mozilla regarding this. I recently wanted to do some Firefox customization for my own private use (not even an extension, I just wanted to have some visual indication of which Firefox windows belong to which profile). I was surprised to find out that even just a header .png in a theme can't be loaded loc…

You can use the Developer Edition, Nightly or Unbranded Builds: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded...
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