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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

#281

Post by amiga386 »

latexr wrote: post #134
finnthehuman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t fault gorhill for not wanting to play the “give large rich organization infinite second chances” game. Sometimes enough is enough even if you think you’d act differently in his shoes. > Mozilla apologized No they didn’t. Now I’m not here to play apology police or anything. But that’s just a perfunctory customer service voice statement which happened to include the word “apologize”. And that’s fine. Nobody exp…

What could the email have said that would have made you believe they had apologised? If the literal string “we apologize” isn’t it, what is?

"Our review processes are not fit for purpose. We commit to replacing them with ones which acknowledge our entire ecosystem is built on the goodwill of unpaid volunteers, and we must not squander their time or resources. People like you are our lifeblood and we must not lose your trust."

"We admit we used automated scanning here and tried to pass it off as human review. We got caught. Badly. All our future scans will have to pass our own internal reviews before we make demands of extension authors."

these sorts of things

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#282

Post by lenerdenator »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #207
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is that the set of "Indians who can speak fluent English" and the set of "Indians who will work for the absolute lowest bid" are exclusive. And I don't blame them, really.

These execs mistake "English is an official language" for "English is a widespread first language". Only 0.02% of Indians speak English as their first language, while total speakers (of first, second, or third language) are 10.6% of the population.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India#Multilingua...

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#283

Post by CaptainFever »

elAhmo wrote: post #90
InsomniacL wrote: post #38

> The organization issued an apology for the "mistake" and recommended to Hill to reach out whenever he has questions or concerns about a review. Before taking drastic action like pulling addons from the store, Mozilla should reach out if they have questions or concerns about a review.

It appears all of the companies that are gatekeepers to apps, extensions and similar user-generated stuff are really quick to overreact and unless you are a high-profile person, have a lot of followers or a really popular app or an extension, good luck resolving it in a timely manner.

On first glance, it really does seem to be the case, regardless if one is "big tech" (e.g. Apple) or a non-profit organization (e.g. Mozilla).

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#284

Post by Squeeeez »

rightbyte wrote: post #244
jjice wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also had these issues when working on my previous job's extension. The Firefox review process was a real nightmare to work with. Same heavy delays and misunderstandings your mentioned. Eventually the company just stopped updating the Firefox extension as often since usage was low and the review process was such a pain. Unfortunate for me, as the only engineer (maybe employee) at that company that used Firefox.

The whole extension change Mozilla forced on Firefox seems like some sort of sabotage. Mozilla sneaking in more and more spyware and ad friendly functionality seems in line with the same conspirators. And given how high profile all these changes are, it runs to the top of the company.

So, which browser are you using?

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#285

Post by arp242 »

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…

The problem with these types of things is that the people who are qualified to do good reviews are also the sort of people who can typically get a far more interesting job building stuff, rather than just reviewing code. It's work that does require a certain level of skill, but at the same time is also quite boring.

And that more interesting job will probably pay better as well.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#286

Post by joemi »

system7rocks wrote: post #109

Curious why Firefox doesn’t just start incorporating uBlock into the browser? Make it a standard feature that comes pre-installed… but maybe not automatically enabled? Thoughts?

So many people in this comment thread commenting stuff like this, that it should be included, it's the only reason to use Firefox, etc. Meanwhile I use Firefox every day at work without uBlock Origin or any other ad blockers, and it's perfectly fine. Why do you think they should it?

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#287

Post by 6510 »

talldayo wrote: post #263
marcinzm wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotes are not data, and requiring perfection is a really odd bar for working or not working.

> Anecdotes are not data When you blatantly violate the IP of a well-trusted dev, posing as a third-party and successfully tricking Apple, yeah, you are a pretty big data point. You can't call CloudStrike an anecdote. My bigger intention is to fight the idea that automated solutions are necessarily better than inept human-reliant ones. Firefox doesn't even have remotely Apple's scale or revenue to work with - who ser…

I'm not sure, if moz revenue is something like 600 m and the ceo makes 7 m while apples revenue is something like 400 b and the ceo made 63 m. You get something like 7/600 vs 63/400000 ?

Then Mozilla should do at least 1000 times better even if it is just a forgotten side project like Firefox?

uhhh what were we talking about again... ah right extension reviews.

Well, just let the developer pay for 50 different tiers of review with prices scaling with the size of the code base or upgrade. Display the level of scrutiny on the extension page, have a donate to the cause button so that funds contribute only to reviews.

If you've installed any extensions you should regularly be made aware of the security risk and have a nice overview of the level of hazard and fund raising efforts.

If you've reached a high level of security further upgrades will either be expensive or install should be discouraged.

In the same place the developer can explain how urgent or useful the upgrade is and users can donate to bring the patch up to the desired level.

Code changes can be displayed with public discussion. This will be useful for doing the different reviews as cheaply as possible. Let there be bidding wars.

In addition there should be an extremely granular permission system that triggers dialogs in an amount sensible for the review level. Developers should be allowed to buy reviews for tiny functions that accurately define permission requests.

For example: Rather than full access to all pages I want access to all links pointing at example.com and I want to fetch the title of the pages on example.com Or say: I don't want access to the entire internet but only to things in valid RSS or Atom format.

Seems a sensible solution to me and I don't even know anything.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#288

Post by arp242 »

kevingadd wrote: post #215
mort96 wrote: post #205

Earlier 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.

I looked at this just a few months as I have a few extensions with some very me-specific stuff that I don't really need/want to distribute – it's just not going to be useful for anyone except me. I couldn't find a good way to permanently install an unsigned or self-signed extension.

You can temporarily add unsigned extensions in about:debugging, but those are lost on restarts, which is pretty annoying. I used this for a while until I got fed up and tried to find a better way.

"Unbranded" Firefox builds allow adding unsigned extensions, but then I need to either 1) compile my own Firefox, or 2) Use "Firefox Developer Edition", which is mostly just the same as regular Firefox but based on beta versions (I'd rather just use release versions). Neither really appeals to me.

So my solution now is to just create "unlisted" extensions and sign them with the web-ext CLI. It works and it's not entirely horrible, but it's a lot more hassle than I'd like.

And the requirement for extensions to be signed is fine; I have no problem with that. But it should allow adding my own signing key. Or something.

I kind of get why Mozilla is so restrictive about this; with banking and credit card stuff and whatnot all being browser-based, adding an extension is basically giving the keys to the castle. I can see some support scammer instructing someone to add some malicious signing key. But there does need to be some limit to how much we protect people from themselves, because at some point you just start making life hard for regular users.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#289

Post by bigiain »

EasyMark wrote: post #187
phendrenad2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And this is why we need paid browsers. If the ad-supported/donation-supported browsers like Firefox need to apply low-quality automated solutions to approving/rejecting even their most popular addons, then clearly the business model isn't working.

I think not everyone thinks that money solves all things. Look at the $8 blue check “verified” accounts on Twitter that are easily identified as CCP/Russian spam bots. We’ve had free browsers for nearly 30 years, so I’d say we don’t need paid browsers just yet. There are of course some out there for those who like the idea, but overall it’s not a solution. n=1 failure doesn’t mean flushing the whole enterprise down t…

> I think not everyone thinks that money solves all things.

I'd go further and say money ruins most things.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#290

Post by ozim »

arp242 wrote: post #285
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…

The problem with these types of things is that the people who are qualified to do good reviews are also the sort of people who can typically get a far more interesting job building stuff, rather than just reviewing code. It's work that does require a certain level of skill, but at the same time is also quite boring. And that more interesting job will probably pay better as well.

I think that is one way that “tragedy of commons”.
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