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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

#321

Post by Aaron2222 »

fastest963 wrote: post #278
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…

> Imagine you would need approval from Microsoft to distribute software. You mean like how you need permission to distribute software on MacOS/iOS? More and more platforms are moving in this direction and I wouldn't be surprised if Windows goes the same way in the future.

You don't need permission from Apple to distribute macOS software. Your users will just see a warning dialog when they try and run it for the first time and have to go to System Settings to allow it to run[0]. If you want to avoid this, you have to pay the $99 USD per year to join the Apple Developer Program, codesign your software with the certificate they give you, and submit it for notarization (which for macOS is a fully-automated security and malware review, unlike iOS notarization which is basically App Store review). It's not ideal (many open-source projects don't want to spend $99 USD per year, and it does tie the software to your real name), but it's not like iOS.

[0]: https://support.apple.com/en-nz/guide/mac-help/mh40616/mac

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#323

Post by EasyMark »

sfink wrote: post #310

That sucks. I work for Mozilla, but nowhere near Addons so I don't know what pressures they're under or whatever. But if I ran the zoo... this is gorhill we're talking about. We ought to just make him an add-on reviewer with full rights, and tell him it's ok if the only add-ons he reviews are his own. We do not need to vet either his competence or trustworthiness; we have vastly more historical data backing him up th…

I suspect he will simmer down a bit (I do not at all blame him for what he did, it has to be frustrating to dedicate thousands of hours into something just to have some clueless person pull it). I think it will be back inside of a week, it’s important and can save battery over regular ublock origin on Firefox.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#324

Post by SuperNinKenDo »

jorams wrote: post #153
SuperNinKenDo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The purpose of their comment is to correct your statement that: > perhaps they should at least make a carve out for one of the single most important extensions that exists. uBOL is not an important extension on Firefox.

It's the same author, essentially same project. Mozilla shouldn't be wasting the maintainer's time and resources with this stuff, and that is the point of my comment. Their comment was nothing but failed pedantry and added nothing if that was its purpose.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#325

Post by ectospheno »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #320
move-on-by wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are too busy working for the advertising companies Mr. Gorhill is blocking. Most recently adding ‘privacy preserving attribution’ - a feature that no user has asked for.

People don't want 3P cookies tracking them around the web. They also don't want to pay to visit sites. Mozilla is trying to provide a middle path, I salute the effort.

I pay to visit many sites on the internet. Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Max, Twitch, etc. They provide value for my money.

I don’t pay for news. Intelligent employees of news organizations would learn from that but no…

Instead we get advertising apologists trying to gaslight me into thinking tracking is ok.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#326

Post by [deleted] »

yojo wrote: post #74
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 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.…

[deleted]

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#327

Post by creatonez »

horsawlarway wrote: post #292
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…

Similar boat. I release an extension with about 1 million installs across Chrome/Firefox/Edge for work. Firefox (despite being the smallest usage) is utterly insane with regards to process. They demand a reproducible build, but then can't do things like install the right version of yarn (no - npm install -g yarn is not correct, our readme says it in bold like 5 times and provides the exact correct command to install…

On the flip side, having to interact with addon review has raised by confidence in the browser. The steps they take to review, while not perfect, seem like they could weed out a lot of potential garbage and malware. I was expecting a much more minimal review process, which would have raised my fear about the extensions I use and set to auto-update.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#328

Post by omoikane »

sfink wrote: post #310

That sucks. I work for Mozilla, but nowhere near Addons so I don't know what pressures they're under or whatever. But if I ran the zoo... this is gorhill we're talking about. We ought to just make him an add-on reviewer with full rights, and tell him it's ok if the only add-ons he reviews are his own. We do not need to vet either his competence or trustworthiness; we have vastly more historical data backing him up th…

This sounds like a proposal to make the review process giving more weight to reputation, unlike the current process which is supposed to be entirely technical[1]. This might be a good idea, but I can see how Mozilla would get a different set of complaints about reputation not being consistently evaluated.

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Reviewers/Guide/Reviewing

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#329

Post by boopdewoop »

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.

Id rather hire a senior dev as a reviewer and a mid dev as the coder at a company. pay the reviewer more since they will be dealing with shit practices and having to train the dev.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#330

Post by Izkata »

lenerdenator wrote: post #282
Rinzler89 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Also don't forget it's an Indian dialect of English, with words and usages of English words that don't exist elsewhere in the world.
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