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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

#51

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

carlosjobim wrote: post #46
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #39

Oof. I get gorhill is pissed about the whole thing, but, this feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face. It's going to be much trickier for people to get uBO Lite onto their Firefox for Android installations now, or even if they can, they might just not bother. And, while I suppose gorhill could make the case that he's protesting this egregious process on behalf of the little guy, the fact is, he's not the…

> I'm not sure what he gains from continued intransigence offers after Mozilla admits their mistake and apologizes. What would he gain from submission to Mozilla? Either way he gains $0 for all the work he's done to improve the Internet for millions of people.

He gains Mozilla's distribution model and audience, which allows users of Firefox to download add-ons from their browser's UI and updates automatically, rather than having to manually pull an extension file from a Github page for each new release and install it.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#53

Post by 4bpp »

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 inevitably will cause false positives.

What's the alternative? No pre-release review at all? As a user I would hope that this will not be the case, especially now that we have confirmation that flashy supply chain attacks are being executed in the wild. In fact the review policy protects gorhill himself too, since it makes him a bit less attractive as a target for a rubberhose attack (no point in blackmailing him to put in spyware if the spyware would be caught before release).

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#54

Post by SSLy »

lol768 wrote: post #52

Why does this extension even exist on AMO? The article says it's the "Lite/Manifest v3 version" - why would you ever install the inferior edition meant for legacy browsers, instead of the one that blocks ads properly that's meant for Firefox?

Because it's lighter on power usage, and that matters for firefox on android.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#55

Post by flyingpenguin »

bluGill wrote: post #40
seba_dos1 wrote: post #32

It's a blog post about something that happened a month ago and boils down to "some (obvious) mistake happened during review". Not much to see here.

That obvious mistakes can happen is itself a problem.

Have you never been at work being forced to do something because you need money but you just are not feeling it that day? Obvious mistakes will ALWAYS happen, regardless of rules, regulations, human involvement, process, etc. It's thoughts like this

"How can we make sure this doesn't happen again"

"Its unacceptable than an obvious mistake happened"

that make corporations so full of random rules, because they think it's possible to prevent things like this. What matters is the frequency with which they happen, and how gracefully you handle yourself after it happened.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#56

Post by seneca »

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.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#57

Post by greentxt »

wolpoli wrote: post #41

> The organization issued an apology for the "mistake" and recommended to Hill to reach out whenever he has questions or concerns about a review. It's unclear why the author of the article decided that the word 'mistake' deserved the scary quote treatment.

Because there was a privacy policy it's hard to understand how that could be a mistake. The insinuation is the reviewer was not acting in hood faith.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#58

Post by jqpabc123 »

JohnBooty wrote: post #22
jqpabc123 wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Generally, yes: follow the money. But that does not mean that random errors can be always attributed to malice or financial interests. You think that's how Mozilla would kiss up to Google? "Hey, we disabled an ad-blocking extension (although not its more popular and powerful big brother) for half a day! And then we put it back up!" If I'm Google, that is not really thrilling me or making an impact. Also, the Google/M…

[flagged]

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#59

Post by phoronixrly »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #51
carlosjobim wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure what he gains from continued intransigence offers after Mozilla admits their mistake and apologizes. What would he gain from submission to Mozilla? Either way he gains $0 for all the work he's done to improve the Internet for millions of people.

He gains Mozilla's distribution model and audience, which allows users of Firefox to download add-ons from their browser's UI and updates automatically, rather than having to manually pull an extension file from a Github page for each new release and install it.

That's a long-winded way to say $0

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#60

Post by SSLy »

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…

> No pre-release review at all?

certainly not leaving only the oldest version of the extension up.

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