Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store • Hacker News Board

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#61

Post by pdpi » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:25 PM UTC

greentxt wrote: post #57

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.

Which brings us to: It's unclear why the author of the article decided that the reviewer was not acting in good faith.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#62

Post by SSLy » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:25 PM UTC

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.

> 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.

only because mozilla is gatekeeping that away otherwise.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#63

Post by jeroenhd » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:25 PM UTC

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'm not even surprised the addon got flagged. The linked files in the Github issue all had file names insinuating a direct connection to known trackers (which, of course, uBOL is blocking). Whatever automated scanning tool Mozilla uses probably latched on to "oh this is Google Tag Manager" and issued the warning that is normally handed out to addons that do include sketchy scripts like these.

HOWEVER: the email clearly states:

> Your Extension uBlock Origin Lite was manually reviewed by the Mozilla Add-ons team in an assessment performed on our own initiative of content that was submitted to Mozilla Add-ons

Either that is a lie, or the manual reviewer that did the "review" doesn't understand that the automated tool they ran is capable of false positives.

Nothing wrong with automated abuse assessments on a platform like Mozilla's, but don't lie in your communications about it (or hire people who know what they're doing when it comes to blocking addons).

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#64

Post by 51Cards » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:29 PM UTC

Timshel wrote: post #43

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…

He gains by not having to interact with them for UBOL. When you waste people's time sometimes an apology is not enough for them to want to continue to work with you ...

An outlook like that will really limit who you work with in the future. I don't know anyone, corp or otherwise, that doesn't mess up from time to time. What matters is the acknowledgement of the mistake and taking steps to rectify it.

IMO, as much as I highly respect his products, the dev pulled a hissy fit over a mistake.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#65

Post by GrantMoyer » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:30 PM UTC

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 agree with what you say about the tradeoffs of a review process, but strongly disagree that Raymond Hill overreacted. He's a solo dev working on uBlock as a hobby who doesn't even take donations; he doesn't owe us anything. He gets to decide if the review process frictionless enough for him to contribute his time and energy, and even though he decided it's not in this case, he made his extension open source, so anyone else is free to publish uBlock Origin Lite in his stead.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#66

Post by abhinavk » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:31 PM UTC

SuperNinKenDo wrote: post #45

Fair play. uBO is THE killer extension, and apparently it never occured to Mozilla that if they were going to insist on using some hideous, Google style, machine led review process for extensions, perhaps they should at least make a carve out for one of the single most important extensions that exists. I can totally understand gorhill becoming completely insensed by the whole thing and refusing to play ball when Mozi…

This is about uBOL. I haven't seen much delays for the main extension. It is always more up to date on Firefox compared to Chrome/Edge.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#67

Post by hermannj314 » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:34 PM UTC

flyingpenguin wrote: post #55

bluGill wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"But the bias-variance tradeoff doesn't really apply to us" - every bureaucracy ever.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#68

Post by abhinavk » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:34 PM UTC

SSLy wrote: post #62

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. only because mozilla is gatekeeping that away otherwise.

For extensions which have full access to all websites, I appreciate that. That is one of the main reasons for ManifestV3 because not all extensions can be reviewed.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#69

Post by Timshel » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:34 PM UTC

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…

Don't remove stuff that are used for some time using only automatic tooling ...

And from the start the review was supposedly: "Your Extension uBlock Origin Lite was manually reviewed by the Mozilla Add-ons team".

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#70

Post by Timshel » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:36 PM UTC

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?

It can run with way less permission as opposed to UBO.