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Firefox to get a “walled garden” for extensions, Mozilla to be sole arbiter

nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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Re: Firefox to get a “walled garden” for extensions, Mozilla to be sole arbiter

#61

Post by danielweber »

userbinator wrote: post #48
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which case they will also download and run SomethingSagaCheats.exe without second thought. Should Firefox disable exe downloads without a setting to turn them on? What about users who download SomethingSagaCheats.jpg and rename it to exe before running? We should disable all downloads then, no? In general I do not like restricting rights to protect people. Now Mozilla is no government, but the same basic idea is g…

give them the resources to educate themselves Exactly. Instead of encouraging an environment of healthy suspicion and "I don't know what this does, maybe I should find out more first; else I shouldn't run it" type of attitude, we've gotten into a situation where people are seemingly loathe to educate themselves - and have been conditioned to trust whatever some piece of software says about whether something is malwar…

I appreciate your desire to improve user security, but it is a huge uphill battle, and many things that you imagine will help will just make users switch to something that nags them less.

Teaching users to be safe -- assuming that's possible -- is a battle that has to be won in very very small steps.

Re: Firefox to get a “walled garden” for extensions, Mozilla to be sole arbiter

#62

Post by acdha »

mikegerwitz wrote: post #47
mschuster91 wrote: post #35

Normally, I dislike "walled garden" approaches. The problem with browser extensions is that there are too many bad players on the field, preying on the non-technical people. The situation is not as bad as in the IE heydays where I regularly cleaned up 10+ (!) toolbars from customers' computers, but it's still a problem. And I, unfortunately, don't see any way to avoid a walled garden approach - as long as there is a…

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMaintainer

That doesn't really explain anything

Re: Firefox to get a “walled garden” for extensions, Mozilla to be sole arbiter

#63

Post by danielweber »

daw___ wrote: post #46

From the announcement: For developers hosting their add-ons on AMO, this means that they will have to either test on Developer Edition, Nightly, or one of the unbranded builds. Does this mean that developers won't be able to test the add-ons on official stable binaries end users will consume their add-ons on? Good luck with that.

My thinking is "I have to install another thing onto my computer to write a script?! Eh, maybe I'll do something else with my time instead."

Re: Firefox to get a “walled garden” for extensions, Mozilla to be sole arbiter

#64

Post by shiftpgdn »

eklavya wrote: post #14

I can totally see why such a thing would be required. I have always wanted to have add-ons vetted by someone I can trust. This will be really effective at least on windows where softwares randomly install shitty add ons and hijack the browser. And mozilla not likely to give in to unreasonable requests from governments because if they are not then add ons should be the least of our worries.

My Chrome profile is current infected with malware due to Google's laissez-faire attitude towards their app store. I consider myself a pretty tech savvy user and still managed to get infected.

A bit of vetting for add-ons is probably a good thing in the long run.

Re: Firefox to get a “walled garden” for extensions, Mozilla to be sole arbiter

#65

Post by thinkcontext »

This is similar to what Safari does for their extensions, as a policy it sounds reasonable. However, the part about the possibility of manual review if automated checks fail is alarming.

I self distribute my extension because I found the AMO process to be infuriating. The extension would pass review then not pass and require changes. Each step in the process requires a multi-week wait in a queue. Unanswered requests for clarification, lost communications, etc, etc. After months of trying I gave up, I know I am not alone in this. The possibility of having to go back into that Kafka-esque maze is extremely disconcerting.

The manual review possibility should also be a concern of all current AMO users, as it has the potential to lengthen current queue wait times.

Re: Firefox to get a “walled garden” for extensions, Mozilla to be sole arbiter

#66

Post by danielweber »

bpodgursky wrote: post #12

IMO the rise of aggressive ad-blocking extensions has spoiled a good thing for everyone. I don't believe that Mozilla has any innate desire to lock-down users and prevent them from customizing their browsers, but making a browser is now an expensive and complicated project, and both Firefox and Chrome are bankrolled by companies which make their revenue primarily via advertising (Google + Yahoo, Google). It's clear t…

There is no evidence that they are going to ban ad-blocking extensions.

Re: Firefox to get a “walled garden” for extensions, Mozilla to be sole arbiter

#67

Post by byuu »

hiou wrote: post #45
byuu wrote: post #2

With each passing day, Mozilla tries harder and harder to get me to stop using their browser. If not for Chrome being the only viable alternative, they would have long since succeeded. Wreck the address bar algorithm? Ugh. Move the tabs on top? Ugh. Force me to keep download history? Ugh. Bury all the configuration options (like JS features) into about:config? Ugh. Turn the UI into a poor Chrome imitation? Ugh. Turn…

I upvoted you to get you out of the grey because I didn't feel like your comment was too inflammatory and did bring up specific issues which are relevant in a big picture view to this change. That said, the CEO comment was a bit unproductive. One thing I would like you to consider is that Firefox has to maintain a certain marketshare in order to continue to serve their mission. Which includes fighting for web standar…

> That said, the CEO comment was a bit unproductive.

I thought about leaving it out because it wasn't a technical issue, but being honest, it was one of the bigger disappointments I've had with their project, so it seemed important to include it.

I know all about the situation, and I also don't like how it was resolved (my disappointment was that it happened in the first place.) I also know others won't agree with me on that. But to me, it's a very important issue. I think ethics are absolutely essential for a CEO of a company.

> Which includes fighting for web standards

This is certainly one positive thing I will say about them. They have definitely helped advance good standards (HTML5, CSS3, etc.)

> Design trends are like the weather, if you don't like it now, just wait a bit and it will be sure to change.

I sure hope so. I've been backed into such a tight corner. I'm down to running FreeBSD with Xfce, and I'm already starting to write my own basic system utilities now (file manager, text editor, etc) because this trend is just accelerating so rapidly.

Re: Firefox to get a “walled garden” for extensions, Mozilla to be sole arbiter

#69

Post by smhenderson »

chimeracoder wrote: post #32
smhenderson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article you won't be able to do that; although not all extensions have to go through addons.mozilla.org they do all have to be digitally signed. There are exceptions - something about "in house, corporate" (whatever that means), developer editions of Firefox and nightly builds. But if I read correctly users of the current, stock Firefox will not be able to suppress the signature check when installing…

To be honest, I don't think people who aren't capable of or interested in downloading a developer edition should be installing unsigned extensions. If there's an unsigned extension you really can't live without, just download Iceweasel - problem solved. It's not like this will be that hard to get around for people who know what they're doing, so I'm not too worried about this change.

I don't completely disagree, and I know computer users have always been treated as separate groups based on skills. That said it's unsettling to me to see a group like Mozilla officially treating users this way.

Software freedom is for everyone and, IMHO, treating one group differently than another with regards to this freedom just legitimises the walled garden concept further.

As the article said, it's hard to call them a community or foundation when they turn around and announce a very company-like policy such as this...

Re: Firefox to get a “walled garden” for extensions, Mozilla to be sole arbiter

#70

Post by byuu »

tokyo1000 wrote: post #24
byuu wrote: post #2

With each passing day, Mozilla tries harder and harder to get me to stop using their browser. If not for Chrome being the only viable alternative, they would have long since succeeded. Wreck the address bar algorithm? Ugh. Move the tabs on top? Ugh. Force me to keep download history? Ugh. Bury all the configuration options (like JS features) into about:config? Ugh. Turn the UI into a poor Chrome imitation? Ugh. Turn…

It's too bad to see that your comment is getting downvoted. I think it hits on some important issues. From what I can tell, Mozilla's own Firefox feedback stats support what you're saying. https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/?product=Firefox It's currently showing 77% of the reports about Firefox as being 'sad', while only 23% are 'happy'. It gets even worse if Firefox OS and Firefox for Android are included, too. In tha…

I think it's part of the dark side of open source software.

When your product is free, you feel no obligation to your users whatsoever. We see it time and time again. Firefox, Ubuntu, Gnome 3, KDE 4, systemd, etc. The attitude is always, "we know what's best for you, piss off."

Hell, I am guilty of it myself. When I'm working on projects for free, I do things the way I want them done. But in my defense, I'm one person working on niche projects nobody would ever depend on for anything important, and I am not looking for popularity.

But right now, the most I can do to express my dissatisfaction is to simply leave. And when we all do that, then suddenly they don't hear anyone complaining, so they think everything they are doing is great, and keep getting worse. I complain because I've enjoyed their software so much in the past, and I'm saddened by its new direction.

Microsoft really went against the grain with Windows 8. And you saw similar levels of outrage. But you know what? The Windows 10 preview has fixed most of it. The Metro start page is gone, the start menu is back, Metro things can run inside windows and multi-task properly now ... they may not be perfect, but they are definitely listening to their customer's feedback, at least.

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