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

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#81

Post by seba_dos1 » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:52 PM UTC

jqpabc123 wrote: post #58

JohnBooty wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

> They had no idea that uBlock Lite was the most popular ad blocker for Firefox.

Did I miss anything? Unless you really care about resource usage (on mobile, perhaps), there's hardly any reason to use uBlock Origin Lite on Firefox. It exists because of Chrome.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#82

Post by jampekka » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:52 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…

Maybe a less crappy review system at least?

"The burden is that even as a self-hosted extension, it fails to pass review at submission time, which leads to having to wait an arbitrary amount of time (time is an important factor when all the filtering rules are packaged into the extension), and once I finally receive a notification that the review cleared, I have to manually download the extension's file, rename it, then upload it to GitHub, then manually patch the update_url to point to the new version. It took 5 days after I submitted version 2024.9.12.1004 to finally be notified that the version was approved for self-hosting. As of writing, version 2024.9.22.986 has still not been approved."

Doesn't sound like something I'd enjoy as a hobby.

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#83

Post by ForHackernews » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:57 PM UTC

jampekka wrote: post #72

ForHackernews wrote: post #47

So Mozilla goofed, apologised of their own accord and corrected the mistake? And in response this dev is throwing his toys out of the pram? Do I read this right?

I can see how having to jump pointless bureaucratic hoops in a volunteer project can cause throwing out toys.

What pointless hoops? The extension was restored.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#84

Post by yencabulator » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 3:01 PM UTC

51Cards wrote: post #64

Timshel wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So, half of what you say matters seems to be missing.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#85

Post by TiredOfLife » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 3:02 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…

Mozilla is not a single person in a basement with a 20 year old second hand computer. They spend hundreds of millions $ per year. uBlock origin has 8+ million installs. The second extension by install count has 4 (four) times less. If if anything to do with gorhill and their extensions is not priority one in their review system, then something is really wrong at Mozilla.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#86

Post by mossTechnician » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 3:02 PM UTC

VoxPelli wrote: post #7

Because no one ever have taken over and compromised high profile extensions? Chrome battles with it a lot, see eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36146278 I find Mozilla's process to be quite reassuring, but would be good to have alternative "addon stores" that also have a review process

Mozilla has the capability to handle compromised addons; this whole mess happened because they wiped out every version of uBOL except for the earliest one.

They just haven't used that capability responsibly... Yet.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#87

Post by yencabulator » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 3:03 PM UTC

noworriesnate wrote: post #48

jordanb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These "lapses in judgement" are driven by Mozilla's brass representing the desires of their real masters. A post-Google Mozilla may be smaller, but I bet Firefox would be better and more popular.

I wish they'd get smaller first, build up a fund so they could literally just invest in the stock market and run indefinitely off the returns, and only then go Google-free. That would be a more permanent solution.

That sounds like it'd make less money for the CEO, why would they be interested in that?

Mozilla no longer does what is good for Firefox.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#88

Post by protoster » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 3:03 PM UTC

sdflhasjd wrote: post #16

VoxPelli wrote: post #7

Because no one ever have taken over and compromised high profile extensions? Chrome battles with it a lot, see eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36146278 I find Mozilla's process to be quite reassuring, but would be good to have alternative "addon stores" that also have a review process

Mozilla is definitely doing the right thing by reviewing the extensions, but the issue here is that were wrong, they found issues that didn't exist (such as claiming it contained obfuscated code and collected private data). It appears the issues were found using simple heuristics (e.g they detected string pagead2.googlesyndication.com in a comment) and these detections weren't then manually reviewed as claimed, which…

Why does lying about manual review seem so commonplace?

For example, during basically any YouTube copyright or moderation controversy, there is always "manual review" of videos that have obviously been caught in automated systems that in case of actual manual review, would be cleared of problems by any reasonable human.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#89

Post by jampekka » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 3:06 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #83

jampekka wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see how having to jump pointless bureaucratic hoops in a volunteer project can cause throwing out toys.

What pointless hoops? The extension was restored.

After pointless hoops. And the process seems to involve pointless hoops even when the review is not rejected.

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#90

Post by elAhmo » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 3:06 PM UTC

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.