It is a perfectly valid reasoning: Addons can be like malware, and that is something Mozilla should protect its users from. Reviewing and then signing extensions is an ok way to do that. But the focus here is not the signing, it is the reviewing.

The problem is not the reviewing either. That may take time and is unpleasant, but it offers something good in return. The problem is the "we will do it this way and make it not configurable". There is no need for that. Users don't change defaults, it would be perfectly valid to go the android route: Disallow the installation of unreviewed addons by default, but add an option in the settings to override this behaviour for users who know what they are doing.

That way, you still protect users in general, and you don't anger the other users who want to install addons from github or whatever. It was completely unnecessary to make it this controversial by forcing it on all users, by taking freedom away.

We have already seen malware that just replaces the Chrome binary to avoid add-on checks, but somehow this isn't seen as a big problem?

> That is possible, but I don’t expect the majority of malware developers to go through such trouble. [1]

I can totally understand where this idea is coming from, but trying to somehow secure Firefox on a system that is already busted is futile.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/02/10/extension-signing...

"Download Mozilla Firefox, a free Web browser. Firefox is created by a global non-profit dedicated to putting individuals in control online."

I find the "appeal to security" argument that's being increasingly popular these days as nothing more than an excuse to restrict general-purpose computing and control the users, and I am not happy about it at all. "Malware is the new terrorism." The idea that we should take away freedom just because someone could possibly make a wrong decision is personally quite horribly disturbing. On the other hand, from the perspective of wanting to exert control, it makes perfect sense: by decreasing the amount of decisions users have to do, it induces atrophy of their critical thinking skills, and makes them more inclined to accept things without questioning...

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."

Upon further inspection at the source code of these scripts and some googling, we found out that it was ad injecting malware in the form of Chrome extensions. Basically and long story short, some 40-50% of our customer base browses the web with ad injecting malware installed, and that's only counting malware that caused errors client side, which is obviously not all.

This was naturally disheartening for us, because you pour your heart and soul into building the best product you can deliver only to hear a very large amount of your customers will never experience anything other than a very subpar version of it...

Browser malware is a very real problem, and I don't know if Mozilla's approach is the best way to tackle it, but there definitively needs to be more people thinking about it, and in particular the Google Chrome team.

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 the new tab page into adware? Ugh. Promote a bigot to the CEO position? Ugh. And now turn extensions into a walled garden? ... I can't even muster up the energy to feign surprise anymore. I basically expect a new disappointment every time I hear Mozilla in the news.

For extensions that will never be publicly distributed and will never leave an internal network, there will be a third option. We’ll have more details available on this in the near future.

That sounds like admin installed certificates in the browser to verify the local signatures.

I a made a quick and dirty plugin for chrome a month ago only to find out i need to undergo an anal exam and give over credit card information to Google, fuck that! is that where Mozilla want to endup?

I'm a bit skeptical of an automated security scan and approval process, but at least it provides a means to revoke a malicious plugin when complaints come in after the fact.

It's hard to see how to get back into this particular Eden.

Yes. It's the same code with different logo.

So if I use a xulrunner based app, and I want to run a Firefox extension (like ABP, mozrepl, etc), right now all I have to do is edit it's install.rdf and whitelist my application, and if there's a signature (META-INF folder), delete that. In this scheme, as I understand it, that would not work, unless I was running the Firefox Developer edition or had an app popular enough to get developers to include it in their whitelist before signing, and even then there would be plenty of exceptions.

So now no one can run my xulrunner based app (with extensions) with the normal firefox installed on their system (or likely available in their distro package repository).

Please tell me this won't apply to apps launched via xulrunner or firefox -app (with the normal firefox).

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.

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 sideload option like on Android, I'm fine with it.

edit: downvotes? Care to explain how else to solve the bundled crapware toolbar plague?

One thing I did realize in learning how to make these extensions is that, unlike with Chrome, Firefox extensions can do anything any other executable file on your computer can do, or at least, they can move, delete, edit, and rename any file anywhere on the hard drive, spawn any process, download anything and save it, so effectively all a malware author has to do is make the extension's install hook download their payload and execute it. It's a one liner to wipe out your $HOME (I have no idea if it will work I'm not going to try it!):

    require("sdk/system/child_process").spawn("/bin/rm", ["-rf", "~/*"])

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.

HTTPS Everywhere is currently only available via their website because it's actually securer than though AMO. If mozilla wall-gardens firefox in the interest of security, I guess they've got some serious issues to settle.

I also wonder bit what happens to developers who need a small userbase to tests their alphas/betas before publishing, as well as custom-built extensions.

This is FUD. Even Apple's App Store doesn't require huge amount of bureaucracy let alone what they seem to be talking about.

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 that Google will never make the same mistake with mobile Chrome -- it will never be extensible, because they have no desire to sacrifice that advertising revenue. I doubt it will be more than a year or two before the Mozilla app store is purged of ad-blocking extensions, if they ever make it in.

I don't want to get in some flamewar about "oh but ads are so bad, I can't help but install adblock". They suck, and I'm not accusing anyone of acting in anything other than their personal best interests, but I think everyone should acknowledge that this is the natural end-game.

If you're too stubborn to let Mozilla sign it AND too lazy to do it yourself then that's your problem - you have no inalienable right to demand that people run your code if you can't be bother to secure it. However you are never locked out of providing mozilla addons, you can still supply whatever you like.

Also, Why did this piece bother to quote the random verbal vomit of some internet commenters? What is that supposed to show? That some people online are rude and ignorant? Frankly there's quite a bit of FUD in this thing, like asking if devs can trust that moving from Dev versions to production will break their code - pretty much the whole point of Mozilla's development model in iterating and providing developer editions is to ensure that doesn't happen.

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 that case, 86% of the reports are 'sad', and only 14% are 'happy'.

I expect disappointed users to be more likely to say something, but that's still an awfully large difference between the proportion of users who are 'happy' and those who are 'sad'. When I used Firefox for Android, I'm pretty sure it sometimes prompted me to give feedback, so it's not like only disappointed users looking to complain are being sampled.

I don't know how things work at Mozilla, but at any other software product company I've ever worked at, feedback results so out of whack would've raised a lot of eyebrows, and gotten a lot of attention. Much effort would have been put toward finding out what's wrong, and what can be done to fix it, especially if the results were consistently bad for weeks or months on end.

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 standards and other things outside directly working on the browser/phone os. Unfortunately, that causes them to serve the larger market than what you or I might enjoy. I'm definitely not a big fan of the dummification trend in UX right now(which most of your complaints seem to stem from), but I'm sure it's just that, a trend, and we'll see some of the more ridiculous parts of that trend move back toward the middle soon enough. Design trends are like the weather, if you don't like it now, just wait a bit and it will be sure to change.

So, hopefully you can cut Mozilla a little slack as they have a many headed dragon to feed and that set of compromises will leave everyone a bit hungry, but on the whole I feel more comfortable depending on Mozilla than the alternatives of Apple and Google.

However, thus far, I've been able to do it. I disable the magic address bar, I use tree style tabs, I have history disabled, and I use combo of menu, toolbar and status bar (Status 4 Evar, addon bar, whatever) to maintain what I consider to be a usable UI. These are all extra work, but I haven't been locked out.

My concern about this latest move is the lag when Firefox needs an upgrade, and not all extensions have been updated and signed. I've had to download and install custom treestyle tabs builds in the past in particular.

Shitty suggestions that elicit strong reactions seem to be better for the Mozilla Corporation than being more and more ignored.