4 ms·

I think the argument misses the point. Most of the people who are using Firefox without extensions are doing so because someone who likes the freedom of the br

I think the argument misses the point. Most of the people who are using Firefox without extensions are doing so because someone who likes the freedom of the browser -- including the ability to run all current extensions -- suggested it. >> In fact it's insulting to all those contributors who work so hard on Firefox to say that extensions are the only thing keeping them from switching to Chrome. The ability to run extensions is just the most popular manifestation of a browser that has always valued user freedom. So my question is, why are they stopping with that mentality? Why blame the victims of such a poor decision? Taking away my option to use extensions seems like the insulting choice to me.

kibwen 10y ago
> why are they stopping with that mentality? Because, in practice, officially giving unfettered access to Firefox's internals to third-party developers makes changing anything in the Firefox codebase a potential quagmire. It's taken five or six years for electrolysis to begin seeing the light of day, and that's because such a drastic rearchitecture of the browser ended up breaking basically every popular addon in the wild. In the meantime, the inability to evolve the browser has hampered its ability to compete with Chrome, whose deliberately-specified addons API leaves it with no such baggage. Not to mention that the greater scope of Firefox addons has more severe implications for user security, which means that Mozilla has to spend resources to further vet every addon on AMO, which leads to even more complaints at the sluggishness of the apparent bureaucracy. Addons were absolutely a great way to differentiate Firefox from IE back in the day, but in the context of modern web browsing having such a free-for-all addons interface is a lose-lose proposition. It's absolutely a shame, but the market of browser users has been inexorably making this decision for years now.
- threepipeproblm 10y ago
  That was well said. But at the end of the day doesn't it remain an argument that users shouldn't be able to run the extensions that have been freely available, aka "we know better than you." Breaking Firefox to turn it into the browser they wished they had made will be disastrous, I'm afraid. It seems to me there are any number of "middle paths" (or dual paths) that Mozilla could take, but they don't want to do anything to jeopardize their consolidated user base.
  - kibwen 10y ago
    > But at the end of the day doesn't it remain an argument that users shouldn't be able to run the extensions that have been freely available I'm unsure what you're arguing here. Their goal is not to abandon addons for the sake of abandoning addons. On the contrary, Mozilla has been sweating blood for years to strike a balance between 1) making the vast architectural changes that will keep them competitive with other browsers and 2) keeping as few addons as possible from breaking with each release. And rarely do they ever get kudos for their efforts in keeping up this balancing act--instead they just get panned both for not being as fast as Chrome and then breaking some subset of addons anyway. So we've at last reached a breaking point: between electrolysis and project quantum, Mozilla is at last forced to choose between being a slow browser with powerful addons or being a fast browser with limited addons. I'm sure there are plenty of folks on HN who will wish they had taken the former path rather than the latter, but the problem is that Mozilla's mission of influencing web standards depends on having sufficient market share to afford a seat at the standards table, and I happen to agree with Mozilla that there are more people out there who want a fast and secure browser than who want an extensible browser (and I say that as someone who's been using Firefox with addons since version 1). (And for all that the point might still be moot: maybe Chrome with its marketing momentum and Safari and Edge with their platform advantage really are unassailable regardless of which path is taken here.) In any case, as unhelpful as it may sound, the idea that users won't be able to "run the extensions that have been freely available" is false. Old versions of Firefox will always exist, and every component is thoroughly open source, so if a community (or company) sees a demand for a fork of Firefox with legacy addons support then the opportunity is ripe.
    - threepipeproblm 10y ago
      >> that will keep them competitive with other browsers I understand that is the hope. In reality it does represent a step away from the approach that has made Firefox popular. I would say it's a guess, at best, that Firefox is suffering because it is not moving towards a Chrome-like model fast enough... versus that Firefox suffering because of the move towards a Chrome-like model. As far as "striking a balance", no that would be something like allowing users who want to keep older extension models do so by agreeing to a dialog box, and then offering to turn such extensions off in case performance problems actually arise.

kibwen 10y ago

> why are they stopping with that mentality? Because, in practice, officially giving unfettered access to Firefox's internals to third-party developers makes changing anything in the Firefox codebase a potential quagmire. It's taken five or six years for electrolysis to begin seeing the light of day, and that's because such a drastic rearchitecture of the browser ended up breaking basically every popular addon in the wild. In the meantime, the inability to evolve the browser has hampered its ability to compete with Chrome, whose deliberately-specified addons API leaves it with no such baggage. Not to mention that the greater scope of Firefox addons has more severe implications for user security, which means that Mozilla has to spend resources to further vet every addon on AMO, which leads to even more complaints at the sluggishness of the apparent bureaucracy. Addons were absolutely a great way to differentiate Firefox from IE back in the day, but in the context of modern web browsing having such a free-for-all addons interface is a lose-lose proposition. It's absolutely a shame, but the market of browser users has been inexorably making this decision for years now.

threepipeproblm 10y ago
That was well said. But at the end of the day doesn't it remain an argument that users shouldn't be able to run the extensions that have been freely available, aka "we know better than you." Breaking Firefox to turn it into the browser they wished they had made will be disastrous, I'm afraid. It seems to me there are any number of "middle paths" (or dual paths) that Mozilla could take, but they don't want to do anything to jeopardize their consolidated user base.
- kibwen 10y ago
  > But at the end of the day doesn't it remain an argument that users shouldn't be able to run the extensions that have been freely available I'm unsure what you're arguing here. Their goal is not to abandon addons for the sake of abandoning addons. On the contrary, Mozilla has been sweating blood for years to strike a balance between 1) making the vast architectural changes that will keep them competitive with other browsers and 2) keeping as few addons as possible from breaking with each release. And rarely do they ever get kudos for their efforts in keeping up this balancing act--instead they just get panned both for not being as fast as Chrome and then breaking some subset of addons anyway. So we've at last reached a breaking point: between electrolysis and project quantum, Mozilla is at last forced to choose between being a slow browser with powerful addons or being a fast browser with limited addons. I'm sure there are plenty of folks on HN who will wish they had taken the former path rather than the latter, but the problem is that Mozilla's mission of influencing web standards depends on having sufficient market share to afford a seat at the standards table, and I happen to agree with Mozilla that there are more people out there who want a fast and secure browser than who want an extensible browser (and I say that as someone who's been using Firefox with addons since version 1). (And for all that the point might still be moot: maybe Chrome with its marketing momentum and Safari and Edge with their platform advantage really are unassailable regardless of which path is taken here.) In any case, as unhelpful as it may sound, the idea that users won't be able to "run the extensions that have been freely available" is false. Old versions of Firefox will always exist, and every component is thoroughly open source, so if a community (or company) sees a demand for a fork of Firefox with legacy addons support then the opportunity is ripe.
  - threepipeproblm 10y ago
    >> that will keep them competitive with other browsers I understand that is the hope. In reality it does represent a step away from the approach that has made Firefox popular. I would say it's a guess, at best, that Firefox is suffering because it is not moving towards a Chrome-like model fast enough... versus that Firefox suffering because of the move towards a Chrome-like model. As far as "striking a balance", no that would be something like allowing users who want to keep older extension models do so by agreeing to a dialog box, and then offering to turn such extensions off in case performance problems actually arise.