3 ms·

I want to second this sentiment and EXPLICITLY call out Mozilla. I am the lead dev for a relatively small Firefox extension. We do not do ANY tracking. We we

I want to second this sentiment and EXPLICITLY call out Mozilla. I am the lead dev for a relatively small Firefox extension. We do not do ANY tracking. We were rejected and removed for simply including the sdk for Microsoft outlook addins as a script in one of our html pages (we share the codebase for an outlook addon as well). This script is well documented and published by Microsoft. I find the hypocrisy here staggering. I know that Firefox gets a lot of love, particularly on HN because it feels like Mozilla is still a trustworthy company. I want to clearly express that I no longer believe this. They want addons in the store that they can use for marketing and sales. Period.

minewastaken 7y ago
https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/mozilla.html https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/mozilla.html This article, along with some other sites and my own digging made me leave Firefox for good. It's a good read if you value privacy and think Mozilla is the good guy in a field dominated by evil corporations. At first it might seem biased, but the author makes very good points and backs them up with tons of sources that can't be really argued - most of the article is reviewing privacy policies and terms of service agreements that are available publicly to check. For now I stuck with Pale Moon, but I'm considering some other browsers like Ungoogled Chromium for my daily private and work use. Pale Moon feels kinda janky and old-school in a not good way. But it's fast and (with some minor tweaking: https://spyware.neocities.org/guides/palemoon.html https://spyware.neocities.org/guides/palemoon.html) respects your privacy 100%.
- vkou 7y ago
  I've read through the first bit of it, and the author comes off as a huge pedant. They spend most of the introduction ranting about browser features being removed in updates - because their expectation seems to be that once Mozilla ships a feature, it must forevermore be a part of the latest version of the browser, from now, until the heat death of the universe... Disclaimer: I don't actually use Firefox, I don't have a hobby horse in this race.
- aasasd 7y ago
  Funny how the design of that article borders on typical insane unreadable looks of conspiracy theory sites.
gnicholas 7y ago
Thanks for posting this. I have had similarly odd experiences recently with the Firefox addon store, which my startup has been in since 2013. All of a sudden we got yanked, among other things because we modify third party libraries. Apparently we would have been fine if we did exactly the same thing but wrote the code ourselves, but since we used a library, and then modified it, we were in violation. To be clear, we provide all our source code in the review process, so it is 100% clear what we are doing. And we don't do anything that is remotely privacy- or security-compromising, which is very clear from the code. We tried to understand this bizarre no-modifying-third-party-libraries policy and see how we could fix it, but they stopped responding and eventually even deleted our extension from the browsers where our users had previously installed it. (Even Apple doesn't do this when it yanks apps — only rarely if there is proven bad behavior will the pull an already-installed/paid-for app from a device.) I happen to know a couple very high-up people at Mozilla, and one of them was able to flag our mistreatment, and the reviewers now seem to be walking back the previously-described global ban on modifying third-party libraries, but we're still not back in the addon store (it's been months). The (alleged?) policy makes no sense to me, and I also don't understand why Mozilla is now blocking users from installing any addon that hasn't been blessed by Mozilla. I understand that they want to vet addons that are listed in their store, but they've assured me that users can't even install off our website unless Mozilla signs off. That seems very un-Mozilla-ish to me. What happened to the open web? For the record, I used to love Mozilla/Firefox, and have used their browsers for decades. I now use Brave, both because of experiences like this one, and because it's much faster on my Mac.
- the8472 7y ago
  > The (alleged?) policy makes no sense to me The most charitable explanation I can come up with is that they want to avoid confusion attacks on their reviewers. But then again they already have a list of hashes for trusted libs, so clearly they could just diff the modified library against the canonical version when a hash doesn't match. > but they've assured me that users can't even install off our website unless Mozilla signs off. That seems very un-Mozilla-ish to me. What happened to the open web? I have clashed with their addons staff over similar issues. Their argument is basically security absolutism, motivated by (some) users easily being tricked. Any inch of rope you give the user they will use to hang themselves. So any security-related decisions they make are based on this dumbest possible user. Additionally they consider it a reputational issue, if an extension screws up firefox then firefox is blamed, or so they say. Firefox stable basically means nannying. If you want more control you're supposed to use developer edition or (on linux) the distribution builds. They don't say it quite that directly, but that's what their answers boil down to.

minewastaken 7y ago

https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/mozilla.html https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/mozilla.html This article, along with some other sites and my own digging made me leave Firefox for good. It's a good read if you value privacy and think Mozilla is the good guy in a field dominated by evil corporations. At first it might seem biased, but the author makes very good points and backs them up with tons of sources that can't be really argued - most of the article is reviewing privacy policies and terms of service agreements that are available publicly to check. For now I stuck with Pale Moon, but I'm considering some other browsers like Ungoogled Chromium for my daily private and work use. Pale Moon feels kinda janky and old-school in a not good way. But it's fast and (with some minor tweaking: https://spyware.neocities.org/guides/palemoon.html https://spyware.neocities.org/guides/palemoon.html) respects your privacy 100%.

vkou 7y ago
I've read through the first bit of it, and the author comes off as a huge pedant. They spend most of the introduction ranting about browser features being removed in updates - because their expectation seems to be that once Mozilla ships a feature, it must forevermore be a part of the latest version of the browser, from now, until the heat death of the universe... Disclaimer: I don't actually use Firefox, I don't have a hobby horse in this race.
aasasd 7y ago
Funny how the design of that article borders on typical insane unreadable looks of conspiracy theory sites.

gnicholas 7y ago

Thanks for posting this. I have had similarly odd experiences recently with the Firefox addon store, which my startup has been in since 2013. All of a sudden we got yanked, among other things because we modify third party libraries. Apparently we would have been fine if we did exactly the same thing but wrote the code ourselves, but since we used a library, and then modified it, we were in violation. To be clear, we provide all our source code in the review process, so it is 100% clear what we are doing. And we don't do anything that is remotely privacy- or security-compromising, which is very clear from the code. We tried to understand this bizarre no-modifying-third-party-libraries policy and see how we could fix it, but they stopped responding and eventually even deleted our extension from the browsers where our users had previously installed it. (Even Apple doesn't do this when it yanks apps — only rarely if there is proven bad behavior will the pull an already-installed/paid-for app from a device.) I happen to know a couple very high-up people at Mozilla, and one of them was able to flag our mistreatment, and the reviewers now seem to be walking back the previously-described global ban on modifying third-party libraries, but we're still not back in the addon store (it's been months). The (alleged?) policy makes no sense to me, and I also don't understand why Mozilla is now blocking users from installing any addon that hasn't been blessed by Mozilla. I understand that they want to vet addons that are listed in their store, but they've assured me that users can't even install off our website unless Mozilla signs off. That seems very un-Mozilla-ish to me. What happened to the open web? For the record, I used to love Mozilla/Firefox, and have used their browsers for decades. I now use Brave, both because of experiences like this one, and because it's much faster on my Mac.

the8472 7y ago
> The (alleged?) policy makes no sense to me The most charitable explanation I can come up with is that they want to avoid confusion attacks on their reviewers. But then again they already have a list of hashes for trusted libs, so clearly they could just diff the modified library against the canonical version when a hash doesn't match. > but they've assured me that users can't even install off our website unless Mozilla signs off. That seems very un-Mozilla-ish to me. What happened to the open web? I have clashed with their addons staff over similar issues. Their argument is basically security absolutism, motivated by (some) users easily being tricked. Any inch of rope you give the user they will use to hang themselves. So any security-related decisions they make are based on this dumbest possible user. Additionally they consider it a reputational issue, if an extension screws up firefox then firefox is blamed, or so they say. Firefox stable basically means nannying. If you want more control you're supposed to use developer edition or (on linux) the distribution builds. They don't say it quite that directly, but that's what their answers boil down to.