6 ms·

They've had the MozillaMaintenance service for several years on Windows already, what has changed now?

testplzignore 5y ago
Based on my reading of https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-mozilla-maintenance-service https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-mozilla-maintenanc..., the current behavior is that Firefox checks for updates only when the app is open, and then only briefly starts the MozillaMaintenance service to avoid the UAC dialog. The MozillaMaintenance service isn't what is responsible for checking for updates. It's not clear to me if MozillaMaintenance is the service that will be checking for updates, or if there is a new service.
hilbert42 5y ago
I don't know about this version but at least one could uninstall the maintenance service. It was the first thing I'd nuke before allowing my PC to reconnect to the internet, the second was to nuke every talk-home-Mozilla link that about:config would allow to either be changed or deleted. This worked, as updates wouldn't even work when clicking 'updates' in the menu. Mozilla has a damned hide to automate updates, not to mention gathering data about users' habits without telling them what's been gathered, and also not allowing users to turn off that collection if they wished. (BTW, we know the depth of this surveillance just by looking at Mozilla's comments on v94's webpage. There's no way Mozilla would know that data unless Firefox's surveillance of its users had been all-pervasive.) By going the way of the rest of the industry, Mozilla is shooting itself in the foot. People who've used Firefox in the past have done so because they want an alterative - not more of the same. I expect Mozilla will go defunct soon, it's now been on its self-destruct path for too long for it to be rescued.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  P.S.: it would be nice if down-voters had the guts to say why they disagreed. But then, perhaps that's a bit too close for comfort if you work for Mozilla.
  - Taywee 5y ago
    Assuming everybody who disagrees with you is some sort of Mozilla inside agent is really getting off on a bad foot, and sabotages any hope of productive discussion before it even starts. Don't assume bad faith in everybody who doesn't think the same way that you do.
    - hilbert42 5y ago
      What I think is irrelevant, I can echo my disgust here out of frustration, but I know that in the grand scheme of things it will amount to nought. Bad faith or just plain stupidity, you cannot escape the fact that Firefox is on a fast slippery slope to obivlion and that Mozilla personnel have done nothing to arrest the process in recent years. Why not? What's driving them to continually implement features and policies that clearly turn users off using Firefox? "Don't assume bad faith in everybody who doesn't think the same way that you do." I usually don't, in fact I always welcome a solid debate but there comes a time when things go so wrong or turn so bizarre that one has to look to offtrack ideas for an explanation. If you've a better rational reason (or perhaps inside knowledge) for why Mozilla continually shoots itself in the foot then many of us would like to hear it. Edit: I usually use the Firefox fork Palemoon to get around many of Firefox's most egregious features but I'd prefer not to do that as it increases my vulnerability to browser fingerprinting,etc., as such, I have to take additional remedial action such as spoofing the user agent for a more common one - and frankly it's a damn pain having to do so. You ought to be able to at least understand why many of us are so annoyed when essentially the last independent browser manufacturer is seemingly (willingly) attempting suicide .
- huhtenberg 5y ago
  > People who've used Firefox in the past have done so because they want an alterative - not more of the same. Exactly! Despite of all the telemetry Mozilla still has absolutely zero clue who their core audience actually is, because they sure as hell are set on decimating what's left of it.
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    But why? It's bizarre. It's almost as if moles from other browser manufacturers have been smuggled surreptitiously onto Mozilla's staff to sabotage the Firefox project.
    - jamienicol 5y ago
      Or maybe, just maybe, people have a different opinion to yourself about how Mozilla can succeed.
- Taywee 5y ago
  > I don't know about this version but at least one could uninstall the maintenance service. You'd obviously be able to uninstall this, too. If your OS allows third-party programs to install services that can not be disabled or uninstalled, the problem is deeper than just the programs you are installing; you need a different OS. > Mozilla has a damned hide to automate updates, not to mention gathering data about users' habits without telling them what's been gathered, and also not allowing users to turn off that collection if they wished. Telemetry is optional. You can disable it. I can understand disliking Mozilla or Firefox's direction, but I absolutely don't understand this paranoid, cynical doomposting and straight-up misinformation about one of the only browsers where you can actually outright disable telemetry, and where you can still separate the address bar from the search bar to avoid leaking information. > we know the depth of this surveillance just by looking at Mozilla's comments on v94's webpage. There's no way Mozilla would know that data unless Firefox's surveillance of its users had been all-pervasive. What do you expect to happen when you check the "Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla" other than them sending data about how people use the browser to Mozilla? It even has a link right next to it in the settings where you can see what data is used. You can know the "depth of this surveillance" by just clicking "learn more" and reading the very first section you are linked to, titled "Interaction data". More importantly, what do you actually propose? What browser are you using that is much more private and secure than Firefox, and allows you the same flexibility in controlling the level of privacy you actually want?
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    "You'd obviously be able to uninstall this, too" Likely so, or I'd never install it. The OSes I use do allow one to uninstall it: specifically Linux, heavily rooted, fully deGoogleized Android and and a highly-hacked Windows 7† (wouldn't be seen dead with any later version for the same reasons). "Telemetry is optional." Turning off telemetry is optional for only some of Firefox's telemetry. The first thing Firefox does when launched is to contact home irrespective of how normal user settings are set. And as we well know, most users will use the defaults and Mozilla is counting on this quirk of human nature. If Mozilla's bona fides were actually genuine and not sleight of hand then it would default all and every bit of telemetry to off and allow the user to switch it on if he or she so desired. BTW, I don't buy the argument that only some of the phone-home data counts as telemetry; by definition, any data sent to Mozilla is telemetry. "What browser are you using that is much more private and secure than Firefox, and allows you the same flexibility in controlling the level of privacy you actually want?" Palemoon. Read my 'Edit' in another of your related posts. Please note: that edit was posted before I'd read this post of yours. __ † For starters, Internet Explorer code no longer exists, thus calls to IE by any program that wishes to bypass the new default browser will fail. This is only one of several thousand tweaks to Win 7 needed to make it user-friendly to yours truly.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sfink 5y ago
  Mozilla "inside agent" here. (Not really, but I work for Mozilla. Don't speak for them etc.) I didn't consider downvoting, but since you mentioned it below it would kind of make sense, since much of what you say here is objectively false. But you're raising legitimate concerns, so I have no reason to prevent your post from being seen. Mozilla is very open about what is collected, and all of it can be turned off. We'd really rather you not lock in insecure versions; until you've worked on a browser, you won't believe how active and pervasive the attacks are. As a developer, I'll also say that the internal process for adding any additional collection is pretty heavyweight. Even if you're just collecting the distribution of garbage collection time slices, you need to go through a privacy data review. Mozilla spells out its data collection policies at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ (first DDG hit for "mozilla privacy", which is how I found it). If something there is unclear, or you have reason to believe we're a bunch of scheming liars and you have the receipts to prove it, please let me know. Firefox Suggest is a calculated tradeoff to provide more functionality in exchange for sending more data, but again it's totally configurable if you disagree with the tradeoff. I honestly don't know what you're going on about with "Mozilla's comments on v94's webpage", so I can't respond to that. I will assert that Mozilla is very much not going the way of the rest of the industry, and we are in fact being very conscious to carve out a different path. Which isn't easy. But if you have the degree of distrust conveyed by your message, then please don't use Firefox. It's not doing you or us any favors. It's fine to call out specific problems and gaps though. Feedback is good, and anyone interested enough to seriously look at this is welcome to get involved with the Mozilla project and contribute to improving this stuff.
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    First, I actually do respect your views and I'm pleased you've had the fortitude to responded as such. To respond adequately to your post would require me to start detailing what I (and many others) reckon what's wrong with Firefox (and similarly so with Thunderbird). Clearly that's not very practical here, as to do so we'd be bogged down in detail and the key points of the argument would be lost. That said and not wanting to let anyone assume I'm avoiding your points, I've divided the key objections into the following groups. 1. Features that by their intrinsic nature should be in both Firefox and Thunderbird but which are missing. These are left to be picked by add-on developers who eventually give up after Mozilla broke the compatibility model once too often. Thus a useful feature we'd gotten used to via an add-on literally disappeared with an upgrade (more about this in point 2.) 2. The single biggest fiasco with Firefox from a user's perspective is Mozilla's perennial breaking of its add-ons. Not only is this disrespectful to third-party developers who develop them, and it often it turns them off from doing further development work, but also it infuriates users whenever their add-ons no longer work. In essence, to them an upgrade is actually a downgrade in terms of user ergonomics. Whilst Mozilla may have done this for noble reasons such as improved security it's of very little concern to the the average user (myself included) whose facility no longer works. As far as he/she is concerned, Mozilla has fucked up yet again - I'm not exaggerating here, it's been a constant theme for Mozilla to blatantly ignore compatibility from the early 2000s until today. Just go to Mozilla's add-ons site and check the huge number of incompatibility issues one finds even with the items that are still listed (many are not). For the record, I'll mention one add-on that should have been in the core program that was fixed by an add-on which was later busted by a 'retrograde' Mozilla 'upgrade' and that was Lazarus, it very usefully allowed undos in dialogue boxes etc. which often get lost for nefarious reasons after one has typed much text. If just about every text editor and wordprocessor has multiple levels of undo then why doesn't Firefox? Whilst there may be many reasonable excuses for why Mozilla acted the way it did, the user isn't interested in hearing any of them - all he/she knows is that a useful feature that once worked now doesn't and Mozilla's actions are the reason. Many of us remember those failures and it's why so many of us go to inordinate lengths to nuke automatic updates, as they're likely to backfire just when we least expect it (inconviently in the middle of an important job etc.). (The picture that such actions (and there's been many of them) engender in many of us users is that Mozilla programers primarily program out of self-interest rather than that of users' actual needs. Naturally, you programmers prefer simpler, cleaner code that doesn't support legacy features - similarly, it seems none of you are prepared to do the extra yard work - the extra coding - need to keep old-API add-ons safe. I know, it's boring shit, and no one will do so willingly, they have to be compelled to do so, and no one in authority at Mozilla has made that call (and that alone speaks a great deal about the ethos/culture at Mozilla). Again, just get it into your heads that no one other than you Mozilla programmers care a damn about the reasons why you nuked XUL/NPAPI as laudable as you at Mozilla deem nuking them to be. Morever, many of us aren't interested in DRM or pandering to the tech giants. Right, include new features if you have to but at least provide us users with the option to let us turn them off. For instance, the first of these annoyances was the removal of the switch to turn JavaScript off. Right, default it to 'on' for the majority who wish to use it but it's down outright authoritarian programming to insist that you programers know best - especially when you haven't a clue about user ergonomics or what actually annoys users (and I've a damned good idea having run an IT department for years only to find myself continually falling foul and being blamed and held responsible by users for your programming changes. Why you programers want to be on such a power kick is something that only psychologists can figure out if that's at all possible. Of course, it's not only Mozilla programmers here, Microsoft's are possibly the worst. It's the sheer arrogance that you programners diaplay when you think you know what's best for users when you often don't have a clue which is so annoying (I'm not aiming specifically at Mozilla programmers here, rather that inflated ego is characteristic of breed. BTW, I've done a considerable amount of programming in my time but I don't consider myself a professional programer.) 3. Similarly, instead of fixing boring bugs such as those longstanding ones in the printer routine and the overall outdatedness of the printer routine per se, not to mention that other first-class annoyance - the failure of text selected by the mouse to be copied from the context menu thus requiring a full highlight followed by CTRL-C then CTRL-V to actually work - you Mozilla programers simply ignore them year after year. Right, fixing bugs is boring, but adding new features obviosly isn't - even if many users deem them unnecessary or of secondary importance to rectifying the more utilitarian features of the program. I mention Australis here. As it's clear it annoyed the hell out of many users, thus it's fitting to ask why Mozilla didn't include an optional fallback to the older UI? Right, I've already answered that point. 4. If Mozilla's programmers genuinely claim they're trying to do the right thing by users then it's almost impossible to conclude that they actually understand users - or what features they actually want from a browser. Yes, it's a restatement of what I've already said, but it has to be true otherwise Firefox's usage ratings wouldn't be nosediving off the graph. An adjunct to that is that Mozilla never fully levels with its users concerning the real reasons for why its takes certain actions - that is other than to dress up changes with PR-speak and spin. If Mozilla's leveled with users more honesty then users would likely reciprocate. Moreover, you would have fewer users like me upping critical hyperbole out of sheer frustration. Finally, likewise, I don't understand why you can't see my reasoning for why the Firefox 94 webpage contains said info you mentioned. I'll get the quote and post it here when I've a moment. Again, what I've said hurts and I know it. Please understand it's no vendetta and it hurts me to be so negative (especially when there's so much negativity about these days); and it also hurts to see the only essentially independent browser going down the gurgler when it ought not to be. You should spare a thought for people like me who insist that the corporate browser should be Firefox only to find us between a rock and a hard place when it all goes belly-up for the many reasons mentioned. Defending Firefox against Chrome is no easy task these days.
dblohm7 5y ago
(I used to work on the team that owned this) The maintenance service is used to prevent the need for UAC prompts during upgrades. That's it. No background update functionality.

Based on my reading of https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-mozilla-maintenance-service https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-mozilla-maintenanc..., the current behavior is that Firefox checks for updates only when the app is open, and then only briefly starts the MozillaMaintenance service to avoid the UAC dialog. The MozillaMaintenance service isn't what is responsible for checking for updates. It's not clear to me if MozillaMaintenance is the service that will be checking for updates, or if there is a new service.

hilbert42 5y ago

I don't know about this version but at least one could uninstall the maintenance service. It was the first thing I'd nuke before allowing my PC to reconnect to the internet, the second was to nuke every talk-home-Mozilla link that about:config would allow to either be changed or deleted. This worked, as updates wouldn't even work when clicking 'updates' in the menu. Mozilla has a damned hide to automate updates, not to mention gathering data about users' habits without telling them what's been gathered, and also not allowing users to turn off that collection if they wished. (BTW, we know the depth of this surveillance just by looking at Mozilla's comments on v94's webpage. There's no way Mozilla would know that data unless Firefox's surveillance of its users had been all-pervasive.) By going the way of the rest of the industry, Mozilla is shooting itself in the foot. People who've used Firefox in the past have done so because they want an alterative - not more of the same. I expect Mozilla will go defunct soon, it's now been on its self-destruct path for too long for it to be rescued.

hilbert42 5y ago
P.S.: it would be nice if down-voters had the guts to say why they disagreed. But then, perhaps that's a bit too close for comfort if you work for Mozilla.
- Taywee 5y ago
  Assuming everybody who disagrees with you is some sort of Mozilla inside agent is really getting off on a bad foot, and sabotages any hope of productive discussion before it even starts. Don't assume bad faith in everybody who doesn't think the same way that you do.
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    What I think is irrelevant, I can echo my disgust here out of frustration, but I know that in the grand scheme of things it will amount to nought. Bad faith or just plain stupidity, you cannot escape the fact that Firefox is on a fast slippery slope to obivlion and that Mozilla personnel have done nothing to arrest the process in recent years. Why not? What's driving them to continually implement features and policies that clearly turn users off using Firefox? "Don't assume bad faith in everybody who doesn't think the same way that you do." I usually don't, in fact I always welcome a solid debate but there comes a time when things go so wrong or turn so bizarre that one has to look to offtrack ideas for an explanation. If you've a better rational reason (or perhaps inside knowledge) for why Mozilla continually shoots itself in the foot then many of us would like to hear it. Edit: I usually use the Firefox fork Palemoon to get around many of Firefox's most egregious features but I'd prefer not to do that as it increases my vulnerability to browser fingerprinting,etc., as such, I have to take additional remedial action such as spoofing the user agent for a more common one - and frankly it's a damn pain having to do so. You ought to be able to at least understand why many of us are so annoyed when essentially the last independent browser manufacturer is seemingly (willingly) attempting suicide .
huhtenberg 5y ago
> People who've used Firefox in the past have done so because they want an alterative - not more of the same. Exactly! Despite of all the telemetry Mozilla still has absolutely zero clue who their core audience actually is, because they sure as hell are set on decimating what's left of it.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  But why? It's bizarre. It's almost as if moles from other browser manufacturers have been smuggled surreptitiously onto Mozilla's staff to sabotage the Firefox project.
  - jamienicol 5y ago
    Or maybe, just maybe, people have a different opinion to yourself about how Mozilla can succeed.
Taywee 5y ago
> I don't know about this version but at least one could uninstall the maintenance service. You'd obviously be able to uninstall this, too. If your OS allows third-party programs to install services that can not be disabled or uninstalled, the problem is deeper than just the programs you are installing; you need a different OS. > Mozilla has a damned hide to automate updates, not to mention gathering data about users' habits without telling them what's been gathered, and also not allowing users to turn off that collection if they wished. Telemetry is optional. You can disable it. I can understand disliking Mozilla or Firefox's direction, but I absolutely don't understand this paranoid, cynical doomposting and straight-up misinformation about one of the only browsers where you can actually outright disable telemetry, and where you can still separate the address bar from the search bar to avoid leaking information. > we know the depth of this surveillance just by looking at Mozilla's comments on v94's webpage. There's no way Mozilla would know that data unless Firefox's surveillance of its users had been all-pervasive. What do you expect to happen when you check the "Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla" other than them sending data about how people use the browser to Mozilla? It even has a link right next to it in the settings where you can see what data is used. You can know the "depth of this surveillance" by just clicking "learn more" and reading the very first section you are linked to, titled "Interaction data". More importantly, what do you actually propose? What browser are you using that is much more private and secure than Firefox, and allows you the same flexibility in controlling the level of privacy you actually want?
- hilbert42 5y ago
  "You'd obviously be able to uninstall this, too" Likely so, or I'd never install it. The OSes I use do allow one to uninstall it: specifically Linux, heavily rooted, fully deGoogleized Android and and a highly-hacked Windows 7† (wouldn't be seen dead with any later version for the same reasons). "Telemetry is optional." Turning off telemetry is optional for only some of Firefox's telemetry. The first thing Firefox does when launched is to contact home irrespective of how normal user settings are set. And as we well know, most users will use the defaults and Mozilla is counting on this quirk of human nature. If Mozilla's bona fides were actually genuine and not sleight of hand then it would default all and every bit of telemetry to off and allow the user to switch it on if he or she so desired. BTW, I don't buy the argument that only some of the phone-home data counts as telemetry; by definition, any data sent to Mozilla is telemetry. "What browser are you using that is much more private and secure than Firefox, and allows you the same flexibility in controlling the level of privacy you actually want?" Palemoon. Read my 'Edit' in another of your related posts. Please note: that edit was posted before I'd read this post of yours. __ † For starters, Internet Explorer code no longer exists, thus calls to IE by any program that wishes to bypass the new default browser will fail. This is only one of several thousand tweaks to Win 7 needed to make it user-friendly to yours truly.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sfink 5y ago
Mozilla "inside agent" here. (Not really, but I work for Mozilla. Don't speak for them etc.) I didn't consider downvoting, but since you mentioned it below it would kind of make sense, since much of what you say here is objectively false. But you're raising legitimate concerns, so I have no reason to prevent your post from being seen. Mozilla is very open about what is collected, and all of it can be turned off. We'd really rather you not lock in insecure versions; until you've worked on a browser, you won't believe how active and pervasive the attacks are. As a developer, I'll also say that the internal process for adding any additional collection is pretty heavyweight. Even if you're just collecting the distribution of garbage collection time slices, you need to go through a privacy data review. Mozilla spells out its data collection policies at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ (first DDG hit for "mozilla privacy", which is how I found it). If something there is unclear, or you have reason to believe we're a bunch of scheming liars and you have the receipts to prove it, please let me know. Firefox Suggest is a calculated tradeoff to provide more functionality in exchange for sending more data, but again it's totally configurable if you disagree with the tradeoff. I honestly don't know what you're going on about with "Mozilla's comments on v94's webpage", so I can't respond to that. I will assert that Mozilla is very much not going the way of the rest of the industry, and we are in fact being very conscious to carve out a different path. Which isn't easy. But if you have the degree of distrust conveyed by your message, then please don't use Firefox. It's not doing you or us any favors. It's fine to call out specific problems and gaps though. Feedback is good, and anyone interested enough to seriously look at this is welcome to get involved with the Mozilla project and contribute to improving this stuff.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  First, I actually do respect your views and I'm pleased you've had the fortitude to responded as such. To respond adequately to your post would require me to start detailing what I (and many others) reckon what's wrong with Firefox (and similarly so with Thunderbird). Clearly that's not very practical here, as to do so we'd be bogged down in detail and the key points of the argument would be lost. That said and not wanting to let anyone assume I'm avoiding your points, I've divided the key objections into the following groups. 1. Features that by their intrinsic nature should be in both Firefox and Thunderbird but which are missing. These are left to be picked by add-on developers who eventually give up after Mozilla broke the compatibility model once too often. Thus a useful feature we'd gotten used to via an add-on literally disappeared with an upgrade (more about this in point 2.) 2. The single biggest fiasco with Firefox from a user's perspective is Mozilla's perennial breaking of its add-ons. Not only is this disrespectful to third-party developers who develop them, and it often it turns them off from doing further development work, but also it infuriates users whenever their add-ons no longer work. In essence, to them an upgrade is actually a downgrade in terms of user ergonomics. Whilst Mozilla may have done this for noble reasons such as improved security it's of very little concern to the the average user (myself included) whose facility no longer works. As far as he/she is concerned, Mozilla has fucked up yet again - I'm not exaggerating here, it's been a constant theme for Mozilla to blatantly ignore compatibility from the early 2000s until today. Just go to Mozilla's add-ons site and check the huge number of incompatibility issues one finds even with the items that are still listed (many are not). For the record, I'll mention one add-on that should have been in the core program that was fixed by an add-on which was later busted by a 'retrograde' Mozilla 'upgrade' and that was Lazarus, it very usefully allowed undos in dialogue boxes etc. which often get lost for nefarious reasons after one has typed much text. If just about every text editor and wordprocessor has multiple levels of undo then why doesn't Firefox? Whilst there may be many reasonable excuses for why Mozilla acted the way it did, the user isn't interested in hearing any of them - all he/she knows is that a useful feature that once worked now doesn't and Mozilla's actions are the reason. Many of us remember those failures and it's why so many of us go to inordinate lengths to nuke automatic updates, as they're likely to backfire just when we least expect it (inconviently in the middle of an important job etc.). (The picture that such actions (and there's been many of them) engender in many of us users is that Mozilla programers primarily program out of self-interest rather than that of users' actual needs. Naturally, you programmers prefer simpler, cleaner code that doesn't support legacy features - similarly, it seems none of you are prepared to do the extra yard work - the extra coding - need to keep old-API add-ons safe. I know, it's boring shit, and no one will do so willingly, they have to be compelled to do so, and no one in authority at Mozilla has made that call (and that alone speaks a great deal about the ethos/culture at Mozilla). Again, just get it into your heads that no one other than you Mozilla programmers care a damn about the reasons why you nuked XUL/NPAPI as laudable as you at Mozilla deem nuking them to be. Morever, many of us aren't interested in DRM or pandering to the tech giants. Right, include new features if you have to but at least provide us users with the option to let us turn them off. For instance, the first of these annoyances was the removal of the switch to turn JavaScript off. Right, default it to 'on' for the majority who wish to use it but it's down outright authoritarian programming to insist that you programers know best - especially when you haven't a clue about user ergonomics or what actually annoys users (and I've a damned good idea having run an IT department for years only to find myself continually falling foul and being blamed and held responsible by users for your programming changes. Why you programers want to be on such a power kick is something that only psychologists can figure out if that's at all possible. Of course, it's not only Mozilla programmers here, Microsoft's are possibly the worst. It's the sheer arrogance that you programners diaplay when you think you know what's best for users when you often don't have a clue which is so annoying (I'm not aiming specifically at Mozilla programmers here, rather that inflated ego is characteristic of breed. BTW, I've done a considerable amount of programming in my time but I don't consider myself a professional programer.) 3. Similarly, instead of fixing boring bugs such as those longstanding ones in the printer routine and the overall outdatedness of the printer routine per se, not to mention that other first-class annoyance - the failure of text selected by the mouse to be copied from the context menu thus requiring a full highlight followed by CTRL-C then CTRL-V to actually work - you Mozilla programers simply ignore them year after year. Right, fixing bugs is boring, but adding new features obviosly isn't - even if many users deem them unnecessary or of secondary importance to rectifying the more utilitarian features of the program. I mention Australis here. As it's clear it annoyed the hell out of many users, thus it's fitting to ask why Mozilla didn't include an optional fallback to the older UI? Right, I've already answered that point. 4. If Mozilla's programmers genuinely claim they're trying to do the right thing by users then it's almost impossible to conclude that they actually understand users - or what features they actually want from a browser. Yes, it's a restatement of what I've already said, but it has to be true otherwise Firefox's usage ratings wouldn't be nosediving off the graph. An adjunct to that is that Mozilla never fully levels with its users concerning the real reasons for why its takes certain actions - that is other than to dress up changes with PR-speak and spin. If Mozilla's leveled with users more honesty then users would likely reciprocate. Moreover, you would have fewer users like me upping critical hyperbole out of sheer frustration. Finally, likewise, I don't understand why you can't see my reasoning for why the Firefox 94 webpage contains said info you mentioned. I'll get the quote and post it here when I've a moment. Again, what I've said hurts and I know it. Please understand it's no vendetta and it hurts me to be so negative (especially when there's so much negativity about these days); and it also hurts to see the only essentially independent browser going down the gurgler when it ought not to be. You should spare a thought for people like me who insist that the corporate browser should be Firefox only to find us between a rock and a hard place when it all goes belly-up for the many reasons mentioned. Defending Firefox against Chrome is no easy task these days.

dblohm7 5y ago

(I used to work on the team that owned this) The maintenance service is used to prevent the need for UAC prompts during upgrades. That's it. No background update functionality.