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This sort of thing is exactly why browser extensions never should have required Mozilla's "approval" in the first place; forcing people onto beta or developer b
by clipsy 2y ago
This sort of thing is exactly why browser extensions never should have required Mozilla's "approval" in the first place; forcing people onto beta or developer builds to have proper control over their own software is an appalling failure to live up to their stated ideology. If they wanted to "protect" average users, they could have defaulted to only allowing approved extensions and made it clear how to opt out for users who wish to do so.
This sort of condescending, controlling, anti-user behavior was one of the reasons I left Mozilla, and the politically/culturally difficult situations it puts them in are a bed they have, unfortunately, made for themselves.
- squigz 2y agoWhat other browser might you recommend other than Firefox?
- im3w1l 2y agoThe answer people don't want to hear is that the answer is to abandon the web. The standards are too complicated and evolve too fast. It costs too much. The bills have to be paid and that means everyone has to sell the users out "just a little bit, but at least we are better than the other guy".
- clipsy 2y agoThe depressing truth is I can't recommend anything. Firefox soft-forks can easily allow unrestricted use of web extensions, but I haven't kept up with which ones are popular and actively maintained so I can't recommend anything specific. If Mozilla ends up standing behind this decision I guess it'll be time to do some research.
- sdk- 2y agoYou can do the same with Firefox. Simply use Beta, Dev Edition or Nightly. The first two are very stable. You just need to flip `xpinstall.signatures.required` to `false` in about:config.
- clipsy 2y agoI plainly stated that in my original post: > ... forcing people onto beta or developer builds to have proper control over their own software ...
- sdk- 2y ago1. It was for squingz 2. No one is forcing you to use Firefox. You don't even pay for it. You should have read the Open Source license buddy.
- clipsy 2y agoI'm stating my opinion, not asking for a refund.
- artenax 2y agoAs far as I know, installing unsigned extensions is also possible in ESR builds, in Firefox from Linux distributions, in Unbranded Builds from Mozilla (but I'm not sure if they keep older versions). In forks and in your own Firefox builds (from source).
- hughesjj 2y agoMozilla has been problematic for a while now, both with personnel having some... strong political ideas, their governance, executive pay, product direction.... Ugh, I don't want to go back to a chromium based browser but I don't know how what other options I have at this point, short of dropping down to links/lynx/elinks ..
- WalterSear 2y agoI was told recently that their executives attempted to start an AI initiative without involving anyone from their data engineering team.
- smegsicle 2y agowhat's wrong with strong political ideas, as long as they're the right ones?
- nitrogen 2y ago> as long as they're the right ones? Which ones are the right ones? Yours? Mine?
- _heimdall 2y agoI honestly can't tell it the was meant sarcastically. Who defines what the "right" political idea is? And do you really want to live in a society limited only to ideas that are deemed as the "right" ones by whoever has that power?
- ulrikrasmussen 2y agoThat's kind of how society works and why we have democracy.
- _heimdall 2y agoWhat do you mean? Who defines the "right" political ideas in a democracy? My understanding is that a democracy would exist to allow the majority of a society to define what they want, and that in the US we have a democratic republic because our founders still didn't trust the public enough to leave decisions entirely to a majority vote of the public.
- dartharva 2y agoUngoogled-Chromium. Literally the only way to install extensions on it is to sideload them. But of course, it won't survive the Manifest-V3 onslaught. I wish some talented bunch of people forked Brave to allow sideloading extensions and strip it of the crypto stuff.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoThorium, Mercury, or LibreWolf.
- rurban 2y agoFennec
- cbsks 2y agoDeep breath... the extensions are still signed. If Mozilla refuses to sign the extensions, then we can pick up the pitchforks again.
- arp242 2y ago> browser extensions never should have required Mozilla's "approval" in the first place; You don't need Mozilla's approval; anyone can publish an add-on anywhere and anyone can install it in Firefox. I've distributed some bespoke non-public addons like this. It's just the Mozilla add-on website/listing that's curated, which seems reasonable; it's their website and they can have their rules.[1] You can make your own "clipsy add-on listing" website if you want. [1]: in this case, it's not even "banned", just not displayed in Russia. It was probably a "ban these extensions or we'll ban all of Firefox" type scenario. Saying "njet" to Putin is tempting, but how does all of Firefox being banned in Russia help Russian people? It doesn't. You may not like the situation, but simplistic takes which simply ignore the reality of the situation are not serious.
- szundi 2y agoYes, seems to be exact way out
- jwitthuhn 2y agoThe extension needs to be signed by mozilla for the normal production builds of firefox to let you load it on startup. If it isn't signed, you need to manually load it in using about:debugging each time you restart firefox.
- arp242 2y agoMozilla is not preventing from signing anything here (and the "security checks" on who can sign are so weak it might as well not exist in the first place).
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoOkay, but you've moved the goalposts from > You don't need Mozilla's approval to pointing out that Mozilla has approved (signed) this extension.
- arp242 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]