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>The last message from the developer in a now-closed GitHub issue shows an email from Mozilla admitting its fault and apologizing for the mistake. However, Raym

>The last message from the developer in a now-closed GitHub issue shows an email from Mozilla admitting its fault and apologizing for the mistake. However, Raymond still pulled the extension from the Mozilla Add-ons Store, which means you can no longer find it on addons.mozilla.org. This seems pretty harsh. Mozilla made a mistake, Mozilla apologized, Mozilla fixed the mistake (maybe even improved their processes), and the author still pulls their choose and criticizes Mozilla. On my opinion either author took this a bit up personally, or cares about improving the review process and wants to make a strong point (with some hurt done for their project visibility).

VoxPelli 2y ago
Feels like they were just waiting for a reason to pull out – likely feels its a hassle to upload and have it review and just want everyone to trust them and keep it simple And I guess some people would claim that since its an open source addon no one can feel entitled to anything else
prmoustache 2y ago
[flagged]
latexr 2y ago
Remember why uBlock Origin exists in the first place: Raymond Hill was fed up with the chore of all the administrative crap around uBlock¹. They wanted it to be a hobby and it started feeling like a job. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38#issuecomment-91871802 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38#issuecomment-918... So it’s predictable they’d get fed up with that Mozilla review process and call it quits too. ¹ Which led them to hand the project to an unscrupulous rando that immediately tried to monetise it, leading Raymond to hate the outcome and having to decry his own previous project and ending up essentially where it all started but with a bunch of extra work in the middle.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
finnthehuman 2y ago
I can’t fault gorhill for not wanting to play the “give large rich organization infinite second chances” game. Sometimes enough is enough even if you think you’d act differently in his shoes. > Mozilla apologized No they didn’t. Now I’m not here to play apology police or anything. But that’s just a perfunctory customer service voice statement which happened to include the word “apologize”. And that’s fine. Nobody expects more. We can acknowledge it for what it is tho.
- latexr 2y ago
  What could the email have said that would have made you believe they had apologised? If the literal string “we apologize” isn’t it, what is?
  - nicce 2y ago
    "Statistically your extensions are one of the most used on Firefox. We will handle all related matters with higher priority and care in the future, and are deeply sorry about this."
  - amiga386 2y ago
    "Our review processes are not fit for purpose. We commit to replacing them with ones which acknowledge our entire ecosystem is built on the goodwill of unpaid volunteers, and we must not squander their time or resources. People like you are our lifeblood and we must not lose your trust." "We admit we used automated scanning here and tried to pass it off as human review. We got caught. Badly. All our future scans will have to pass our own internal reviews before we make demands of extension authors." these sorts of things
    - latexr 2y ago
      Come on, be realistic. They’re not going to grovel and humiliate themselves over it, especially on a first apology contact. Expecting that kind of response would be ridiculous. The other comment was much more plausible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711187 I’m interested in what the original commenter thought, though.
marssaxman 2y ago
The author is a volunteer and the software is a labor of love: of course it's personal. Such projects thrive when the author feels like they are giving a valuable gift to a community which is receiving and appreciating it. Being required to submit your creation through an impersonal "review" process which rejects you in such a way that it's obvious nobody cared enough to even look is not just a buzzkill: it's an insult. I would walk away, too.
- freedomben 2y ago
  > when the author feels like they are giving a valuable gift to a community which is receiving and appreciating it. Who is the "community" in this case? Mozilla? Or is it us users? If the former then fine, but if the latter, then who is being hurt by this, and how does Mozilla being annoying reflect ingratitude in the community?
  - latexr 2y ago
    > who is being hurt by this See Raymond’s comment five days ago: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197 Who is being hurt is Raymond Hill (their sanity / mental stability / desire to work on this popular extension); Firefox users who preferred the Lite version; Firefox users on Android; Everyone who would’ve been recommended this extension and now won’t (see other comments in this thread); Mozilla (taking yet another hit to their reputation) and by extension the open web as more reasons to abandon Firefox lead to less browser diversity.
trustno2 2y ago
Judging from his replies, this is not the first time he had problems with the review system
akira2501 2y ago
> author took this a bit up personally Yea, those pesky unpaid developers, letting their emotions get mixed into their personal projects. Why can't they be cold and unfeeling, like the people who run the firefox "store?"
healsdata 2y ago
Mozilla sent a template email and you're acting like they did anything beyond that. They didn't even assure the author that their add-on wouldn't be removed without prior two-way communication ever again. Mozilla has a press page -- they could issue a clear, open press release talking about what went wrong, how they're changing going forward, etc. They could even acknowledge that this extension is awesome and contribute capital to making it available to their users. But, instead, they did the minimum amount possible to save face after one of their reviewers royally messed up. The things the reviewer cited in the first review are plainly wrong and a junior JS developer could tell you that. Heck, an AI reviewer would have done better (ChatGPT 4o mini): "No, this file does not appear to contain minified code. Minified code is typically compressed to remove all unnecessary characters such as whitespace, line breaks, and comments to reduce the file size, making it harder to read. The code you provided contains readable formatting, including comments, indentation, and well-structured functions, which are not characteristics of minified code."

VoxPelli 2y ago

Feels like they were just waiting for a reason to pull out – likely feels its a hassle to upload and have it review and just want everyone to trust them and keep it simple And I guess some people would claim that since its an open source addon no one can feel entitled to anything else

prmoustache 2y ago

[flagged]

latexr 2y ago

Remember why uBlock Origin exists in the first place: Raymond Hill was fed up with the chore of all the administrative crap around uBlock¹. They wanted it to be a hobby and it started feeling like a job. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38#issuecomment-91871802 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38#issuecomment-918... So it’s predictable they’d get fed up with that Mozilla review process and call it quits too. ¹ Which led them to hand the project to an unscrupulous rando that immediately tried to monetise it, leading Raymond to hate the outcome and having to decry his own previous project and ending up essentially where it all started but with a bunch of extra work in the middle.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

finnthehuman 2y ago

I can’t fault gorhill for not wanting to play the “give large rich organization infinite second chances” game. Sometimes enough is enough even if you think you’d act differently in his shoes. > Mozilla apologized No they didn’t. Now I’m not here to play apology police or anything. But that’s just a perfunctory customer service voice statement which happened to include the word “apologize”. And that’s fine. Nobody expects more. We can acknowledge it for what it is tho.

latexr 2y ago
What could the email have said that would have made you believe they had apologised? If the literal string “we apologize” isn’t it, what is?
- nicce 2y ago
  "Statistically your extensions are one of the most used on Firefox. We will handle all related matters with higher priority and care in the future, and are deeply sorry about this."
- amiga386 2y ago
  "Our review processes are not fit for purpose. We commit to replacing them with ones which acknowledge our entire ecosystem is built on the goodwill of unpaid volunteers, and we must not squander their time or resources. People like you are our lifeblood and we must not lose your trust." "We admit we used automated scanning here and tried to pass it off as human review. We got caught. Badly. All our future scans will have to pass our own internal reviews before we make demands of extension authors." these sorts of things
  - latexr 2y ago
    Come on, be realistic. They’re not going to grovel and humiliate themselves over it, especially on a first apology contact. Expecting that kind of response would be ridiculous. The other comment was much more plausible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711187 I’m interested in what the original commenter thought, though.

marssaxman 2y ago

The author is a volunteer and the software is a labor of love: of course it's personal. Such projects thrive when the author feels like they are giving a valuable gift to a community which is receiving and appreciating it. Being required to submit your creation through an impersonal "review" process which rejects you in such a way that it's obvious nobody cared enough to even look is not just a buzzkill: it's an insult. I would walk away, too.

freedomben 2y ago
> when the author feels like they are giving a valuable gift to a community which is receiving and appreciating it. Who is the "community" in this case? Mozilla? Or is it us users? If the former then fine, but if the latter, then who is being hurt by this, and how does Mozilla being annoying reflect ingratitude in the community?
- latexr 2y ago
  > who is being hurt by this See Raymond’s comment five days ago: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197 Who is being hurt is Raymond Hill (their sanity / mental stability / desire to work on this popular extension); Firefox users who preferred the Lite version; Firefox users on Android; Everyone who would’ve been recommended this extension and now won’t (see other comments in this thread); Mozilla (taking yet another hit to their reputation) and by extension the open web as more reasons to abandon Firefox lead to less browser diversity.

trustno2 2y ago

Judging from his replies, this is not the first time he had problems with the review system

akira2501 2y ago

> author took this a bit up personally Yea, those pesky unpaid developers, letting their emotions get mixed into their personal projects. Why can't they be cold and unfeeling, like the people who run the firefox "store?"

healsdata 2y ago

Mozilla sent a template email and you're acting like they did anything beyond that. They didn't even assure the author that their add-on wouldn't be removed without prior two-way communication ever again. Mozilla has a press page -- they could issue a clear, open press release talking about what went wrong, how they're changing going forward, etc. They could even acknowledge that this extension is awesome and contribute capital to making it available to their users. But, instead, they did the minimum amount possible to save face after one of their reviewers royally messed up. The things the reviewer cited in the first review are plainly wrong and a junior JS developer could tell you that. Heck, an AI reviewer would have done better (ChatGPT 4o mini): "No, this file does not appear to contain minified code. Minified code is typically compressed to remove all unnecessary characters such as whitespace, line breaks, and comments to reduce the file size, making it harder to read. The code you provided contains readable formatting, including comments, indentation, and well-structured functions, which are not characteristics of minified code."