i'm starting to think, that mozilla execs are just google in disguise.
Firefox
A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox
Appears to be a mistake, but needs gorhill to appeal to make the reviewer aware of the mistake and to be able to fix it, which he doesn't feel like doing because he thinks it's unlikely to have been a mistake.
Update: now reversed, but gorhill removed it himself just to not have to deal with the review process and the possibility of human error anymore.
Sooner or later it's time to move to the smallweb
Migrating to librewolf right now. Fuck this shit
There will be no Librewolf without Firefox though.
Isn’t it maintained independently?
It's just a patch on top of Firefox.
Every time Mozilla releases a new version of Firefox, LibreWolf applies patches on top of it and releases that. No Firefox, no LibreWolf.
There are hard forks of Firefox that work semi-independently of that project. But they often struggle with feature parity and, worse, security.
Source code doesn’t magically disappear when the company who made it goes off the rails. LibreWolf will be just fine.
Who's going to develop security and feature updates for it? The Librewolf devs certainly won't have the man power.
That's not really what the issue is when people mention LibreWolf depends on Firefox. Its code will always be there, sure - but an abandoned browser is a soon-to-be-dead browser. Something as complex as Firefox needs constant updates to its security and engine, at a minimum, to keep it safe and functional. That's all work that Mozilla does for LibreWolf, and it's a significant enough burden that arguably no current fork of Firefox would be able to bear it. It's apparently a burden even Microsoft wasn't willing to bear anymore.
In theory, no, but in practice... Every major Google Chromium fork has accepted the removal of Manifest V2 add-ons. It's much easier to make a fork when 99% of your work is done for you. (That's not to disparage any fork of any major browser, just a point that development doesn't come cheap.)
So much for capitalizing on Chrome's missteps when it comes to ad blocking I guess
Mozilla says the addon has problems, the developer says it doesn't. Are there any 3rd parties that can weigh in on this?
My own reading of the situation on the developer's GitHub is unfortunately that the review by Mozilla is indeed completely inaccurate in every way. No way to even read it as a "Each side has their own story" type of thing since they reproduce Mozilla's emails verbatim. They seem just materially incorrect. The source files referenced by the emails are visible on the same GitHub account, along with their complete histories showing no changes at all - the issues referenced don't and never did exist.
The only redeeming thing I can find is that the dev (ambiguously) seems to have never replied to the email from Mozilla about the issues, and so Mozilla was never made aware that there was an issue with the review that needed fixing. They seem to have done this because they perceived the process as hostile and not worth engaging with, which... fair, I guess.
I understand where the dev is coming from but I think he still should have just replied to Mozilla. This is clearly a mistake on their part. The dev just seems pissed off and decided to not reply out of emotion. His call I guess but I don't agree with that approach.
That's Gorhill for you, very pissed off, very emotional, not very emotionally bright.
That's like every developer of these tools lol.
I agree that they should have replied, and that replying probably would have even fixed the mistake, but I also can't find it in me to fault them in this situation. Getting those emails would have been both frustrating and insulting, and one of their messages on the linked GitHub page goes into the various stresses the situation puts them through.
I don't agree that there's enough evidence here to decide Mozilla's actions were hostile/malicious - maybe if they were given a chance to fix things and still didn't, but everyone makes mistakes. Incompetent, sure, malicious, not enough evidence.
Yea I don't think Mozilla did it maliciously. I think either some dumbass analyst fucked up, or they ran it through AI, and the AI is dogshit and fucked up. Those are my guesses.
AI seems like a possibility. I find it slightly easier to believe that someone in management was stupid enough to replace human reviewers with bots than that someone in a position to decide what gets accepted had never heard of UBO and didn't realize that it's an important one.
Either way they really ought to explain themselves.
Who knows? The file that got incorrectly marked as collecting or transmitting data was named "googlesyndication_adsbygoogle.js". I'm sure that's a very reasonable guess for what a file with that name would do... in most add-ons. But like, obviously not in this one. My best guess is the reviewers have some type of tool that's intended to help them find issues, it flagged the referenced files, and the reviewer either couldn't or didn't properly verify the files were actually issues.
Yea I think it's an honest mistake. I don't see this as "hostile" to Gorhill. I have no idea why he thinks this. It's really weird.
Gorhill does not seem like the sort of person to respond to problems by giving Up.
This is the developer who responded to the creation of Manifest V3 by pioneering a hack-free V3-compliant addon, and ended up making it genuinely compelling.
Mozilla doesn't show their work (the reasoning behind the removal) but gorhill does.
Being on the fence is an interesting position to take, but I would be genuinely shocked if one of the most reputable creators of one of the most reputable extensions of all time is lying to its user base about the locations and contents of the files in the open source extension that can be audited by literally anybody just by browsing to that directory on their computer, because in addition to being open source on GitHub, it's the same source on your PC.
ETA:
Mozilla also accuses uBlock Origin Lite of not having a privacy policy (a detail I removed from my post for brevity's sake) but gorhill provides a screenshot of it. I guess that could have been faked too. Less difficult to fake: the archives of the privacy policy on Mozilla's site, which took me too long to track down
I'm not sure why you think "being on the fence is an interesting position to take", I'm glad there are people out there who have the skills to look at the code and see if it's doing what people claim it is doing or not, I am not one of them. I just want a browser that doesn't treat me like a piggy bank and less ads. I don't know the developers reputation and simply asked for more knowledgeable people to chime in, sorry if that's a problem for you.
For what it's worth, Firefox is absolutely still the browser that doesn't treat you like a piggy bank and has options to eliminate ads.
Sometimes you really have to stop and ask yourself what the fuck is going on at Mozilla's HQ. It's insane how they manage to shoot themselves in the foot at least once a week.
I think this is what's happening.
If Google loses appeals, Mozilla (and many other browsers that rely heavily on getting their revenue from Google), will have to find new ways to generate revenue. Unfortunately, they seem to be looking for the easiest way out, and that's selling out their users.
It's intentional
Google's vassal company
Yep. What is the likelihood of coincidence when 1) Google's just released manifest V3 2) is cracking down hard on ad blocking 3) is failing hard at being more than a nuisance to ad block users and 4) Mozilla is attacking its most widely used 3rd party feature; the core feature of Google's scorn.
This is why I don't donate money to Firefox. Mozilla, the for-profit corporation, should not exist. It's a parasitic entity that has no value, need, or right to exist. Users should be able to donate to Firefox and vote on specific features, without Mozilla swinging its dick around and ass blasting us all. If donations were transparent and accountable, I'd donate hundreds of dollars a year, for the rest of my life. Because of Mozillas continuous ratfuckery, they get nothing from me. I wonder how true that is for the majority of its user base.
Very cool stuff. Between this and fucking Microsuck Recall it looks like I won't be using the Internet at all in the near future....
Very fun.
Fucking Corpo pricks.
TBH, we'd probably all do well to use the internet a little less
Edit: bloody hell, I hadn't looked into Brave that deeply yet, fuck Brendan Eich and fuck Peter Thiel.
Jesus. A day without bad news from Mozilla would be nice. I am beginning to feel a distinct need to switch browsers. ~~and Brave is currently looking like the best balance between compatibility and privacy. I've only been resistant to Brave because it's based on Chromium and~~ I want to support non-Chrome browser engines, but the Firefox forks I've tried like Waterfox and Pale Moon just aren't there yet in terms of usability for me (primarily, wide protocol support for web video playback).
Anyone got any better suggestions, by any chance?
Check out zen browser! Built on Firefox and takes inspiration from arc. Built by a solo dev. I’ve really been liking it. https://zen-browser.app/
Brave is currently looking like the best balance between compatibility and privacy.
Brave is the funding vehicle of a far right political activist. Fuck Brendan Eich, fuck Brave.
IIRC it's not just Eich but also political agent Peter Thiel, the guy who created a surveillance network so powerful that the NSA relies on him.
IIRC it’s not just Eich but also political agent Peter Thiel
Seems you're right: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/new-funds-help-browser-maker-brave-try-ridding-the-web-of-nasty-ads/
I had forgotten why I dropped Brave. This was why.
Brave is also Chromium-based, so switching to that does nothing to promote a web without a Google engine monopoly. Of the three serious engine developers, Google (Chromium), Apple (WebKit), and Mozilla (Gecko), Mozilla is still the least worst option (and that's saying a lot as this story makes evident once again). FF alternatives like LibreWolf rely in Mozilla Firefox development because they don't do engine development. I hope the Servo revival turns that into a serious contender.
That's why I still use FF. I wish they were run by better people, but it's still not on par with Google's shit.
And they still offer useful features/services like email masks, cookie containers, and a VPN (which is rebranded Mullvad). If they were awful bad actors, they would be running their own exit nodes and surreptitiously collecting user data that way.
It's very privacy focused but if sites break you can turn of fingerprinting protection and thing like that in the settings with one click.
Great browser
LibreWolf still depends on Firefox for continued development. If Mozilla goes under, I don't see it having all that much of a future.
If Mozilla goes under, the main funders (except google) will start funding the librewolf team instead, and they'll have more than enough resources to maintain the browser since librewolf devs don't spend 99% of their funding on other garbage unlike Mozilla. Maybe it is about time we hand over the browser to more capable people.