Firefox To Mandate Extension Signing

First time accepted submitter x0ra writes In a recent blog post, Mozilla announced its intention to require extensions to be signed in Firefox, without any possible user override. From the post: "For developers hosting their add-ons on AMO, this means that they will have to either test on Developer Edition, Nightly, or one of the unbranded builds. The rest of the submission and review process will remain unchanged, except that extensions will be automatically signed once they pass review. For other developers, this is a larger change. For testing development versions, they’ll have the same options available as AMO add-on developers. For release versions, however, we’re introducing the required step of uploading the extension file to AMO for signing. For most cases, this step will be automatic, but in cases where the extension doesn’t pass these tests, there will be the option to request a manual code review."

Comments

Drama queen

[Anonymous Coward]

Then use one of the builds where they will disable this feature. It's not that hard, and unless Mozilla decides to stop open-sourcing Firefox you'll always be able to make your own build without the feature. If you don't even trust them enough to be sensible with this plan, then why do you trust them enough to use their complicated source code in the first place?

Re:Drama queen

[Sir_Substance]

I'd like to express my personal dislike to you as a developer for any process where I must acquire your approval in any fashion to develop for your platform.

I'm doing you a favor mate, the least you can do is not make doing that favor harder than it need be.

Re:Drama queen

[HBI]

They won't have many users at all if they piss off the extension developers sufficiently. The whole reason FF got the uptake it did was because of the very evangelizing users who care about extensions. I know of dozens of people who would not have ever had Firefox but for me.

The fact that this isn't even realized is sad, but understandable. The reason FF is losing users now can be traced to many things, but any road to recovery is being hindered by pissing off the precise people that got them to where they were.

Re:This is a good thing overall...

[aardvarkjoe]

The problem in my eyes is not the default requirement that only signed extensions are allowed; the problem is that they don't even allow users to override it.

Even if you're only concerned about development of extensions, it's a terrible idea to say that, essentially, developers can't test and develop with release versions of Firefox.

This won't end well.

[Bryan Bytehead]

I'm already seeing erosion of extensions just because of the changes that are being made in Firefox, and developers' are getting tired of fixing the breakage. Forecast Fox, a nice weather bar suffered from losing the default status bar. OK, there are ways to get it back, but now you have an extension that requires other extensions to work. Then AccuWeather created some issues, which they have since fixed. Another developer has now taken up to keeping it working, but I can't help think that the original developer is going to smack that version down. Not yet, but then, it hasn't been a week yet. Then there's a theme extension that I used to use, Noia, which has gone through a few iterations. It seems that Mozilla has made it harder for theme authors, and that author has given it up. In fact, the author has already removed it from AMO! Which means that I get left with something that looks very much, too much, like Chrome. I run a desktop, I don't run Firefox on a tablet or a phone, and I rather like how Firefox looked before everything got borked. Trying to force everybody into a phone/tablet/laptop/desktop only one way of doing things, yeah, it's something that I do object to. Strenuously, but it's not like what I have to say means anything.

Throwing another wrench into the path of extension authors isn't going to be helpful. To the end users or the developers.

Yeah, it might cut down on some cruft, but that's why you do your due diligence when installing extensions, both on and off AMO.