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Mildly related, but since when google asks for money to release extensions? Is this a joke?

Unfortunately not. Once you set everything up to Publish the extension and hit the Publish button, Google informs you need to pay a 5 USD developer registration fee (using Google Payments) which allows you to publish up to 20 items.

Edit: They claim this is "to check the legitimacy of the accounts of the developer to ensure users are protected against fraud." (paraphrasing slighty)

I only use chromium (not even chrome!) for testing, but as an OSS developer I'm even more appalled by this.

When I polished the extension with a custom Icon, I went to the Chrome Store with a big smile on my face, it asked me to set up settings, let me set up a custom icon, forced me to think of a good informational text, and at the "moment supreme" of hitting the Publish button it asked me for a credit card. Luckily Mozilla returned that smile and had a suprisingly fast review-proces, it only took around 12 hours I think.

Anyway, now I can first see how popular it will be on Firefox before I decide to try find a 'throw away' credit card.

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