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Comment by AsusFan | Hacker News Reader

You won't be laughing for long, I believe.

See this FAQ:

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/09/03/mozillas-manifest...

Note how they say: "We have no immediate plans to remove blocking webRequest and are working with add-on developers to gain a better understanding of how they use the APIs in question to help determine how to best support them."

"No immediate plans" is weasel-speak, as is "[we] are working with add-on developers".

If Mozilla was dead sure that they weren't going ahead with it, they would say so, unequivocally. And I remind you that Mozilla "worked with add-on developers" when they unilaterally decided to drop XUL and go ahead with web extensions, while failing to include support for APIs that developers said they needed to support functionality that their add-ons provided.

IMHO, adoption of manifest v3 is not a matter of "if" but rather "when".

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While I would agree that this might be just a overt way of saying "when", that statement came from Mozilla, and so far I don't think I could accuse them of misleading newspeak. If that was any other big corpo, then you are absolutely right.

As far as organization Mozilla have my trust and I don't look for false bottoms in their statements.

I would point out the previous statement they made there:

> Firefox is not, however, obligated to implement every part of v3, and our WebExtensions API already departs in several areas under v2 where we think it makes sense.

I trust Mozilla to be on my side as customer than ad industry. Well, we will see what future brings.

Mozilla is free to implement Manifest v3, while preserving the webRequest API in its current state. Maintaining the blocking abilities of the webRequest API would not introduce any incompatibilities with Chrome extensions, because they simply would not use that part of the API.

I think the concern is they might also be "free" to find alternative sources of funding if that were the case not whether or not it's technically feasible to support an API that exists today.

Of course, I'm mainly pointing out that if Mozilla retorts to use compatibility as a reason for deprecating parts of the webRequest API, they'll most likely be dishonest.

I don’t understand why you are downvoted because Firefox is a Google funded browser. One day they’ll have to compromise or find a real business model.

"Google wants to drop support for blocking WebRequests, which will cripple certain extensions, others might not even work at all. Mozilla is not going to follow this destructive path. Instead, they will keep allowing the use of blocking WebRequests and investigate how to address the issue differently."

https://gist.github.com/Lusito/dd6b76b93f83267903619103745cc...

That isn't an official communication from Mozilla. That is "someone's" recollection of something "someone" said (or not) at some workshop:

"Fair warning: I don't speak for Mozilla. Everything I say here is a recording of my memories from that event. Nothing more. Nothing less."

(and yes, I noticed that the second "someone" is Mozilla's "Add-ons Policy Policer, Thunderbird Council Chair", but my point still stands: this is something "someone" said, not Mozilla's official position)

Mozilla will certainly support manifest v3 to maintain Chrome compatibility. That was never in question.

The question is whether Mozilla _removes_ support for webRequest like Google did. And you're right, they weaseled their way out of answering that question.

You just have to look at how they don't support addons in their new mobile browser to see their true intentions.

Addon support will be available in Firefox Preview. This has been clarified.

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