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Comment by wslh | Hacker News Reader

I never liked Mozilla for a number of experiences:

Their transition from an open source project to an organization receiving millions from the Google search box.

The restrictions (based on security reasons) to install an extension from a site different than mozilla addons. For me this was a prequel of app stores.

Mozilla Thunderbird team had no respect for people who reported bugs: they closed important bug reports.

Lack of respect for extension developers breaking compatibility between versions and not clearly isolating extensions. I remember looking into the TabMix Plus extension and seeing ~40 IFs handling special cases with other extensions.

Lack of a good community (circa 2007) where complex questions were never answered.

I can think about more disgusting experiences...

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>Their transition from an open source project to an organization receiving millions from the Google search box.

I have no problem with this as long as they use the funding to continue producing open source software. I don't think it would be possible for them to compete with Chrome as a pure open source project with no major funding. Mozilla's role since its founding of providing a viable alternative FOSS browser is just as valuable and appreciated now as it was in the IE days, imho.

>The restrictions (based on security reasons) to install an extension from a site different than mozilla addons. For me this was a prequel of app stores.

For a product aimed primarily at easily-duped non-tech lay people, I have no problem with this either. As long as the addons remain FOSS.

>Lack of respect for extension developers breaking compatibility between versions and not clearly isolating extensions.

As a FF user I can live with this, as long as the breaking changes move the browser forward technically, or get rid of some legacy cruft, or similar. It's definitely not in FF's interest either, as it incentivizes users to try other browsers, so I expect it's on their todo list, just maybe not as high a priority as other issues.

> As a FF user I can live with this...

The issue is from the developer perspective but also (although invisible) from the user side. Extension developers make titanic work and users can loose some extensions in the way of compatibility. Obviously important brands will never be incompatible but less known extensions will.

The security restrictions regarding add-ons make sense, I believe Chrome has just recently adopted them due to the browser being owned by hacked websites.

Thunderbird was a silly waste of resources and should have been shelved well before they did.

In balance I'm quite happy Mozilla exist and have been generally positive.

Can you explain you disdain for thunerbird? I'm using it as my main email program and am quite happy with ti.

I explained it: it has important bugs and the team instead of saying "won't fix" said "it didn't occur".

I agree with you on some Thunderbird bug particulars, and I weighed in and in at least two cases helped turn things around:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=668655

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=579372

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478468

Sorry I was not earlier on the scene to help -- people are supposed to mail me when my early warning systems don't see a problem in the community.

Honest question: did you try to intervene or get involved in any of these cases?

/be

Mozilla have limited resources and a large number of more important projects that could do with those limited resources.

It would be interesting to receive replies instead of downvotes.

"Their transition from an open source project to an organization receiving millions from the Google search box."

You can be both things. Generally it's nice to be paid for your work.

"The restrictions (based on security reasons) to install an extension from a site different than mozilla addons"

If someone convinces you to install a malicious browser extension (easily done in a world where people will click OK on basically anything) they can spy on and control everything you do online.

> If someone convinces you to install a malicious browser extension (easily done in a world where people will click OK on basically anything) they can spy on and control everything you do online.

Do you think then that for example desktop software must be installed from a central company like Microsoft because someone can convince you to install it from every website?

And also: do you think that Mozilla was really doing security inspections in the early days? No, it wasn't, the extensions had all kind of security bugs. I think it was more about control.

You can install extensions from any site. You'll only get an additional prompt if you're not installing from the mozilla add-on site.

You can think it was about control, but this could not be farther from truth.

<disclaimer>I work for mozilla</disclaimer>

An additional prompt means less conversions.

There are alternative methods that Mozilla could do, like bringing a Mozilla certificate to host the extension in your own site without an extra prompt.

And how would we decide to whom to extend the certificate? To whom should we entrust "conversions"?

You are talking around the larger problem, which is a huge one for many extension and app ecosystems (e.g. Google Play, where weak-AI scanners fail to stop malware and spamware).

Mozilla uses community review, which works much better but is of course imperfect, a human thing.

No one that I know of has solved this larger problem. I would be interested in research pointers and tips (not complaints).

/be

I work for Mozilla, but speak for myself. If you think it was about control, then you don't know how Mozilla works. We fight larger players with one arm tied behind our back because of our commitment to making things open and interoperable. We do it gladly, because we know that sometimes our reference implementation won't be the best implementation, and even if we fail, we want the tech to live on. Every day I have or overhear a discussion about making certain what we build doesn't privilege our own solutions over others. Are we perfect at this? No. Sometimes security of our users trumps a completely level playing field. But every time we have to slightly close a technology, know that it's done extremely begrudgingly.

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