alt Hacker NewsBut this is not about a high profile plugin. The high profile plugin is "uBlock Origin", and this is about "uBlock Origin Lite", which is a big thing for Chrome, but not for Firefox. Why would anyone want to use uBOL, when they have the option to use uBO?
Perhaps Mozilla does have a higher tier of review, but it's for specific plugins, not for specific authors.
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If it is, indeed, the case that they don't bump the entire account to a higher tier of service if one of their products justifies it, they've fundamentally conflated the technology with the humanity of the system and this is a predictable consequence.
They're the browser with 2% market share.
They're lucky he didn't also pull uBlock Origin because he felt insulted and let users figure it out. He doesn't owe Mozilla their tent-pole of "We make it harder for third-parties to track you", the tent-pole he set up for them for free.
But it's the same dev who's been active for over a decade and has a solid reputation. Users rely on these extensions. Removing a popular, well established extension without warning or apparently even making sure it was in violation of said policies to begin with is irresponsible.
And the specific extension in question being a popular ad/tracker blocker while Mozilla has been cozying up to the adtech industry lately and selling access to Firefox user data isn't a good look for Mozilla. Maybe Mozilla is just being grossly mismanaged but this is all getting noticeably suspicious.
From what I remember, there are noticeable efficiency gains when using uBOL on mobile browsers.
It’s more efficient which can pay dividends in battery life on android, especially for those who have older phones.
> But this is not about a high profile plugin. The high profile plugin is "uBlock Origin", and this is about "uBlock Origin Lite", which is a big thing for Chrome, but not for Firefox. Why would anyone want to use uBOL, when they have the option to use uBO?
uBlock Origin requires giving the extension full read and write permissions on every site you visit, which is a huge liability, security-wise.
uBlock Origin Lite uses Manifest V3, which doesn't require providing those permissions to the extension.
Perhaps you trust gorhill with that power, but it's pretty understandable why others might not want to give that power to a third party.
Generally, anything published by the guy who maintains your most-installed plugin is by definition high profile. That’s why we’re talking about this case on HN.
If Mozilla is providing tiered support by plugin rather than publisher, this latest kerfuffle is evidence that they should reconsider the approach. But if I were betting, I’d guess there’s no one at Mozilla whose job responsibilities include keeping their marquee plugin authors happy.