
Google and Mozilla are failing to support browser extension developers - dessant
https://armin.dev/blog/2019/08/supporting-browser-extension-developers/
======
geofft
> _It is a regular occurrence to hear about open source developers selling
> their browser extensions, only for their users to be exploited later on by
> the new owners. ... We are witnessing the failure of browser vendors to
> recognize the value of our labor and the important role it plays in a
> healthy browser ecosystem._

So this is an interesting philosophical question - the market value of the
extension is the value of "monetizing" it by stuffing ads, or worse,
monitoring/tracking/exfiltration, into the extension. It's the market value of
the trust of the extension's userbase. Is that the value of the extension
developer's labor?

I would argue not really. The value of a bank, for instance, is _not_ the
amount of money in all of the vaults. That money is held in trust for
customers, and it is not for the owner of the bank to dispose of. Therefore,
nobody who makes a _fair_ offer for the bank should expect those resources in
the transaction, so a fair market price for the bank is much less - such as
the present value of the interest earned by the bank minus the interest
returned to customers.

In particular, the only reason the bank has customers is they expect to get
their money back, generally with interest, at some point in the future. If
they didn't, they'd put their money elsewhere. So if a bank is willing to sell
the contents of the customer accounts, that indicates incomplete information
in the market - customers didn't know the bank wasn't trustworthy. The true
market value of the bank, in a perfect-information market, would be close to
zero.

It seems like the problem here is that we know two ways of compensating
browser extension developers: "don't" and "breach your users' trust." Those
point to wildly undervalued _and wildly overvalued_ estimates of the fair
market value of the developers' work. And we should come up with some fairer
way to value their work (or, more fundamentally, to compensate them; we may
not need to monetize the extension, necessarily) first, and I'm not totally
sure it's the fault of browsers for not having had such a clever idea - it
seems like we collectively need to figure that out.

~~~
paulgb
As an extension developer who recently got one of these offers, your analysis
is a good verbalization of my gut feeling on the matter. I turned it down, of
course.

While users may feel bad about extension developers not being compensated, I
feel like the larger story here is that:

\- Companies are buying extensions for nefarious purposes, which presents a
huge security risk.

\- Evidently, app stores are sufficiently bad at detecting this that it
remains profitable.

~~~
geofft
Yes, agree - detecting extensions that have changed hands into someone who
wants to "monetize" it and preventing those updates from getting to users
definitely seems like a thing that the browser manufacturers should be doing
(even if - and perhaps _especially_ if - it lowers the apparent market value
of extensions) and that the onus is on browser manufacturers / extension store
operators to do so.

~~~
kibwen
I'm not sure how one would automatically detect such a thing as a browser
extension changing hands. If you require signing extensions to make a release,
there's nothing stopping a developer from selling their keys. And even without
changing hands, the threat to users remains the same if the company just goes
from "we'll give you $10k for your extension" to "we'll give you $10k to link
this library into your extension and not ask what it does" (one might counter
that an ethical developer could accept the former option while rejecting the
latter, but it's hard to believe any developer willing to sell their extension
in the first place isn't fully aware of what that means for the future of
their users).

~~~
michaelmrose
Just never allow such a transfer force a new user to create a new name. Ensure
this is part of the terms of service. Prosecute violators that is to say buyer
and dev under cfaa and ensure a hefty fine is levied with prison time.
Nefarious parties will find few sellers thereafter.

~~~
zzzcpan
You forgot to mention a small detail: force every other country in the world
to enforce your ridiculous laws.

~~~
adrianN
Thanks to the movie industry, this is mostly a solved problem.

------
keraf
NoCoin author here. With approx 700k users across 3 browsers, I have obviously
received many emails for purchasing my extension. I have never accepted to
sell my project, even when I had some low financial moments, because my intent
was never to make money with it. And it being an open source project, it
belongs to the community. I would also feel like I am breaching the trust of
my users if I decide to hand it over to an unknown party. I always look up at
the exemplar integrity of VLC maintainer @jbk [0].

Regarding the monetization of NoCoin, I advertise the fact that I am accepting
donations in the description of the extension and have links on the GitHub
page. There is also a button to donate directly on the Firefox add-ons page.
Almost all donations came from the Firefox Add-ons store. I guess if Google
would do the same on the Chrome store, developers would get more donations?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372048)

~~~
elorant
If I'm not too intrusive, what's the average offer an extension like yours
receives for selling it?

~~~
callumlocke
I’m the author of JSON Formatter [1] with 989,000 users.

I probably get a couple of offers a year for it. Of those that have offered
specific sums, they ranged from from $10-20k. I always reject them, because
it’s pretty obvious they want to turn it into malware.

I’ve had a couple of cases where I felt they went to some effort to schmooze
me first, presenting themselves as having benign intentions, almost like a
carefully crafted con. But as far as I can tell, there is no legitimate,
ethical reason to want to acquire it, and I won’t sell out my users like that.

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/json-
formatter/bcj...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/json-
formatter/bcjindcccaagfpapjjmafapmmgkkhgoa?hl=en)

~~~
ignoramous
$20k seems like a pretty lowball offer? Close to 1M users (plus potential for
further growth) and you have me expecting at least $400k... Or, am I expecting
too much?

~~~
Khoth
There isn't potential for further growth if it gets bought. They just want to
serve malware to the existing userbase.

~~~
itake
That is still $0.02 per user. Not a bad deal.

------
asr
On the one hand, this seems like a real missed opportunity by Mozilla. As
Chrome reigns in extensions that conflict with Google's business model, this
is a reason to use Firefox.

BUT - extensions are also often the cause of a slow and frustrating Firefox
experience, which then leads folks to talk about how Chrome is better-
performing/faster (I've been guilty of this myself in the past). Mozilla needs
to make sure Firefox is keeping pace with Chrome, which they've presumably
decided means de-emphasizing extensions.

That said, not sure why Mozilla needs to de-emphasize donation buttons.

~~~
jhasse
> BUT - extensions are also often the cause of a slow and frustrating Firefox
> experience

I doubt that this is true. Some extensions like Adblockers even make browsing
faster.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
For a demonstration install Dark Reader on an ageing or budget machine. It can
render Chrome sluggish and frustrating and Firefox almost unusable.

There's a fair few others that can upset Firefox but never seem to be the same
extent of annoyance for Chrome.

~~~
kevingadd
I had a similar problem with Owl, it's because they typically use CSS filters
to achieve dark mode. It's frustrating because it's a very bad solution but
it's easy to not realize that the extension is causing the problem (especially
because browsers work hard to hide it)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
That does show up one area that Chrome still eclipses Firefox - the Shift Esc
task manager that will usually reveal which tab or extension is cratering
things. Firefox is much more opaque about memory and especially CPU use,
making it far harder to pin down.

~~~
feanaro
Do you know about about:performance?

~~~
giancarlostoro
Firefox has a task manager now. They should improve on this to compete with
Googles. Nobody wants to type a URL when they can hit an easy shortcut.

~~~
cartlidge
I have a hope of remembering about:performance. I can bookmark it, and it's
there in autocomplete. You can make a link to it in your webpage or in a nice
plugin (which, once it gets a couple thousand users, you can sell to an honest
businessman for tens of thousands).

Shift-Escape? what? I'm supposed to just randomly press every key combination
till something happens?

~~~
efreak
If you can remember the hotkey for Windows task manager, sure. It's
Ctrl+Shift+ESC. If not, you can access it through the menu.

------
bduerst
>The Chrome Web Store and the Microsoft Store do not offer features for
supporting extension developers.

That doesn't seem right - doesn't Google let developers monetize extensions in
the chrome web store?

    
    
         You can publish Hosted Apps, Chrome Apps, Chrome
         Extensions, and Themes in the Chrome Web Store.
         Collectively these are called simply "Items". You have 
         many choices when it comes to making money from items 
         that you publish in the Chrome Web Store. This page 
         covers just a few ways to monetize your store item:
    
         - In-app payments
         - One-time charge
         - Subscription
         - Offering a limited trial version of your item
    

[https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/money](https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/money)

The issue of developers selling out their chrome extensions to 3P (that the
author references) probably has more to do with the fact that bad actors get
better money for harvesting user PII than the developer would if they
maintained the extension as it was originally meant to be. This is a real
privacy issue, but it's also why Chrome cracked down on extension APIs
recently by restricting what is shared with the extension.

~~~
throwaway5389
> it's also why Chrome cracked down on extension APIs recently by restricting
> what is shared with the extension

It'd be nice if they had 'trusted devs' or similar. Even if they provided a
paid meatbag extension review service, I'd pay to get the plugins I use
reviewed!

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
That's an interesting idea. I, too, would happily contribute to a funding pool
to have a competent human analyze the extensions that I'm using. One would
expect this to (loosely) allocate money to checking the extensions that are
most used, so the ecosystem would benefit even for people who weren't
contributing.

~~~
anbop
And corporations would pay a lot to have extensions security reviewed if they
had a business use case.

------
dessant
Hi, author here. Certain software may bring greater value for society when it
is freely accessible for everyone, without compromising on user privacy, while
being partially subsidized by users who can afford to sponsor such projects.

It would benefit us all if browser vendors would enable users to easily
support extensions, and do so from a unified user interface, like an extension
store.

It sends a different signal for the user when a browser vendor encourages and
handles contributions for extensions, instead of leaving developers on their
own to build makeshift donation prompts and expect users to give out credit
card data or sign up to third-party services just to donate.

Sponsoring your favourite extensions right from your Google or Firefox account
would help projects receive more funding, be more user-centered, and further
enrich the browser extension ecosystem, while encouraging new developers to
publish their own extensions and support user needs.

------
Groxx
Redesign reducing visibility of donation button, and no real support for
selling / monetizing your extensions in the stores: totally agreed, they can
and likely should do better there. I'd be curious to see if the change had any
effect tho, and how much. Above-the-fold is valuable real-estate, it's
possible that it's better-utilized after the change, just along a different
set of priorities.

Direct payment from browser vendor to useful devs: not sure where that money
would come from.

Alexa can probably support it since more use of an Alexa likely has a strong
correlation with increased purchases through Amazon - they essentially
directly profit off popular extensions, in a measurable way because they track
everything, since it keeps people using Amazon in general.

I'm not sure Mozilla gets much money from e.g. adblock. Or other popular
extensions. Plus they're a non-profit, so their cash-in-hand isn't too likely
to change dramatically, unless we can convince more companies to donate (which
could allow donating to extension devs).

~~~
wmf
_Direct payment from browser vendor to useful devs: not sure where that money
would come from._

Web browsers are insanely profitable thanks to search referrals.

------
tick_tock_tick
Chrome and Google not caring or supporting these kind of things I get but
Firefox's recent efforts seem to be either gross negligence or targeted moved
to destroy their addon ecosystem.

I thought Firefox was going to get better with their redesign but it seems
like it just resulted in lost functionality. Their misguided quest to get more
market share has been a completely failure and pushed anyone who valued their
customizable experience away.

~~~
Causality1
Been trending that way for years now. Making a browser that does what you want
it to do is way easier than making a browser that does what your users want it
to do. Sometimes I wonder if the "iterate version integers every six weeks so
our e-peen looks bigger" approach is to blame.

~~~
stctw
That's an interesting thought. It's almost like Chrome and Firefox have been
in a "browser cold war" for years now, trying to outdo each other's version
numbers, trying to entice users with greener grass rather than the stronger
"attacks" of the IE-Firefox "browser wars" of the past, and one side trying to
imitate the other.

Chrome realized that if it jumped ahead in version number, it could gain a
huge PR advantage, and then Firefox was forced to follow that pattern or
appear outdated. Users may have gained some rapid iteration, but in the long
term, I think we lost the ability to understand how the browsers are changing
(of course, some of that is a matter of the inherent complexity explosion in
the Web).

And once you change to the constantly-incremented version numbering scheme,
how can you ever go back to something more meaningful? Who's would blink
first?

Happily, Pale Moon, for example, retains more modest version numbers. I hope
their developers continue doing well. Imagine if it (or a similar project)
were the next Phoenix, the way Firefox rose from Netscape's ashes.

~~~
userbinator
_Chrome realized that if it jumped ahead in version number, it could gain a
huge PR advantage, and then Firefox was forced to follow that pattern or
appear outdated._

Personal anecdote, but of all the non-technical people I know (which I define
as those who may barely know what a browser is, and only use the computer for
browsing a tiny fraction of the Internet), _none_ of them like the constant
change, especially when it breaks their workflow, and those who do pay
attention to version numbers think the rapid "version explosion" (to quote
one) is completely silly. Like a lot of other things in life, they just put up
with it because they're powerless.

I really wonder who the browser makers are targeting with the "move fast and
break things constantly" attitude, because it's definitely neither the
technical nor non-technical users I know.

~~~
Causality1
Certainly isn't me. I'm still salty about Firefox 2 removing the "close
current tab" button and putting an X on every tab instead. It was nice having
that muscle memory instead of having to hunt down whichever tab you're
currently focused on.

~~~
userbinator
I've never used Firefox 1.x so haven't used that UI, but it sounds like
something they could've made configurable but didn't want to, for whatever
reason.

However, in all the tabbed browsers I've used, Ctrl+F4 closes the current tab.

~~~
pferde
Ctrl+W also does that, and is much easier on the fingers (unless your hands
are huge).

------
iamnotacrook
That's not their core business. It's redolent of the complaints when Twitter
etc limit their API/number of tokens per app etc. They're doing it because it
no longer serves a purpose. Perhaps Mozilla is slightly different but Google
would only benefit from ad/tracker blockers going away.

~~~
eitland
> Google would only benefit from ad/tracker blockers going away.

In the long run, this might sadly be true, but I disagree for now. No way
Google is doing this because of the goodness of their hearts.

They do it because they haven't completely squeezed out all competitors yet.

Removing or utterly crippling addons now would force users to realize what
Chrome is while there still are options, meaning a huge chunk of the users
would go to other browsers.

Look to Chrome mobile, the one that they can force ram down the throat of >
50% of mobile users. Chrome mobile doesn't have addons because it doesn't
compete.

Sorry to all Googlers here for being so blunt, and feel free to point out one
or more examples from the last few years where Google has prioritized their
users above quarterly / yearly profits.

I used to be a huge fan but Google has massively disappointed me over the last
5-10 years.

~~~
rifung
I work for Google, opinions are my own.

> Sorry to all Googlers here for being so blunt, and feel free to point out
> one or more examples from the last few years where Google has prioritized
> their users above quarterly / yearly profits.

No need to apologize =]

An example that comes to mind is the current focus on accessibility. I think
from an objective financial/engineering perspective, it's much preferable to
just ignore accessibility because it adds complexity and isn't used by the
vast majority of users. However, providing access to everyone is the right
thing to do.

Another example is crisis tools
([https://crisisresponse.google/](https://crisisresponse.google/)). I don't
think we make money from these apps.

Of course, I'm sure people will say this is just for marketing or something
but in the end, how can one get around that?

I don't think Google is flawless. Far from it! But it's a huge company with
way too many products so it's only natural there will be bad decisions and
good ones, just as there are bad people as well as good people.

> Look to Chrome mobile, the one that they can force ram down the throat of >
> 50% of mobile users. Chrome mobile doesn't have addons because it doesn't
> compete.

I'm not sure I understand.. are you saying that Chrome mobile takes up a lot
of RAM? Because if so I would agree with that, but isn't that precisely why
extensions shouldn't be allowed? Implementing extensions would add an even
greater burden and poorly written extensions would provide a bad user
experience.

If anything I really wish we could strip Chrome down. I think people adopted
Chrome early on because it was really light and personally I really feel like
we let everyone down by letting it get so bloated.

~~~
SquareWheel
I'm curious. What specifically would you like to see removed from Chrome?

~~~
rifung
To be honest I don't know too much about what's been added but I can only
assume new functionality must account for the increased bloat.

I imagine it's support for things like "Chrome Apps" or more generally the
desire to get websites to be able to do the same things as native apps. I
suspect there's also the fact that Chrome has to support Chrome OS as well.

But I am new to Chrome OS so admittedly I am not too familiar on the history
or background =]

~~~
SquareWheel
Chrome OS was my thought as well. I'm not sure how much of that is included in
Chrome itself, and how much is bundled separately as part of the OS though.

For some reason I thought Chrome Apps were deprecated. PWAs can do most of the
same things today.

~~~
rifung
Ah I think you might be right! But to be totally honest, I really don't care
for PWAs either.. Maybe I am just too old fashioned but I don't care for my
web apps having offline functionality.

That being said, I am not familiar with the technology so this is very much an
uninformed opinion!

------
pluc
They're also failing users. The Chrome Web Store is a cesspool of malware and
other abusive extensions - Mozilla is doing better though.

------
timwaagh
I don't think devs should be shamed into not selling their software. That's
some questionable 'white-knight' ethics. If you sell something, great. if you
don't, also great. if you use ads to monetize or sell data, also great. If you
use a freemium model which serves ads to the plebs and asks money from the
elite, even better.

For that matter I don't think open browser producers can be expected to foot
the bill for it either. their browsers do not cost a thing, after all and
browser extensions only impact a very small part of their userbase.

Please remember that not everyone has a problem with ads, 'privacy invasion'
and targetting. Some people do and think that everyone should think the same.
I find this mentality rather stifling.

~~~
giancarlostoro
> Some people do and think that everyone should think the same. I find this
> mentality rather stifling.

I feel like people should be more informed over the implications. If they
still don't care once I explain the issues, that's their prerogative to not
care. I feel like most people don't understand why the "I have nothing to
hide" mentality will cost us plenty of freedoms we still have.

I agree with you though, most people aren't like the majority of HN users,
they just don't care or don't understand.

------
Razengan
Despite having a smaller extension ecosystem, Apple seems to have the right
idea: Safari extensions (and soon even system extensions) are discovered and
delivered via the App Store like any other app, and their developers can
charge for them like any other app.

------
Causality1
Personally I think this is sort of missing the forest for the trees. The big
picture is, Mozilla and Google don't like extensions or extension developers.
They don't like people customizing their browsers. We see feature after
feature drop from being a button in the menu, to being an option in the
about:config, to requiring an extension, to requiring manual modification of
files, to being entirely disabled.

Look at something as simple as putting the tabs below the address bar. If
Mozilla respected their users, it would be as simple as hitting the Customize
button and then dragging the tab bar to the bottom. Then they stuck it in an
about:config option. Then they required you to make a custom userChrome.css.
Now guess what, in the newest version userChrome.css loading is disabled by
default and you have to manually turn it back on. How long it will take before
it's entirely disabled? I have no idea, but the message from Mozilla is clear:
"You can use it the way we want you to or you can go to hell".

------
haberdasher
This speaks for itself:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQi3OH0AE53rgDO1...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQi3OH0AE53rgDO1DSSRqLdH0h7790hPKiIHGlayLfhDGyEZWZLmxBQVNuSE4JFR3uj3fjRGY2lOK2J/pub)

"Last updated: 3/12/2018"

------
oceanghost
I know this is tangential-- I would like to write a FF extension -- can anyone
point out some good resources for that? Beyond what's on Moz's official site
of course.

~~~
rococode
I just started working on an extension recently with no experience and have
found it to be pleasantly unchallenging. If you are familiar with web
development already, it's actually a pretty easy transition. Primarily you
have the option of injecting some JS into every page, and also running a page
in the background. So you just need to design your extension to work that way.
Then you have access to some extension-specific APIs for stuff like the little
icon in the toolbar or reading cookies.

I think if you already know web dev, you probably don't need a specific
resource to figure it out - just dive right into it and look up which parts of
API you need for certain things.

If you don't already know web dev, perhaps it would be better to learn that
first and then look at extensions.

~~~
oceanghost
Thank you! I'm not a web dev precisely, but I think I can muddle through that
:-)

~~~
jazoom
It's essentially the same as a Chrome extension now. Tutorials and
documentation for either should work fine.

~~~
Scrantonicity
Extensions written for one should work in the other as well after some minor
repackaging.

------
jordanmoconnor
I make an extension for a living.

Use Stripe and bake billing/account management into your app.

Same experience across browsers.

~~~
cameronbrown
I'm curious, is it just an extension or do you have other contact points with
customers?

I feel like it's hard to justify paying for an extension so I'd love to know
how you convince people to pay.

------
ww520
I wrote browser extensions in pastime. They are mainly for my needs and happen
to be useful for others. I'm lucky that I don't need to write extensions for
financial reason, and don't ever plan to sell out. On the other hand, I can
understand why some developers choose to do so. People get a family to feed.
It would certainly helpful for Google and Mozilla to have greater support for
the extension developers financially.

------
SimeVidas
Idea:

1\. The browser introduces a flat monthly subscription, e.g., $5 per month.

2\. If the user signs up, the browser would distribute the money between the
extensions that the user has installed, by default.

3\. The user would also have the option to direct the money to specific
extensions and/or to exclude specific extensions from this payment.

4\. This system would be completely optional, but the browser cold in return
provide an advanced extensions UI with extra privacy and security options.

~~~
techntoke
A flat monthly subscription for what exactly? Advanced extensions with UI and
extra privacy/security options? There is a reason why this doesn't exist, and
people already pay extra money for Windows and Mac OS. If people are already
paying for an OS, they shouldn't then be required to pay for a premier
browsing experience.

------
Santosh83
The basic issue is people do not want to pay for software if a 'good enough'
free replacement is available. Hence Mozilla having to source money from
whomever is willing to give them, and hence the race to the bottom. This has
been particularly true in browser space. We usually pay for using programs of
similar complexity like PS or AutoCAD etc., but we have always taken it for
granted that browsers should be free and/or bundled. This works to the
advantage of big players who can sink in the millions involved, which Mozilla
is only alive today because of former momentum (user base). Forget about a
browser startup or a community-maintained alternative. It has become too huge
and complex an undertaking for anyone to bother as long as
Chrome/Edge/Safari/Firefox will be available, no matter if they turn into
user-hostile mess.

------
zzzcpan
A lot of extensions are made because people need them for themselves, not to
live of extension development. And this is something that can exist as a nice
open source ecosystem with some oversight, like packages on a typical linux
distro. All the development stuff can go into something like AUR on Archlinux,
where users have to explicitly participate and accept more risk. And this is
something not very evil browser vendor might be willing and be able to do. But
creating incentives for extension developers is definitely the opposite of
their plans, they'd rather kill extensions altogether.

------
mcjiggerlog
They're also failing to support users, as hinted by the article. The fact that
developers are able to simply hand over control of extensions to a third
party, who are going to do god knows what with it, without the user being
informed at all, is ridiculous.

I have a few extensions with 10-100,000 users and have received many emails
from people asking to buy one. The numbers in the article seem accurate - if
you have 100,000 users you could be looking at offers for tens of thousands of
dollars. So, it's no surprise that developers cave in and compromise their
users' security.

------
throwaway5389
I've experienced slowness / crashes with FF extensions, as some people have
described here, annoyingly the problem doesn't seem to be reproducible. I'd
optimally like to have 4-5 plugins maximum - key-driven browsing, adblock, CSS
overrides and JavaScript injection.

What's the best way to blame / troubleshoot a bad plugin? Because as soon as I
add them all I experience 1-2 page crashes/infinity loops per hour

~~~
throwawayy1001
> What's the best way to blame / troubleshoot a bad plugin?

You don't do that if the plugin is provided for free, you can just say
"thanks" or "no thanks", just don't use it / develop your own.

~~~
throwaway5389
I meant respectfully blame, fwiw. If your plugin crashes my browser and I like
the plugin, I'll fix it / send a bug report. If I don't like it, or it's
beyond repair, I'll uninstall it.

I have way bigger stones I can grind my axe on, if I ever feel the need.

------
billpg
I don't use browser extensions (as much as I'd like to) because I've seen too
many being sold for nefarious purposes.

------
vfclists
Why don't developers of addons like gorhill and piro accept donations and hand
them out to other addon developers they consider worthy, or some other
developers users consider worthy?

It will help addon developers or even bring new developers to support addons
whose original developers want to move on to other things.

------
Ambele
If you aren't buying the product, then you are the product. Maybe the problem
is that extensions stores aren't as monitized as the IOS and Android App
stores?

------
thomas
No way anyone google or Mozilla can compete with a potential sale of 30 cents
a user. So if that’s truly they case they might was well expect the sales to
happen and start to limit the power of extensions or put them behind expert-
only gates, like Chrome flags.

~~~
dessant
Obviously none of us expect to be paid the black market value of extensions.
The point is for browser vendors to offer better tools for sponsoring
developers, because it benefits everyone.

And no, the reaction to security issues should not be to further limit the
extension API and declare war on the concept of general computing.

------
Mathnerd314
If it's open source then anyone can fork, right? So sell the extension, fork
it, publish a new non-shitty version, and let users know via some non-official
means. The only losers are the ignorant people who don't switch and the people
you sold it to.

~~~
pferde
Those ignorant people are your users too, and you're still being a dick by
selling them out, no matter how you try to rationalize around it.

------
gdulli
Between every release making we worry what functionality I'm going to lose and
which extensions will stop working, or having all my containers wiped out
permanently, Mozilla is failing extension users.

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pjmlp
Maybe it is me, but I seldom see the value of using an extension versus little
utilities.

It is not as if every mainstream language doesn't have libraries to handle
networking requests.

~~~
zzzcpan
I wrote a security focused javascript, ad and annoyance blocking extension for
myself, which is essentially a CSP, script and style injector with keyboard
shortcuts. I don't see how utilities can help here.

~~~
pjmlp
It would have been done via proxy configuration.

~~~
zzzcpan
Sure, it's technically possible, but it's an order of magnitude more work.

~~~
pjmlp
Which prevents any extension author free reign on my browser data.

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pluma
I think what a lot of comments are missing is that the value of a browser is
directly boosted by the value provided by its extensions.

I wouldn't have switched to Firefox from Chrome if most of the extensions I
was using wouldn't have had readily available equivalents or workarounds. I
would have held off on test-driving the new Edge as my daily workhorse browser
if I hadn't noticed an extension for my password manager in the Microsoft
Store and found that I can install most extensions from the Chrome Web Store
too.

Netscape and Opera prove that the paid browser business model is dead, sure,
but that doesn't mean browsers (especially browsers developed by companies
with lots of related paid services) don't represent value for the companies
developing them -- and that those companies don't profit from that value.

Google especially benefits massively from Chrome's marketshare -- even to the
extent that their own web services can get away with treating competitor
browsers as second-class citizens. Extension developers contribute to the
value driving that marketshare and open source extension developers do so with
practically no return on investment.

This is just another example of the true sharing economy of open source
clashing with capitalism (which is inherently based on extracting surplus
value as profit, not sharing it back). Which would be fine, really, if the
people participating in the sharing economy wouldn't also exist in capitalism
and have to rely on their success under capitalism to ensure basic subsistence
like food, shelter and the means of extension development.

Extension developers using ads, tracking, malware or selling their extensions
to malicious entities are just trying to find ways within the system to
capitalise at least on some of the value they've provided. That's undesirable
and developers shouldn't be in such dire circumstances to be willing to give
in, but this is a systemic problem.

Luckily unlike with most systems, this system is almost entirely in the hands
of browser vendors. Browser vendors could emphasize donation options -- just
look at how big open source projects like some Linux distros push donations
while still allowing for freeloading. But browser vendors currently have no
direct incentive to do so -- in fact, doing so might actually harm their
metrics.

------
OrgNet
Sometime I think that Google is controlling the decisions at Mozilla for
Firefox...

------
taqcp
Hey man, thanks for Buster. I donated. You deserve it.

