
Mozilla kicks rebel coders to kerb with Firefox 3.6 'lockdown' - alexandros
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/18/firefox_3_6_components_directory_lockdown/
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idm
Misleading headline from The Register; no fault of alexandros for posting to
HN verbatim, but misleading nonetheless.

After all, I think this 'lockdown' is a great idea. FF has a totally
reasonable interface for addons, so there's no need to circumvent it.

Anyway, if you're using an OS that provides sensible privilege separation, I
believe you're already prevented making the sorts of modifications that
'lockdown' targets. As a result, this will lead to more consistent and
predictable behavior across platforms.

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Psyonic
Sounds like a good thing. Strange this was never done before

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AndrewDucker
Good thing too. I'm all for addons and the like, but they should be
transparent and under user control.

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phsr
Is this why half or the plugins that I had installed and working in 3.6b2
aren't working with 3.6b3? I have the Add-on compatibility reporter, and
extension check turned off....

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DEinspanjer
Doubtful. This change doesn't affect normal add-ons. It only affects
extensions that are installing bits in the main Firefox application directory
rather than in a profile.

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yan
Never realized 'kerb' is a valid Britishism until I looked it up.

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cakeface
Is there any way to tell if you have code that has been added to the
components directory?

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alextp
Erm, ls .mozilla/plugins I think

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jellicle
That's a fine idea, but how do they plan to prevent, e.g., Windows operating
system updates from adding their own extensions? Microsoft updates have added,
what, three different extensions to Firefox, without notice to the user and
with no easy way to uninstall them?

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NikkiA
The easiest way would be to encrypt the addon store on the user's hard disk.

MS could still install addons stealthily, but they'd need to violate the DMCA
to do so, and I can't see even MS being that willing to risk the legal issue
just for an addon.

