And the theatre analogy is just silly. It's not like shutting down a theatre because someone got shot in it, it's like enacting a "no guns in this theatre" policy instead.
> Instead of allowing open access to the internals of Firefox, which will never be secure
Android, iOS, and many other OSes do this all the time via rather granular ACLs. It can be done.
All analogies are flawed - but Firefox is closing the theaters by completely killing off their add-on interface in exchange for an comparatively shallow experience.
If it were that simple, then the Chrome team would simply have asked the Android team to provide their expertise in designing Chrome's extension API. And of course, it's not like Android provides apps unrestricted access to the hardware (there's a reason that people bother to root their phones). Firefox addons are currently less restricted than Android apps.
Chrome's choice to not use such ACLs has no bearing on whether it is possible or reasonable for a web browser to use. Chrome is not the be-all-end-all of browser technology.
> Firefox addons are currently less restricted than Android apps.
And that's what could be changed. The lack of restrictions in the current state doesn't mean that it can't (or that it shouldn't) change.
I get it, it's a hard problem to fix. There would be a lot of pain in getting there, both for Mozilla and addon developers. But throwing in the towel feels like a cop-out.
The logic is sound, but so is closing down every theater because someone got shot in one of them. After all, everyone has TVs and blu-ray players now, and you can't get shot in a theater if there are no theaters...