Re:Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions ...
by CaptSpify on Saturday February 18, 2017 @12:46PM
(#13675720)
> but there's no right that says that Mozilla must be the one to maintain that code.
And there's no right that says I have to use FF. They are giving up one of their big advantages.
Re:Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions ...
by kibwen on Saturday February 18, 2017 @01:13PM
(#13675866)
From where I stand, it looks like they're trading one of their big advantages for a massively reduced maintenance burden which will unquestionably allow them to compete better on every other front. It may or may not pan out, but I think we can all agree that some change of trajectory from the past few years is needed if Firefox hopes to stay relevant. You're free to think that Mozilla leadership is incompetent, but in this particular instance I think their stance is grounded in sound reasoning, as inconvenient as it is undoubtedly is for some power users.
Re:Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions ...
by CaptSpify on Saturday February 18, 2017 @04:01PM
(#13676656)
> You're free to think that Mozilla leadership is incompetent
Source on me saying that? I think they are making a few dumb decisions, but that's putting a lot of words in my mouth.
FF has very few advantages. They aren't competing on speed, mind-share, ease-of-use and now they aren't competing on reliability of add-ons. I get that this can help them focus, but pushing away their limited user-base is like using an axe to help a sinking ship.
Owning the code that runs on your machine is your right as a user of open-source software, but there's no right that says that Mozilla must be the one to maintain that code. And nobody's asking you to maintain your own personal fork either: find all the other people who care about unlimited (if fragile) browser extensibility via unrestricted addons and form a community (or hell, a corporation) to collectively make the browser you want, starting from a fork of Firefox (or Chromium, or Midori).
If you believe that there are enough people in your position to make such a collaboration successful, then you're all set. And if you don't believe that there are enough people out there who care about unrestricted addons to make such a project viable, then--while I sympathize with your plight--maybe it makes business sense for Mozilla to drop support for unrestricted addons, especially due to the ways that this feature hinders all the other features that Firefox users are clamoring for: speed, reduced memory usage, speed, HTML5 adoption, speed, ES6+ adoption, speed, speed, security, and speed.