Re:Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons
by CorpusCalcium on Monday December 03, 2018 @08:54AM
(#18588717)
Nobody is "prohibited" from doing so. You want a Firefox that lets you do whatever you want, you can easily use an unbranded or pre-release build, or even roll your own or use someone else's lightly-tweaked fork. Nobody owes you an officially supported product that's for a wide audience and is also a complete free for all. Even Ubuntu and other Linux distros require you to opt into third-party software channels. You just don't like the specific choice that Mozilla is giving you, but it's still very easily there.
It applies directly. Anything that gives the user a choice can make the user experience worse for a user who makes the wrong one. But it also makes it better for a user who makes the right one in a way different from what the developer would have had to use as a default -- because sometimes something is right for 70% of the users, so it should be the default, but the other 30% are better off with something else. Taking away the choice makes the 30% worse off to benefit the 10% of the 70% that would have chosen incorrectly for themselves. That is not a relative advantage.
> I meant this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18583257
I'll reply there, but note that you haven't addressed my point -- other platforms survive and indeed have the largest share without prohibiting users from installing software, even when competing directly against others that do.