Mozilla recently removed every version of uBlock Origin Lite from their add-on store except for the oldest version.
Mozilla says a manual review flagged these issues:
Consent, specifically Nonexistent: For add-ons that collect or transmit user data, the user must be informed…
Your add-on contains minified, concatenated or otherwise machine-generated code. You need to provide the original sources…
uBlock Origin’s developer gorhill refutes this with linked evidence.
Contrary to what these emails suggest, the source code files highlighted in the email:
- Have nothing to do with data collection, there is no such thing anywhere in uBOL
- There is no minified code in uBOL, and certainly none in the supposed faulty files
Even for people who did not prefer this add-on, the removal could have a chilling effect on uBlock Origin itself.
Incidentally, all the files reported as having issues are exactly the same files being used in uBO for years, and have been used in uBOL as well for over a year with no modification. Given this, it’s worrisome what could happen to uBO in the future.
And gorhill notes uBO Lite had a purpose on Firefox, especially on mobile devices:
[T]here were people who preferred the Lite approach of uBOL, which was designed from the ground up to be an efficient suspendable extension, thus a good match for Firefox for Android.
New releases of uBO Lite do not have a Firefox extension; the last version of this coincides with gorhill’s message. The Firefox addon page for uBO Lite is also gone.
Mozilla doesn’t need 80% of its revenue to do a good job of maintaining a browser codebase. So it’s a good thing that that funding could disappear, Mozilla could fold like a lawn chair and the next open-source fork that everyone got behind would pick right up and probably do a better job at the core task than Mozilla is.
This idea that open-source software requires more than a dedicated contributing community is (one of many) memes created by the likes of Google and Microsoft in order to snuff out FOSS competition.
i could see that being the case, i would expect it to be the case, but judging by how much the CEO of mozilla gets paid, idk how long that will last…
Although the open source nature of it would be highly beneficial, it might give grounds for google to be a literal monopoly, so maybe that would be productive even. Who knows.