No, it's that this will do little to affect those crappy addons - they'll find a way around the signing but legitimate/new developers will have more hassles to deal with. It's effectively DRM and we all know how well that whack-a-mole game works.

Not sure. I would need replacements for:

Firebug
Chatzilla
AdBlock Plus & Element Hiding Helper
QuickDrag
SnapLinks Plus
TableTools2
LiveHTTP Headers

There are a few others that are nice but I could do without, every other addon I have is to fix what Mozilla broke.

I care because it increases the cost of the device, increases electrical consumption in operating the device (again, costing more money), generates extra heat which shortens the lifespan of the electronics, creates possible failure points which could cause electrical shorts/interference with other parts of the device. Then there's the software aspect, bugs which require patching, "features" which can't be turned off, slowness in turning the device on and off, advertising when no signal is present, etc.

I want my devices to be smart, not my displays. I want my displays to be interoperable through several generations of devices.

It's not tinfoil-hatism when it's true. Big brother issues aside, there's a very valid point in his post: Why pay for all those extra electronics/failure points when all you want is a display device. Personally, all I want is a screen and speakers with enough ports on the back for my various systems.

I RTFA. If addons require signing they have to be submitted for review by Mozilla. Mozilla becomes a gatekeeper meaning they can in theory be legally forced or simply themselves choose to not sign specific addons. That would effectively block them from being used by mainstream Firefox users who don't know about various builds/etc.

Tabs on top does have some logical sense but following that logic the bookmarks toolbar is out of place, the search bar behaves in a global manner instead of a tab based manner, etc. They just did too many "me too" things without thinking them through fully.

Most recently they removed the ability to place UI elements in the file bar - I used to keep search there (since it's global) and the address bar below the tabs. It worked really well but of course they want the file bar gone so they have to make sure no one can use it to its full potential.

If you don't sign an extension it's effectively blocked - that's the entire point of signing. The malware douches will find a way around it easily while the rest of the community suffers the consequences. It's a game of whackamole you know you can't win.

Adblock is an example addon. Insert the name of any addon.

Another [i]example[/i] that came to mind almost immediately was FireNES. Never been on AMO due to the content but now will be effectively locked out of the mainstream release of Firefox.

I agree with that entirely. Addons have been its saving grace - every screwup Mozilla made there's been an addon to fix it... or at least manage it. This move is going to gradually erode that imo. Not right away but within a few years I'd wager.

Extensions are what got me to switch away from IE way back in the day. There's a core half dozen of them that are invaluable.

Lets say Adblock gets blocked. Do you really think they're going to continue to develop for a non-mainstream audience?

For me this signals the start of the end for Firefox. Before you know it you'll see legal requests to block extensions like Adblock Plus from being signed and with more hurdles to jump through the ecosystem will shrink. What does remain will be spread out as fewer developers bother with AMO and try to drive traffic/revenue to their sites.

I'm not hostile to them, I'm using Firefox right now. I'm just critical of their choices in certain areas.

Items like the burger menu and status bar being like Chrome's take priority over fixing major issues with the sqlite database(s) (install SQLite manager, you'll be amazed at how long data is being stored) and simple things like being able to view content inside the browser (example bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s... - yes, it's coming up on its 15th birthday).

Most of their design choices are just "me too" instead of anything meaningful or original. I can't fault them too much though, they set out to copy the major browsers early on and they've stuck with it. I just wish they were quicker with less visible fixes and slower on design changes.

I just don't have the time to root/want to bother risking a bricked device anymore. FirefoxOS got dismal reviews and my experience with Mozilla is that they're more concerned with (bad) design rather than functionality. Jolla might be an option but I have my doubts as to whether they have the resources to hang in long term, Ubuntu might. Any option that allows me to delete (or does not have) the mass of pre-bundled crapware/social media apps/etc. and that can turn off the nightly Android phoning home is better than hardware specs in my books.

Honestly, I don't care how mediocre it is - if it gives me control over the software on my device I'm sold. I was dreading buying a new Android