1233680 - xpinstall.signatures.required

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[Bob49]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0
Build ID: 20151208100201

Steps to reproduce:

Force the use of signed addons is breaking the work of users !!

Some addons, including language dictionaries and packages are very useful.
Lambdas users do not know what to do! The preference is still the solution to avoid problems.

https://forums.mozfr.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=127572

What do you make to not break the work of users ?? Sign addons linked to it or not ?



Expected results:

What should have happened? The user is the freedom to use the module he wants. If problems with, it only looks at him.

All addons related to privacy, security and quality of navigation, at work, should not be blocked. In short, the majority of useful addons, so leave the choice to the end user.

The average user should not use the versions Aurora, Nightly or ESR, but what may come in the future, if you remove the preference to not let the freedom to use! which would make the Release the least used version, which would not make sense!
Unless users go to another browser authorizing the installation of the desired addons.
Be careful not to block the desires of the users .............................

Sorry if this is not totally the place here but anger rises among users and it is hoped that you apaiserez it avoiding forced cost that cost the absolute use of addons signed.
On the way, from the time that Firefox works fine, the use of addons concern only the user! This is the opinion of the majority of users addons.

Comment 1

[Bob49]

I have forgotten ... many people already talking not to perform the next updates to Firefox!!..

Comment 2

[Gingerbread Man]

Please explain what this bug report is about clearly and concisely. How are you prevented from running any given extension?

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Addons/Extension_Signing#FAQ

* Add-on signing won't be enforced for themes, dictionaries, language packs or plug-ins.
* Extensions listed on the Firefox Add-ons site are already signed.
* Extensions hosted on third-party sites can be submitted by their authors for signing, without listing them on the Firefox Add-ons site.
* Extensions that users have modified for their personal use can be submitted for signing, without listing them on the Firefox Add-ons site.
* The signing requirement can be disabled in Firefox Developer Edition and Nightly, as well as unbranded versions of Beta and Release (the latter will be available at some point in the future).

Comment 3

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I'm going to close this as it isn't a bug report and so isn't the appropriate place for discussion. There have been many threads on this subject in the addons-ux and dev-addons mailing lists on this subject already where you can bring up any additional concerns that haven't already been discussed at great length.

Comment 4

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

Well, it was or wasn't a "bug report" but the behaviour complained about is indeed the intended behaviour for Firefox, so this bug is indeed INVALID — as a Firefox bug.

At the moment there are the following possible workarounds:
(a) Make sure that you use only signed extensions. If necessary (for instance if you have an unmaintained unsigned extension already installed, and you want to go on using it) get the .xpi file from the extensions/ subfolder of your profile, or zip up the unpacked extension from a subsubfolder of the extensions folder or your profile and change its extension from .zip to .xpi, and in either case submit the .xpi thus obtained for signing.
(b) remain with Firefox, but use either a Nightly aka a1 aka Trunk build, or a Developer Edition aka a2 aka Aurora build, and set xpinstall.signatures.required manually to false in about.config.
(c) instead of Firefox, use SeaMonkey, where xpinstall.signatures.required is false by default, even in beta and release builds. WARNING: not every Firefox extension works with SeaMonkey. Some work with both out of the box, some can be converted as an extra step, but some parts of both browsers (in particular the tabbrowser feature) are so different that no extensions supports them both.

Comment 5

[Bob49]

@ Gingerbread Man,  passing many people use Firefox Developer and Edition, Nightly  (Versions we will suggest to users lambdas, for the use of their favorite unsigned addons and despite possible bug versions of Firefox!) and ESR, do not worry you? and therefore fewer users to release?
Fewer and fewer users for Firefox Release, you not worry?

>> Gingerbread Man said :"as well as unbranded versions of Beta and Release (the latter will be available at some point in the future)" ! It is not clear

@ Dave Townsend, 
Firefox developers are struggling to follow is that the majority of users want, on the subject of addons!

If there is no bug brought in, it does nevertheless one! An important bug in the possibility of users work and a bug in the proper use of Firefox!
If I use a not signed addon, it looks at me, it does not affect the proper functioning of Firefox. (besides personally, I use old addons that will not be signed and which pose no problems. I would do anything to keep my freedom ... to use, like many other people.)

Because too much precipitation made for the development of Firefox! .. And as some people are already talking, use Firefox becoming less and less free!

In short, many people do not understand this relentlessness absolutely not to allow freedom of the final choice to the user, for Firefox Release.

One last word before this bug is locked... I volunteer for Firefox for 10 years (and uses it for over 10 ..), but like other volunteers, now I doubt very much the direction taken for Firefox and does not reassure me. So I do not know if you understand the difficulty to reassure users and soothe their anger?!

Sorry again, if all has nothing to do here, but had to come to say ... and not just for myself but for many users names.

As mentioned users and even volunteers, complicated and very dark future years for Firefox, with paths that are taken far from unanimous ... and many people worried and sad.

Well, now ... you can lock and act as if nothing was said.
Long live Firefox, and hoping not to lose the great freedom of use that we had before, what was its strength and past image...

Comment 6

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

@Bob49: Bob, your English is not always very understandable. I found even some places where the only way to make sense of it was to translate it to French and back. Example:

"If I use a not signed addon, it looks at me," [...] →
"Si j'utilise une extension non signée, ça me regarde," [...] →
"If I use an unsigned add-on, it's my business," [...]

The fact that your email address is @free.fr helped me in this respect.

Comment 7

[Bob49]

Sorry, me, not having studied English at school (but Spanish!) ...
Translation Page (Google) mixed by mistake

Comment 8

[Rahly]

My only problem with this, is that if this preference is removed.  It removes customability from the user.  For example, I have several patches to extensions that either, the author refuses add or the project is dead.  Now if I add those patches, the extension refuses to load.  Either this preference needs to stay, or something needs to be added to the interface saying "Files in extension have changed, extension has been disable, would you like to re-enable?" where when selecting re-enable, the extension files are rehashed.  The hash is stored and if files deviate from that/those hashes, then it asks again.

Comment 9

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to Rahly from comment #8)
> My only problem with this, is that if this preference is removed.  It
> removes customability from the user.  For example, I have several patches to
> extensions that either, the author refuses add or the project is dead.  Now
> if I add those patches, the extension refuses to load.  Either this
> preference needs to stay, or something needs to be added to the interface
> saying "Files in extension have changed, extension has been disable, would
> you like to re-enable?" where when selecting re-enable, the extension files
> are rehashed.  The hash is stored and if files deviate from that/those
> hashes, then it asks again.

You're welcome to use the unbranded builds that will still allow you to disable this preference.

Comment 10

[Rahly]

(In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] from comment #9)
> You're welcome to use the unbranded builds that will still allow you to
> disable this preference.

Unfortunately, the unbranded builds never perform as good as the official release.  Loading any web page with even a few things going on in javascript cause the all tabs to stop responding for several minutes, i.e. sports web sites or wikia.com.  Which I never get in any of the official builds.  The unbranded builds are good for one thing only, testing.  Which fails completely if you need to use it as a serious browser.  They also use far too much memory compared with the official, 2gigs for 2 tabs opened to "google.com", opening 10 tabs and windows tells me i'm running low on ram and would I like to close it.

Comment 11

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to Rahly from comment #10)
> (In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] from comment #9)
> > You're welcome to use the unbranded builds that will still allow you to
> > disable this preference.
> 
> Unfortunately, the unbranded builds never perform as good as the official
> release.  Loading any web page with even a few things going on in javascript
> cause the all tabs to stop responding for several minutes, i.e. sports web
> sites or wikia.com.  Which I never get in any of the official builds.  The
> unbranded builds are good for one thing only, testing.  Which fails
> completely if you need to use it as a serious browser.  They also use far
> too much memory compared with the official, 2gigs for 2 tabs opened to
> "google.com", opening 10 tabs and windows tells me i'm running low on ram
> and would I like to close it.

I'm not sure where this is coming from since the unbranded builds aren't available yet. They will be identical to branded Firefox builds in every way except different icons and the ability to turn off this pref. They won't otherwise behave any differently.

Comment 12

[Rahly]

(In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] from comment #11)
> I'm not sure where this is coming from since the unbranded builds aren't
> available yet. They will be identical to branded Firefox builds in every way
> except different icons and the ability to turn off this pref. They won't
> otherwise behave any differently.

Sorry, I thought you were talking about all the other releases, Nightly, Developer Edition, Beta, which all seem to preform the same way which is far inferior to final releases.  They are generally unbranded as well, with different icons.