925637 - Blocklist unity-firefox-extension add-on

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Blocklist Policy Requests, defect)

Description

[Benjamin Kerensa [:bkerensa]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130917154415

Steps to reproduce:

unity-firefox-extension an extension produced by Canonical Ltd. automatically installs itself into Firefox since Ubuntu 12.10. 

(https://code.launchpad.net/~webapps/unity-firefox-extension/)


Actual results:

The extension adds functionality to Firefox that causes annoying notifications to be displayed to users when they visit certain websites prompting them to install the site as a WebApp


Expected results:

Firefox users on Ubuntu should not see third-party add-ons bundled into what they expect to be a clean install of Firefox. This extension could confuse users to believe that the notifications are coming from Firefox versus being the behavior of a third-party add-on.

Comment 1

[Benjamin Kerensa [:bkerensa]]

Additionally it seems just in a quick reading of add-on guidelines that this add-on does not comply with some bits of the "Be Transparent" portion of Add-On Guidelines. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Add-on_guidelines

Comment 2

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

We won't block this add-on for coming preinstalled with Ubuntu. It's their distribution of Firefox and their call to include the add-on in it.

Can you please specify which other violations of the guidelines are present in this add-on?

Comment 3

[Benjamin Kerensa [:bkerensa]]

@Jorge: Just the pre-installed nature well its not really pre-installed in that another application separate from Firefox in Ubuntu actually installs it. The other would be, lack of any descriptions for the add-ons themselves which is also covered in the transparency bit.

This was discussed at Summit informally so I just decided to raise the bug and see what Add-ons thought because the policy seemed clear on descriptions and installing add-ons without notification to the user.

Notably the notifications that pop up in Firefox look very similar to the User Personalization labs feature that was demoed at Summit so users down the road could confuse this for a Firefox feature.

Comment 4

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

(In reply to Benjamin Kerensa from comment #3)
> @Jorge: Just the pre-installed nature well its not really pre-installed in
> that another application separate from Firefox in Ubuntu actually installs
> it. The other would be, lack of any descriptions for the add-ons themselves
> which is also covered in the transparency bit.
>
> This was discussed at Summit informally so I just decided to raise the bug
> and see what Add-ons thought because the policy seemed clear on descriptions
> and installing add-ons without notification to the user.


I think the Ubuntu add-on fits in the exceptions class, given that it is their own distribution of Firefox, similarly to what you would get in an enterprise deployment or a school. Furthermore, the add-on can be disabled, so users can get rid of it if it is a problem.

Having a description in the Add-ons Manager would be great to have, for sure, but we won't block an add-on for that reason. I would recommend bringing it up in their bug tracker.

> Notably the notifications that pop up in Firefox look very similar to the
> User Personalization labs feature that was demoed at Summit so users down
> the road could confuse this for a Firefox feature.

I have no problems with that. Add-ons can have very similar UI or be incompatible with each other. Furthermore, the Ubuntu add-on predates UP for quite a while.

I don't see any reasons to blocklist the add-on at present.