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 says the addon has problems, the developer says it doesn’t. Are there any 3rd parties that can weigh in on this?
My own reading of the situation on the developer’s GitHub is unfortunately that the review by Mozilla is indeed completely inaccurate in every way. No way to even read it as a “Each side has their own story” type of thing since they reproduce Mozilla’s emails verbatim. They seem just materially incorrect. The source files referenced by the emails are visible on the same GitHub account, along with their complete histories showing no changes at all - the issues referenced don’t and never did exist.
The only redeeming thing I can find is that the dev (ambiguously) seems to have never replied to the email from Mozilla about the issues, and so Mozilla was never made aware that there was an issue with the review that needed fixing. They seem to have done this because they perceived the process as hostile and not worth engaging with, which… fair, I guess.
I understand where the dev is coming from but I think he still should have just replied to Mozilla. This is clearly a mistake on their part. The dev just seems pissed off and decided to not reply out of emotion. His call I guess but I don’t agree with that approach.
That’s Gorhill for you, very pissed off, very emotional, not very emotionally bright.
I agree that they should have replied, and that replying probably would have even fixed the mistake, but I also can’t find it in me to fault them in this situation. Getting those emails would have been both frustrating and insulting, and one of their messages on the linked GitHub page goes into the various stresses the situation puts them through.
I don’t agree that there’s enough evidence here to decide Mozilla’s actions were hostile/malicious - maybe if they were given a chance to fix things and still didn’t, but everyone makes mistakes. Incompetent, sure, malicious, not enough evidence.
Mozilla doesn’t show their work (the reasoning behind the removal) but gorhill does.
Being on the fence is an interesting position to take, but I would be genuinely shocked if one of the most reputable creators of one of the most reputable extensions of all time is lying to its user base about the locations and contents of the files in the open source extension that can be audited by literally anybody just by browsing to that directory on their computer, because in addition to being open source on GitHub, it’s the same source on your PC.
ETA:
Mozilla also accuses uBlock Origin Lite of not having a privacy policy (a detail I removed from my post for brevity’s sake) but gorhill provides a screenshot of it. I guess that could have been faked too. Less difficult to fake: the archives of the privacy policy on Mozilla’s site, which took me too long to track down
I’m not sure why you think “being on the fence is an interesting position to take”, I’m glad there are people out there who have the skills to look at the code and see if it’s doing what people claim it is doing or not, I am not one of them. I just want a browser that doesn’t treat me like a piggy bank and less ads. I don’t know the developers reputation and simply asked for more knowledgeable people to chime in, sorry if that’s a problem for you.
