Mozilla reveals Firefox add-on lockdown
Mozilla yesterday detailed plans to require Firefox add-ons to be digitally signed, a move meant to bear down on rogue and malicious extensions, and one that resembled Google's decision years ago to secure Chrome's add-on ecosystem.
Some Firefox users called out Mozilla for disregarding its own long-and-often-expressed ethos of the need for an open Internet.
"We're responsible for our add-ons ecosystem and we can't sit idle as our users suffer due to bad add-ons," said Jorge Villalobos, the add-ons developer relations lead at Mozilla, in a blog post Wednesday. Firefox, which celebrated its 10th-year anniversary last November, has long been known for its laissez-faire approach to add-ons, one of the features that propelled it to a 25 percent share of all browsers in 2009 and helped revitalize the browser market.
