On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 01:19:26PM -0500, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: > On 18 December 2017 at 13:08, Matthew Miller <mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 09:55:26AM -0800, Adam Williamson wrote: > >> I think we should be concerned by this kind of behaviour on the part of > >> the supplier of our default desktop browser, and we should express that > >> concern to them. Assuming Fedora-as-a-project shares my concern, do we > >> have a channel to communicate with them about this, and request > >> assurances that they understand the seriousness of this, and that they > >> have changed policies so that nothing like it will happen in future? > > > > Is there a fundamental difference between this and, if, say, similar > > functionality were in the FF 57 release itself? > > > > > > I am not sure I understand your question enough to formulate what > difference you are wanting. Since the addon was distributed POST > install without user intervention, it would seem yes there is a big > difference. If it were installed in FF57 then I wouldn't > install/update to that version. If it is 'pushed' post install then it > means that just using the software means that Mozilla can push addons > to my desktop without my intervention or knowledge. This takes the > browser from being my software to always being 'their' software which > I am just using for their pleasure. It occurred to me that Mozilla's view of this service is probably biased the way they support non-Linux desktop platforms (Windows, OS-X, Android, etc) where 95%+ of their users are. There the users have a direct interaction with Mozilla as the distributor. Once they have downloaded Firefox for windows from Mozilla's website, Mozilla can push out updates to their browser on the fly, and for a large % of users this requires no intervention/approval. There is no middle man "OS vendor" as you get with Linux distros (ok app stores are a middle man, but that's more about rubber stamping the release, not re-packaging & rebuilding firefox). So in this world, the ability to push out code as add-ons without user intervention, doesn't feel significantly different than their ability to push out the entire new browser verson releases to users, largely without intervention. None the less, if we consider Fedora maintainers to be adding value via the packaging process, over having users get their browser direct from Mozilla, then I do still think it is desirable to be able to opt-out of this feature in Fedora builds. Conversely though in a Flatpak world though, we would be moving much closer the model of Windows/OS-X/Android where Mozilla has a more direct way to push software to users, without a OS vendor arbitrarily rebuilding & repackaging stuff. Regards, Daniel -- |: https://berrange.com -o- https://www.flickr.com/photos/dberrange :| |: https://libvirt.org -o- https://fstop138.berrange.com :| |: https://entangle-photo.org -o- https://www.instagram.com/dberrange :| _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
