Signing is only required on official release and beta builds -- users on developer edition, nightly, and unbranded builds can opt-out of the signing requirement by flipping a setting in about:config.
I worked around this with a script that patches the omni.ja zipfile to change the setting to require signing.
It needs to be unpatched for updates - I don't allow my normal day-to-day Firefox instance to write to it's own binary anyway. Firefox tells me when there is an update, and I then restart into my special script that unpatches, runs Firefox with permissions to modify itself and a profile that I don't use for day to day browsing, only for updates, and then patches it again.
Developer edition has updates but it's a beta. Unbranded builds aren't a beta but don't get updates. There is no version that's just like normal firefox except without signing enforcement.
Part of the problem is the very delineation between developer and end user.
How about Firefox just be a powerful open platform that anyone can develop for easily with as few roadblocks as possible? We should all be one step away from being developers.
I am so glad I was on the old Firefox 12 years ago. I'm glad that I was able to quickly whip up extensions and share them with my friends. Wanting to automate bypassing my school's wifi captive portal, or wanting to change how the bookmark menu was displayed encouraged me to experiment.
The fact that Mozilla now sees only an audience of consumers that need to be protected from themselves and marketed to is the problem. Mozilla is afraid of their precious precious brand being sullied.
The point of my post was that there should not be such a hard delineation between regular users and developers. A developer edition is not a helpful solution.
What’s the trade-off here? Browsers are trying to protect users against a metric ton of malware trying to exfiltrate login credentials, and the vast majority of users have no clue what an extension even is.
Last week my dad thought he had a virus, but really it was just a BS spam site that he had accidentally allowed to send him notifications. The screen in Chrome to revoke notification access was like 8 clicks deep.
Browser extensions are a powerful, beautiful, dangerous bit of tech. Is it asking too much to put some guard rails in place that really aren’t too much trouble to follow?
> Is it asking too much to put some guard rails in place that really aren’t too much trouble to follow?
No, but that's not what Mozilla is doing. A confirmation prompt is a guardrail. This is a fence.
> Last week my dad thought he had a virus, but really it was just a BS spam site that he had [...] allowed to send him notifications.
That's his own fault. Not an ideal outcome by any means but a private organization has no right to restrict people's freedom just to protect others from themselves.
This would not have protected your father from any of that. If hostile code can inject an extension into your Firefox profile, it can also install a keylogger or read your unencrypted Firefox password store. There is almost no protection against your credentials being exfiltrated. Neither would it protect you against unwanted notifications. It will however greatly reduce the functionality of Firefox.
This is security theater.
> Browser extensions are a powerful, beautiful, dangerous bit of tech. Is it asking too much to put some guard rails in place that really aren’t too much trouble to follow?
There are many layers of guard rails already. The problem is that now they want to also inspect every extension that I use, even if it is for completely private use and will never be available to the public. And Mozilla does not exactly have a good track record with trust.
