I doubt it. According to https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/publish/submitti... the file has to be validated and signed through their submission form, and, I quote,

> Note, however, that your add-on may still be subject to further review, if it is you’ll receive notification of the outcome of the review later.

So other than hosting, I fail to see how this is different from distributing through the official channel — you still have to pass their review.

Note that I’ve never written a Firefox add-on (I’ve written plenty of Chrome extensions though), so please correct me if I’m wrong.

That's not what mozilla is changing with this policy change. You've had to either sign or temporarily load an unsigned packed/unpacked extension for a while now.

Okay, as bad as Chrome then. Thanks for the clarification.

Pretty much. There's a preference you can change to allow unsigned extensions, but it only works in dev/nightly firefox and "unbranded editions" of release/beta firefox.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#FAQ

Well, except there are other versions of Firefox (such as developer) where you could install it. This is for the base vanilla version, if you will.