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Mozilla shoots itself in foot

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xtabber:
Firefox survives in today's Chromium dominated browser world mainly because of the wealth of useful extensions available for it, many of which have no Chrome/Chromium equivalent.

So today, many Firefox users woke up to find that all of their extensions had been disabled and could neither be used nor re-installed.  This turns out to be the result of a certificate checking bug at Mozillla.

ghacks has a good description of the problem here.

As I write this, nearly 12 hours later, Mozilla still has only a temporary fix involving enabling Studies in the Privacy & Security Options.

Nod5:
Big mess this!

Ghacks is a good site, but a bunch of people in the comments section there tend to be weirdly, toxically negative against all things Mozilla/Firefox.

Two more direct sources to monitor for news until a more permanent fix is out:
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/05/04/update-regarding-add-ons-in-firefox/
https://twitter.com/mozamo

https://twitter.com/mozamo/status/1124882998984204288
We are really, really sorry for the continued disruption of features that you love and trust. We know this has been frustrating, and we're committed to fixing this as fast as we possibly can.

--- End quote ---

https://twitter.com/mozamo/status/1124879521750978560
Hi folks, our team has been working around the clock for the last 24 hours to get your extensions back up and running. Unfortunately, we don't have a permanent fix ready to be released.

We're going to hold off on trying to push a permanent fix tonight (Pacific time) and give our engineers a chance to breathe while our QA team runs a more complete battery of tests on the updated builds.
--- End quote ---

Deozaan:
I read this post yesterday and breathed a sigh of relief because my Firefox wasn't affected. 8)

Then sometime later in the day I had to reboot and Firefox updated itself and lost my extensions. :'(

dantheman:
I've been a user and proponent of Firefox since day one back in... 2002 with Phoenix!
Like many, i was tempted in commenting on Ghacks but did not.
While their "Quantum" leap was a huge deception (especially because of Legacy extensions taking the boot),
this latest bump in the road might very well be the last one for me.
Have been testing quite a few different browsers since then (mostly Chrome clones) and Slimjet seems to have found a niche in my heart for reliability and features.
Waterfox? Just doesn't do it like Firefox.
Palemoon? Just feels and looks like an old clunker (even with themes).

So, no, i'm not going to post anywhere else about this.
It's just sad to see a once great browser take the ditch (maybe once and for all).

Nod5:
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/05/04/update-regarding-add-ons-in-firefox/
A Firefox release has been pushed — version 66.0.4 on Desktop and Android, and version 60.6.2 for ESR. This release repairs the certificate chain to re-enable web extensions, themes, search engines, and language packs that had been disabled (Bug 1549061). There are remaining issues that we are actively working to resolve, but we wanted to get this fix out before Monday to lessen the impact of disabled add-ons before the start of the week. More information about the remaining issues can be found by clicking on the links to the release notes above. (May 5, 13:22 EDT)
--- End quote ---

Seems like a reasonable approach. They've now had more time to test the update. The release allegedly patches (most of) the issues which should go some ways to mitigate negative impact on users who rely on Firefox on work/school weekdays.

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