Mozilla recently removed every version of uBlock Origin Lite from their add-on store except for the oldest version.
Mozilla says a manual review flagged these issues:
Consent, specifically Nonexistent: For add-ons that collect or transmit user data, the user must be informed…
Your add-on contains minified, concatenated or otherwise machine-generated code. You need to provide the original sources…
uBlock Origin’s developer gorhill refutes this with linked evidence.
Contrary to what these emails suggest, the source code files highlighted in the email:
- Have nothing to do with data collection, there is no such thing anywhere in uBOL
- There is no minified code in uBOL, and certainly none in the supposed faulty files
Even for people who did not prefer this add-on, the removal could have a chilling effect on uBlock Origin itself.
Incidentally, all the files reported as having issues are exactly the same files being used in uBO for years, and have been used in uBOL as well for over a year with no modification. Given this, it’s worrisome what could happen to uBO in the future.
And gorhill notes uBO Lite had a purpose on Firefox, especially on mobile devices:
[T]here were people who preferred the Lite approach of uBOL, which was designed from the ground up to be an efficient suspendable extension, thus a good match for Firefox for Android.
New releases of uBO Lite do not have a Firefox extension; the last version of this coincides with gorhill’s message. The Firefox addon page for uBO Lite is also gone.
If Mozilla goes under, the main funders (except google) will start funding the librewolf team instead, and they’ll have more than enough resources to maintain the browser since librewolf devs don’t spend 99% of their funding on other garbage unlike Mozilla. Maybe it is about time we hand over the browser to more capable people.
Librewolf is a tiny niche within a tiny niche. No one at Google has even heard of it, and they’re certainly not going to start throwing money at a tiny obscure browser fork with zero web engine development experience if Firefox dies. Librewolf is a cool project, and I will gladly recommend it, but it dies with Firefox. It only even makes sense to consider the possibility if you have absolutely no self awareness of how small of a community we are at all.