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We need to do some sort of announcement in the Thunderbird blog
about our plans concerning addons. I'd like to have feedback from
folks to see if there is any debate about what is the correct
direction for us.<br>
<br>
We've at least agreed that we are continuing to support binary
addons. Concerning signing, we took steps months ago to not move
forward on requiring addons to be signed, so there are no current
plans to require signing. There is still some debate about that in
bug 1168571. We should probably come to a firm decision and announce
it. Most commenters were opposed to signing, though there were some
holdouts.<br>
<br>
Then there is "<a
href="https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-developing-firefox-add-ons/">The
Future of Developing Firefox Add-ons - The Mozilla Blog</a>" that
announces the complete disabling of current XUL addons at some point
in the future. Several Thunderbird community members commented on
that blog post, strongly opposed to that direction.<br>
<br>
Contrast that with <a
href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Go_Faster">Firefox/Go
Faster</a> where there are plans to expand the use of addons in
Firefox, adding so-called "system add-ons" and moving Hello to one.
(This is similar to what we are doing with Lightning, which should
hopefully make our Lightning integration easier in the future).<br>
<br>
At this point, I think that the prevailing viewpoint is probably the
following, and I would like to announce this if possible in a blog
post:<br>
<br>
1) Thunderbird continues to support binary addons.<br>
2) Thunderbird will not require addon signing.<br>
3) Thunderbird has no current plans to disable the use of
traditional XUL/XPCOM addons in Thunderbird.<br>
<br>
This policy must be modified by the caveat "as long as core Mozilla
code can be used to support it".<br>
<br>
(I might also note that initial patches are being looked at for the
integration of the technology formerly know as Skinkglue into
Thunderbird core, to be called JsAccount, which makes it possible to
define new account types in Thunderbird using a traditional
XUL/XPCOM/JavaScript addon. This will almost certainly be in our
next major release).<br>
<br>
Could I have some comments or discussion on these proposed
positions?<br>
<br>
I hope the Thunderbird community appreciates that diverging from
Mozilla in this manner will probably mean that we will need to take
over addon review from Thunderbird at some point, possibly including
forking of AMO for our own use.<br>
<br>
:rkent<br>
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