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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Let me just state that I do <b>not</b>
share Eyal's position on this matter.<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I agree with sancus for example that
removing support for legacy XUL extensions in ATN was a fair
choice. The alternative would have been to fork AMO/ATN, and
it's a huge and complicated codebase, and that would not have
been reasonable. The decision made was sound.<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">But I would like TB to find ways to
make life less painful for extension developers. There are many
low hanging fruits for immediate relief that are not difficult to
implement. There are also many different ways to help.<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">My approach is to look at the
cumulative work: If 300 extensions need to do 1h of work each
(300h total), or alternatively TB project needs to do 10h of work,
I think we should let TB help out. It would be a net positive.<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I also think that TB project should be
more active in finding new volunteer owners for abandonned addons
that are in active use. In the interest of our end users to have a
smooth upgrade.<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Little decisions like that make a huge
difference in the result.<br>
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<p>Ben<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 24.09.20 um 10:01 schrieb Eyal
Rozenberg:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:74d66115-20dd-05ec-4d33-40345aa174c3@technion.ac.il">
<br>
<br>
On 24/09/2020 2:51, Andrei Hajdukewycz wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">I'm sure Wayne meant client/core
developers. </blockquote>
<br>
Well, that's not what Wayne said. And if that's what he meant,
this illustrates how us extension developers are semi-consciously
thought of as inconsequential, not peers who must be part of
decision making; and that IMHO is the result of a failure of
leadership.
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">I don't know why the same
<br>
people keep trying to re-litigate this,
<br>
</blockquote>
> transition to web extension APIs
<br>
> was guaranteed to happen in Thunderbird the moment Mozilla
decided
<br>
> that's the way Firefox was going. We delayed it as long as
reasonably
<br>
> possible. More than reasonably, IMO.
<br>
<br>
Until a couple of months ago, I was sure you were right: It's
something that just happens to us, out of our control, a done
deal, Firefox forced our hand etc.
<br>
<br>
But that's simply false: It is an arbitrary choice that we are
making - to strip extensions of their privileges and not to offer
a decent loader. The alternative is so easy, that most of it can
be accomplished by a few thousand lines of JS thanks to John
Bieling ("WindowListener").
<br>
<br>
Also, there is no such thing as "transition". It's a cancellation
of extensibility. That is terrible and unacceptable. I hope we can
overturn this after the elections.
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Unless you want to argue for rebuilding
Thunderbird on some other engine
<br>
it was never going to be possible to make them work forever.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Again, this is simply untrue. (Almost) all we are missing is a
facility for loading extensions within Thunderbird. Our regular,
non WE extensions work just fine in Thunderbird 78 once we've
loaded them. With a little bit of effort we would probably just be
able to load chrome.manifest-based extensions (perhaps with some
tweaks).
<br>
<br>
We are wasting everybody's time and resources with replicating
APIs and making people rewrite their extension code when this is
absolutely not necessary.
<br>
<br>
Eyal
<br>
<br>
PS - Some new APIs may not be a bad idea, but they should not be
about what extensions are and aren't allowed to run.
<br>
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<br>
</blockquote>
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