Re: [Enigmail] Future OpenPGP Support in Thunderbird

On 10/8/19 12:41 PM, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
>> I have a terrible feeling that as with Firefox, this change in
>> Thunderbird is going to carpet-nuke Thunderbird's add-on ecosystem and
>> severely reduce its overall utility.  WebExtensions has been around
>> since 2015 and the Firefox WebExtensions add-on landscape is still a
>> blasted plain sparsely dotted with a few stunted trees.  It is still
>> shocking to me how *few* pages the entire list of Firefox WebExtensions
>> takes up.
> 
> I'm wildly in favor of WebExtensions mostly because of how it brings at
> least theoretical cross-browser portability to what had previously been
> the Wild West.  I agree the Firefox ecosystem of WE is pretty desolate
> right now, but the Google Chrome one is doing pretty well and the nature
> of WE is they can be ported from Chrome (and all its derivatives: Opera,
> MS Edge, etc.) to Firefox and back again without much headache.


For clarity:  I understand the technical arguments behind WebExtensions,
and they are generally sound.  Nevertheless, the change was a body-blow
to Firefox's add-on ecosystem from which it so far shows little signs of
recovering.  A huge number of add-on developers just threw up their
hands and quit.


> I completely understand the fear that WebExtensions will be a wasteland.
>  But let's be careful about praising the old system, because really, it
> didn't deserve much in the way of praise.

I'm not really praising the mechanism itself.  Just lamenting the loss
of the huge, rich ecosystem that grew on it, and which shows little sign
of regrowing.


-- 
  Phil Stracchino
  Babylon Communications
  [email protected]
  [email protected]
  Landline: +1.603.293.8485
  Mobile:   +1.603.998.6958

_______________________________________________
enigmail-users mailing list
[email protected]
To unsubscribe or make changes to your subscription click here:
https://admin.hostpoint.ch/mailman/listinfo/enigmail-users_enigmail.net

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iF0EAREIAB0WIQQhBcb8lF0qegc4m7jQN86O76EySQUCXZzFoQAKCRDQN86O76Ey
SfOAAKCgbiPnQxmJdKZCghkN0bt0HtGf6QCgkifebo3JSJLC7T16xJs6uPvEjsg=
=qlwO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----