sense of packaging firefox' addons?

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le jeudi 28 février 2008 à 04:14 -0600, Arthur Pemberton a écrit :
> 2008/2/28 Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net>:
> > Le mercredi 27 février 2008 à 13:22 -0800, Andrew Farris a écrit :
> >
> >
> >  > The builtin firefox addon update system works far faster for most desktop users
> >  > than getting a new rpm packaged, built, and shipped...
> >
> >  I works far faster for update freaks that love hunting the internet for
> >  software bits and always update to the latest version.
> 
> You know Firefox checks for updates automatically, right?

Ever tried to use this behind a corporate firewall? The firefox system
is a joke, can't even use its own proxy settings, it only sort-of works
for home users.

> > It's pretty
> >  useless for the large class of users who want their apps to just work
> 
> Requiring admin to install some addons via RPMs is your idea of just work?

That's how it works both in corporate context and in computer-illiterate
nephew-support contexts.

> >  and are not willing to invest large parts of their time in extension
> >  hunting.
> 
> As opposed to searching through the repos with yum for the extension
> you want? How much easier is that than going to addons.mozilla.org?

Our package descriptions are localized. addons.mozilla.org is
English-only. Even ignoring the various ways the Firefox extension
system is broken, this alone makes it unsuitable for a large class of
users.

> > And some extensions have been known to have security holes, so
> >  relying on users to update extensions when all do not is going to bite
> >  us sooner or later.
> 
> So the users won't hit install when Firefox offers them the updates,
> but they will run yum update to get updates?

Many users have learnt that "just-say-no" is the right answer to any
browser popups

> >  The Firefox addon update system is far from awesome when you're the one
> >  who has to install and update Firefox extensions manually on a pool of
> >  systems because users don't bother (additionally that's one reason
> 
> And how many people are there like that?

Only needs one to justify a Fedora package.

> You know you can just create
> your own RPM for your pool of users, and get what you want done.
> 
> >  Firefox fares so bad in the enterprise — geek-oriented installation
> >  system without any provision for centralised management).
> 
> What kind of enterprise is willing to run Firefox on Linux but not
> willing to roll out their own supplemental apt/yum repository?

The kind of enterprise that decides it has better ways of spending money
than filling out the missing pieces in Fedora.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: Ceci est une partie de message num?riquement sign?e
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/attachments/20080228/26f81137/attachment.sig>