I’m going to chime in here as a “would-be contributor”. I say
would-be because it’s most likely I won’t be.
I just spent the last 20 hours or so writing an extension. My
main target was Firefox for Android. I did this to fix a problem
I had (related to the browsing experience, not the core
application). I took it upon myself to find a solution and the
time to try sharing my solution with others. These kinds of
choices are the bedrock of community, the want to help others.
Now I see this thread and understand that not only can I not
share my extension with others, I can’t even really use it
myself, locally. The decisions by Mozilla talked about here
explain why it was so hard to test on mobile, why I couldn’t find
a way to simply load my extension locally, and why the docs are
confusing.
I want to let Mozilla know that the inablity to meaningfully
create and distribute add-ons has a negative effect on the
community. As would-be contributor, I feel betrayed. I feel
dirty, as though I’d just been robbed. It’s a yucky feeling. The
20 hours I spent developing could have been spent with my
family. I could have worked on my house. I could have learned a
skill that helped others, that benefited a community. Instead,
it looks like I’ve been told that my add-on, and subsequently my
time, is not worthwhile. Not because of some inherent technical
issue. Instead, because…well, I’m not sure why. It has
something to do with Mozilla feeling that add-ons detract from
the browsing experience or are unsafe or… I can’t quite tell
why.
Anyway, I’m not going to start running a nightly build just to
run my add-on. I don’t see that as a viable solution. I really
wanted to make the add-on work for Tor Browser. I can see that’s
not likely to happen.
Maybe I missed something and my understanding is off. Maybe I’m
spoiled by Emacs. I don’t think that making extensions needs to
be this difficult.
Is there a way I can run my little, 20 line add-on locally, on my
personal device, for my own benefit? Or is it really the case
that I’m barred from that?