> And then, as someone pointed out on reddit, I realized that we still haven’t taken the time to explain in-depth why we had no choice but to remove XUL-based add-ons.
> * very quickly, add-on developers realized that anything they did could break anything else in the system, including other add-ons and Firefox itself, and they often had no way to prevent this;
> * similarly, anything Firefox developers did could break add-ons, and they often had no way to prevent this;
> * also, some of the changes that Firefox needed to remain competitive with Chrome were going to break most add-ons immediately, possibly all add-ons in the longer term;
> * oh, and by the way, since add-ons could do everything, they could very easily do anything to the operating system, from stealing passwords to pretending to be your bank.
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It's a really long article with lots of background and technical detail, so I felt it safe to include a larger summary of the basic points than I normally would.
> * very quickly, add-on developers realized that anything they did could break anything else in the system, including other add-ons and Firefox itself, and they often had no way to prevent this;
> * similarly, anything Firefox developers did could break add-ons, and they often had no way to prevent this;
> * also, some of the changes that Firefox needed to remain competitive with Chrome were going to break most add-ons immediately, possibly all add-ons in the longer term;
> * oh, and by the way, since add-ons could do everything, they could very easily do anything to the operating system, from stealing passwords to pretending to be your bank.
---
It's a really long article with lots of background and technical detail, so I felt it safe to include a larger summary of the basic points than I normally would.