{"id":7616,"date":"2015-12-01T15:34:19","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T23:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/?p=7616"},"modified":"2016-02-01T13:34:21","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T21:34:21","slug":"de-coupling-reviews-from-signing-unlisted-add-ons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/2015\/12\/01\/de-coupling-reviews-from-signing-unlisted-add-ons\/","title":{"rendered":"De-coupling Reviews from Signing Unlisted Add-ons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>tl;dr<\/strong> &#8211; By the end of this week (December 4th), we plan to completely automate the signing of unlisted add-ons and remove the trigger for manual reviews.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past few days, there have been discussions around the first step of the add-on signing process, which involves a programmatic review of submissions by a piece of code known as the &#8220;validator&#8221;. The validator can trigger a manual review of submissions for a variety of reasons and halt the signing process, which can delay the release of an add-on because of the signing requirement that will be enforced in Firefox 43 and later versions.<\/p>\n<p>There has been debate over whether the validator is useful at all, since it is possible for a malicious player to write code that bypasses it. We agree the validator has limitations; the reality is we can only detect what we know about, and there&#8217;s an awful lot we don&#8217;t know about. But the validator is only one component of a review process that we hope will make it easier for developers to ship add-ons, and safer for people to use them. It is not meant to be a catch-all malware detection utility; rather, it is meant to help developers get add-ons into the hands of Firefox users more expediently.<\/p>\n<p>With that in mind, we are going to remove validation as a gating mechanism for unlisted add-ons. We want to make it easier for developers to ship unlisted add-ons, and will perform reviews independently of any signing process. By the end of this week (December 4th), we plan to completely automate the signing of unlisted add-ons and remove the trigger for manual reviews. This date is contingent on how quickly we can make the technical, procedural, and policy changes required to support this. The add-ons signing API, <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/2015\/11\/20\/signing-api-now-available\/\">introduced earlier this month<\/a>, will allow for a completely automated signing process, and will be used as part of this solution.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll continue to require developers to adhere to the <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.mozilla.org\/en-US\/Add-ons\/AMO\/Policy\/Reviews\">Firefox Add-ons policies outlined on MDN<\/a>, and would ask that they ensure their add-ons conform to those polices prior to submitting them for signing. Developers should also be familiar with the <a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/Add-ons\/Reviewers\/Guide\/Reviewing\">Add-ons Reviewer Guide<\/a>, which outlines some of the more popular reasons an add-on would fail a review and be subject to blocklisting.<\/p>\n<p>I want to thank everyone for their input and insights over the last week. We want to make sure the experience with Firefox is as painless as possible for Add-on developers and users, and our goals have never included &#8220;make life harder&#8221;, even if it sometimes seems that way. Please continue to speak out, and feel free to reach out to me or other team members directly.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll post a more concrete overview of the next steps as they\u2019re available, and progress will be tracked in <a href=\"https:\/\/bugzilla.mozilla.org\/show_bug.cgi?id=1229197\">bug 1229197<\/a>. Thanks in advance for your patience.<\/p>\n<p>kev<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>tl;dr &#8211; By the end of this week (December 4th), we plan to completely automate the signing of unlisted add-ons and remove the trigger for manual reviews. Over the past &hellip; <a class=\"go\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/2015\/12\/01\/de-coupling-reviews-from-signing-unlisted-add-ons\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>De-coupling Reviews from Signing Unlisted Add-ons - Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/2015\/12\/01\/de-coupling-reviews-from-signing-unlisted-add-ons\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kev Needham\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/2015\/12\/01\/de-coupling-reviews-from-signing-unlisted-add-ons\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/2015\/12\/01\/de-coupling-reviews-from-signing-unlisted-add-ons\/\",\"name\":\"De-coupling Reviews from Signing Unlisted Add-ons - 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