[kinetik]

There's no "special Flash installer". I think you're talking about the Plugin Finder Service, which is generic and works with any plugin. PFS serves metadata that points the user to the vendor's plugin download page (possibly to a streamlined installer built by the plugin vendor): https://wiki.mozilla.org/PFS

The "special Flash updater" detects if the user has Flash installed and is out of date, and only if so, it points them to Adobe's website to download the latest version. This is likely to happen for all widely used plugins. Flash is the first because it's so widely installed. More details here: http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2009/09/04/helping-users-ke...

It's pretty easy to find this all out with a search engine, so I'm beginning to wonder if your "slightly incorrect" claims are deliberate misrepresentations. I'd question your agenda, but honestly I don't care. The facts are available for anybody with a search engine handy.

[blasdel]

Sure it's theoretically generic, but is there a single other plugin available through Mozilla's PFS server as an xpi? They have records for the other standard plugins, but those all use native installers. I can't find a dump of their database, and it looks like there's no way to enumerate it through the API.

Gnash and swfdec are available via Debian and Ubuntu's independent PFS servers as an xpi in their Mozilla forks, but not through Mozilla normally since I don't think their UI will present multiple options for one set of <embed> attributes.

The feature exists solely because Flash doesn't ship in the default installs of Windows (or in OEM installs in NPAPI form), or any of the Linux distros (just OS X).

Mozilla are collaborators: they don't have the moral high ground here.