[addicted]

The old extensions were not compatible with e10s.

If the Firefox team wanted to improve speed/security/modularity, etc. they had to ditch the old extension model.

It sucks, but necessary.

[dingo_bat]

"Not compatible" is just another way of saying "we don't have the resources and/or the inclination to support your programs". Look at what Microsoft does to ensure backward compatibility. They simulate specific windows bugs for specific old games that were coded to expect the original bug in Win95. Just so users' programs keep working. It's a matter of priorities and resources. And I believe both are out of whack at Mozilla right now.

[noisem4ker]

>The old extensions were not compatible with e10s.

Addons based on older APIs could be made compatible with the newer multiprocess design (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Working_with_mul... ) and for a while Mozilla tried to persuade developers to update theirs (see https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2016/08/02/multi-process-fir... )

It was only not long after that when Mozilla's fresh direction decided to start pushing the WebExtensions bandwagon only while dropping everything else, in spite of the thousands of man-hours invested by the addon developers (many of which, you can understand, were not happy; see http://fasezero.com/lastnotice.html )

>they had to ditch the old extension model

To me, that's more like a political decision they made at an arbitrary point in time.