[akdor1154]

My crank unevidenced theory is that

1. they wanted an Apple-level of verified review process for AMO, because the Chrome store and even Android app store have problems with malicious content.

2. This costs money.

3. They didn't want to open a free for all because they didn't know exactly how to go about solving 2. yet, and if they introduced some payment system then it would be easier to do from a clean slate, without an AMO full of existing extensions to somehow grandfather through.

As said before, this is fully unfounded and probably unfair speculation. I like it more than the 'google conspiracy against adblockers' though because Mozilla's motivations in this case are quite reasonable and can be taken in good faith. Keeping credit card skimmers out of AMO at the cost of restricting access to 'Firefox Pro'/'AMO Pro'/author-pays would honestly be quite a good thing for Mozilla to consider imo.

In any case it's great to see them allowing things now!