tl;dr – 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 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 “validator”. 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.

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’s an awful lot we don’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.

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, introduced earlier this month, will allow for a completely automated signing process, and will be used as part of this solution.

We’ll continue to require developers to adhere to the Firefox Add-ons policies outlined on MDN, 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 Add-ons Reviewer Guide, which outlines some of the more popular reasons an add-on would fail a review and be subject to blocklisting.

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 “make life harder”, 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.

I’ll post a more concrete overview of the next steps as they’re available, and progress will be tracked in bug 1229197. Thanks in advance for your patience.

kev