This week’s release of Firefox Quantum has prompted all kinds of feedback, both positive and negative. That is not surprising to anybody – any software that has a large number of users is going to be a topic for discussion, especially when the release in question is undoubtedly a watershed.

While I have previously blogged about the transition to WebExtensions, now that we have actually passed through the cutoff for legacy extensions, I have decided to add some new commentary on the subject.

One analogy that has been used in the discussion of the extension ecosystem is that of kernelspace and userspace. The crux of the analogy is that Gecko is equivalent to an operating system kernel, and thus extensions are the user-mode programs that run atop that kernel. The argument then follows that Mozilla’s deprecation and removal of legacy extension capabilities is akin to “breaking” userspace. [Some people who say this are using the same tone as Linus does whenever he eviscerates Linux developers who break userspace, which is neither productive nor welcomed by anyone, but I digress.] Unfortunately, that analogy simply does not map to the legacy extension model.

Legacy Extensions as Kernel Modules

The most significant problem with the userspace analogy is that legacy extensions effectively meld with Gecko and become part of Gecko itself. If we accept the premise that Gecko is like a monolithic OS kernel, then we must also accept that the analogical equivalent of loading arbitrary code into that kernel, is the kernel module. Such components are loaded into the kernel and effectively become part of it. Their code runs with full privileges. They break whenever significant changes are made to the kernel itself.

Sound familiar?

Legacy extensions were akin to kernel modules. When there is no abstraction, there can be no such thing as userspace. This is precisely the problem that WebExtensions solves!

Building Out a Legacy API

Maybe somebody out there is thinking, “well what if you took all the APIs that legacy extensions used, turned that into a ‘userspace,’ and then just left that part alone?”

Which APIs? Where do we draw the line? Do we check the code coverage for every legacy addon in AMO and use that to determine what to include?

Remember, there was no abstraction; installed legacy addons are fused to Gecko. If we pledge not to touch anything that legacy addons might touch, then we cannot touch anything at all.

Where do we go from here? Freeze an old version of Gecko and host an entire copy of it inside web content? Compile it to WebAssembly? [Oh God, what have I done?]

If that’s not a maintenance burden, I don’t know what is!

A Kernel Analogy for WebExtensions

Another problem with the legacy-extensions-as-userspace analogy is that it leaves awkward room for web content, whose API is abstract and well-defined. I do not think that it is appropriate to consider web content to be equivalent to a sandboxed application, as sandboxed applications use the same (albeit restricted) API as normal applications. I would suggest that the presence of WebExtensions gives us a better kernel analogy:

Gecko is the kernel;

WebExtensions are privileged user applications;

Web content runs as unprivileged user applications.

In Conclusion

Declaring that legacy extensions are userspace does not make them so. The way that the technology actually worked defies the abstract model that the analogy attempts to impose upon it. On the other hand, we can use the failure of that analogy to explain why WebExtensions are important and construct an extension ecosystem that does fit with that analogy.