14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla is providing an update on the McAfee Firefox add-on that was found to cause serious issues. At the time, some Mozilla contributors argued that the add-on should be blocked/blacklisted until the problem was fixed.
Such drastic measures are not generally favored by Mozilla, but the foundation has in the past taken a stance and blocked popular add-ons that were causing crashes and problems for a large number of users, including McAfee add-ons.
However, the team took a more cooperative approach this time and worked with McAfee to come with a solution. As such, a fixed version of the problematic add-on, SiteAdvisor, is already available.
"Just over a week ago, Mozilla’s memory team discovered major leaks caused by the McAfee SiteAdvisor 3.4.1 add-on. A bug was filed, and six days later the McAfee team released version 3.4.1.195, which fixed the major leaks," Mozilla wrote.
The updated SiteAdvisor 3.4.1.195 only fixes the major memory leaks, so there are still issues. But those are being worked on, in the meantime, the add-on should be quite usable.
The teams at McAfee and Mozilla haven't yet determined if the remaining issues are caused by the add-on or faulty Firefox code.
"The Add-ons Team generally will not block legitimate add-ons without consulting with their developers first and giving them a reasonable amount of time to analyze and fix whatever problem is discovered," Mozilla explained.
"We have found that developers of legitimate, widely-used add-ons are usually more than happy to work with us in finding resolutions to problems and ensuring a smooth experience for users," it added.
There were some at Mozilla, including the developer who discovered the memory leaks that were asking for a block for the add-on, arguing that problems caused by it ended up looking bad for Firefox. But Mozilla doesn't want to alienate developers working on Firefox add-ons and worked with McAfee on a fix.