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Stylish and Userstyles.org have a new owner

Martin Brinkmann
Oct 9, 2016
Internet
|
17

Users of Stylish who have set their styles to auto-update may have noticed that they become corrupt in the process since October 6, 2016.

This is caused by an infrastructure move after ownership of the project was transferred to another party.

Ownership of the Stylish web browser extension and userstyles.org website have been transferred from Jason Barnabe to Justin Hindman in the past two weeks.

Details on the deal and the new owner are scare. A forum post on the official Userstyles.org forum introduces the new owner briefly.

I have chosen Justin Hindman as the next leader of Stylish and userstyles.org. I'll let Justin introduce himself, but I believe Justin has the ability and desire to move the project forward.

Justin replied to that post briefly, but has not posted on the site since. This is important as changes happened to the infrastructure of the project shortly thereafter.

According to one user post, the following happened:

The site was moved to Amazon Web Services, the domain name was transferred and the new owner hidden behind a shell (domainsbyproxy.com), the repositories were transferred to a commercial Github account with no public-facing members.

Some information are verifiable right away. The userstyles.org domain is indeed protected by "Domains By Proxy", a company that blocks private information from being revealed in the registrar data (you see that when you run a whois, provided the whois service updated its dataset recently).

A quick check confirms that the userstyles.org website is hosted by Amazon now.

Style corruption issues

Probably the biggest issue right now is that users are reporting that styles are not delivered in working condition during updates. It seems to be a transport issue and not one of storage.

Neither the old nor the new owner have acknowledged the issue yet. It could be that the issue arose during the transfer of the site.

It is highly suggested to turn off automatic updates for userstyles until the issue is resolved. This can be done in the following way:

  1. Load about:addons in the Firefox address bar.
  2. Switch to the User Styles section on the page that opens.
  3. Click on the "more" link underneath each style that you have installed.
  4. Switch the automatic updates setting to off.

It is unclear if and when the issue will be resolved.

Closing Words

The issues shares similarities with how the then-popular userscripts.org website stopped working from one day to the next. Lets hope that this is not a repeat of that.

Summary
Article Name
Stylish and Userstyles.org have a new owner
Description
Users of Stylish who have set their styles to auto-update may have noticed that they become corrupt in the process since October 6, 2016.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. K said on September 11, 2020 at 3:10 am
    Reply

    How in the actual frig do I contact the owner of the site now?
    I tried to send this to their contact page on userstyles.org but I get an error.
    “To whom it may concern,
    I am contacting userstyles.org today to beg you to please make this site run faster by any means necessary. It is insanely slow or just doesn’t load. I didn’t even know it was possible for a website to be this slow in 2020.
    Please for the love of god do something.
    Thank you.”

  2. Jammy Smith said on March 16, 2017 at 4:28 pm
    Reply

    I am switching to “Stylus”, https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne. According to the commit page at github (https://github.com/schomery/stylish-chrome/) tracking codes are removed and there are many new features and bug fixes.

  3. Frank said on October 20, 2016 at 4:25 pm
    Reply

    If we’re talking about extensions, why even bother with FF? No mention of Chrome on the article. Very one-sided for a “journalist”, don’t you think?

  4. IMHO said on October 10, 2016 at 7:27 pm
    Reply

    Recent Firefox “improvements” put devs of addons in a urge to modify or even rebuild their products, so I understand if someone just gives up for this reason.

    New owners should have a team of devs, as one person projects are clearly left out in the mud by MOZILLA CORP. at this point.

    Hopefully some exceptions to this trend pushed by MOZILLA CORP. will arise… so, I think that a userstyles site with spam-aware subscription and some – just some – ads and promotional content is enough to keep both new owners and users happy.

  5. wonton said on October 9, 2016 at 11:06 pm
    Reply

    question is will everyone get a update to stylish filled with malware

  6. waterfox said on October 9, 2016 at 5:09 pm
    Reply

    Firefox new multi-process “feature” is trying to kill most addons.

    1. Chains The Bounty Hunter said on October 9, 2016 at 8:55 pm
      Reply

      That’s the spirit, post something entirely relevant to the article!

      1. T J said on October 9, 2016 at 9:30 pm
        Reply

        @ Chains The Bounty Hunter

        “That’s the spirit, post something entirely relevant to the article!”

        Seconded ! I love your subtle sarcasm :)

  7. Vrai said on October 9, 2016 at 5:08 pm
    Reply

    I wonder if this move has privacy and security concerns.

    Analogous to when a good Android app gets purchased by another outfit and they change the TOS and Privacy Policy to start collecting way more user data.

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on October 9, 2016 at 5:57 pm
      Reply

      We don’t have any information on the deal. Did the new owner pay money, or was he simply appointed? We don’t know why the repositories were moved, why the website is hidden behind a proxy, or what went wrong during the transfer or afterwards that causes scripts to become corrupt.

      Could be completely harmless, could be that it is not.

  8. Earl said on October 9, 2016 at 3:45 pm
    Reply

    Not at all similar to userscripts.org — they were spammed out of existence because the guy(s) running it just got tired of dealing with it and didn’t want to change how he/they dealt with it (or didn’t).

    Sorry to see Jason move on, though. I’ve been using Stylish almost from day one (my account there is 3 digits). I create all of my own styles, so I don’t use the site much. Still, I hope the new guy gets things straightened out soon.

    I wonder if Jason just didn’t want to deal with the internal changes Mozilla chose to force down everyone’s throat, much like many other devs.

  9. pd said on October 9, 2016 at 1:54 pm
    Reply

    Would be good to see this all get sorted out. At worst, it should be opened up and even taken on by Mozilla.

    1. ivanionello said on October 9, 2016 at 2:29 pm
      Reply

      Mozilla doesn’t preserve:
      1. API compatibility or auto conversion old addons to new addons
      2. user styles: they it doesn’t preserve Firefox UI DOM structure
      Mozilla even didn’t do userChromeJS.js and move your obligation to GreaseMonkey developer. Shame on your, Mozilla!!!

      Mozilla doesn’t pay to authors of such addons as:
      uBlock Origin, Stylish, DownloadThemAll, UnMHT, Add to search bar, FlashGot, GreaseMonkey, Ressurect Page, Context Menu Plus, ErrorZilla, Plus, FoxyProxy, FindBar Tweak, NoSquint Plus, FireGestures, Vertical Tabs Reloaded, Multi Links Plus, Screengrab (fix version), Vertical Tabs Reloaded , Tree Style Tab.
      It’s really weird because these addons only reason of using Firefox.

      I can make conclusion that Mozilla doesn’t understand user’s point of view. Difference between Chrome and Firefox in nowadays for usual user is addons. Chrome faster than Firefox on multi-process systems and video playing (hardware acceleration). It means if you don’t use addons you don’t need to use Firefox.

      Of course you can talk about open source, privacy etc. But such projects as Tor can do privacy fork of Chrome (Chromium) too. And that’s why I talk only about functionality.

      1. Parker Lewis said on October 10, 2016 at 3:05 pm
        Reply

        There’s no system in place that I’m aware of that says “hire add-on developers”. It’s all informal, when you have a successful add-on you are more frequently in contact with Mozilla, you are known there and when you’re competent they know it. You can bring yourself forward and be well received once you have a network.

        For example, Giorgio Maone (NoScript, Flashgot) is currently working on WebExtensions API so that NoScript along with a bunch of similar add-ons can be ported. He has been given what I think is the highest access level to Firefox’s source and money.
        Here’s an example of what he has had to do: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1147637

        (Note that “Vendor Cost: > $25,000” doesn’t mean he is only paid $30k. This type of bug uses $25k as an indicator threshold, “this project costs less than $25k, this one more”. It’s surprising that they even list a number publicly.)

        I don’t think one should expect this to happen to them though. The norm is that relations between Mozilla and add-on developers are devoid of money considerations, like other open source communities.

      2. Marc said on October 10, 2016 at 3:04 am
        Reply

        @Parker Lewis
        “I think a couple add-ons have been bought to be integrated into Firefox at some point, though, and Mozilla may pay some devs to do work on Firefox, like NoScript’s developer.”
        Interesting topic, can you share the source of that info? or elaborate more on the work done on FF by addons developers payed by Mozilla?

      3. Parker Lewis said on October 9, 2016 at 4:56 pm
        Reply

        ……….
        ” Of course you can talk about open source, privacy etc. But such projects as Tor can do privacy fork of Chrome (Chromium) too. And that’s why I talk only about functionality. ”
        ……….

        No, using Tor with anything but Firefox (Tor Browser) is a really bad idea: https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#TBBOtherBrowser

        ……….
        Mozilla doesn’t pay to authors of such addons as: […]
        It’s really weird because these addons only reason of using Firefox.
        ……….

        Firefox is a free product, Mozilla doesn’t earn money from the people who use it but from search deals. I’m yet to see an add-on developer complain that he isn’t paid by Mozilla. I think a couple add-ons have been bought to be integrated into Firefox at some point, though, and Mozilla may pay some devs to do work on Firefox, like NoScript’s developer.

        Do you think the app store and play store pay app developers ? No, they *take money* from them, and not a small amount. Yet, aren’t apps one of the big reasons that make people ready to pay so much for a smartphone ?

        So, based on just this (there’s more), who’s the most respectable company ?

        Content developers tend to always get the short end of the stick, no matter the content and medium. Mozilla treats them pretty well in comparison.

        ……….
        Chrome faster than Firefox on multi-process systems and video playing (hardware acceleration).
        ……….

        Objectively they are about the same, although perhaps not on your specific computer. Firefox is clearly faster for anything asm.js related (certain Facebook features, and more generally high quality games and apps). Chrome should be more responsive but only until Firefox e10s is out, which it is for people without add-ons (40% of Firefox users).

      4. adwawdawd said on October 9, 2016 at 3:26 pm
        Reply

        *downthemall :p

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