Is there a reason (technical or philosophical) that we haven't put any
effort into a permissions model for addons similar to what we're trying to
do for webapps on fxos? I can imagine, personally, using closed-source
addons which I am granting specific, granular capabilities, but I would be
very hesitant to use closed-source addons that could really do anything
with my phone.

On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 2:38 PM, Jonas Sicking <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 3:34 AM, Gervase Markham <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On 22/06/15 16:21, Jonas Sicking wrote:
> >> ** Phone behavior **
> >>
> >> One of the primary pieces of functionality of a smartphone is the
> >> phone. I.e. phone calls and SMS/MMS. While these are old and boring
> >> technologies, they are still heavily used.
> >>
> >> I think it would be great to add hooks to enable addons to react to
> >> incoming and outgoing phone calls and SMS/MMS.
> >>
> >> Ideally this would not be done by having the addons modify the Gaia
> >> app frontends, but rather by having the addons hook in to the
> >> phone/SMS/MMS backends. Both because it'll be easier for addons to
> >> hook in at that level, and because we can keep backend hooks stable
> >> even when we update Gaia/FirefoxOS to users.
> >
> > Although it would be cool if the app was then notified about any changes
> > so it could update its UI. E.g. if a dial-through addon modifies my
> > dialling of an international number to first dial a local number, wait,
> > and then dial through the international number, I'd like to see what was
> > happening on the display. Otherwise, I'll dial and see e.g.:
> >
> > 001 413 243 0181
> >
> > but hear the touchtone equivalents for:
> >
> > 020 1234 4567 <pause> 001 413 243 0181
> >
> > I'd like to say I think this API is critically important. Being able to
> > mess with this stuff is still not very possible on other platforms, and
> > yet it's a crucial feature for putting users in control. But it's also
> > easily abusable by malware, which is another reason I think we need to
> > have UI updates for what the phone is actually doing.
>
> I agree that we should enable addons to modify outgoing phone numbers
> in such a way that the user sees the modified phone number.
>
> However given that addons will be able to modify the dailer UI, there
> is no way we can ensure that the user sees what number is called. And
> I think that's good since I want to enable addons that modify the user
> experience.
>
> Addons are scary, they can and will do things that are unsafe. We need
> to be fine with that. That's why we are separating addons from web
> content.
>
> / Jonas
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