Thanks for keeping it civil. I will address some of your comments in the best way I can.
>It wasn't always like that. We used to be able to download a sub-10 MB installer, run it, and have a usable installation of Firefox ready for use.
The Web Platform advanced a lot in the last few years. A lot has been added to browsers. They are no longer a simple HTML engine with some CSS and bad JS engines. Browsers these days are almost their own operating systems for good and bad. They have so much stuff going on between all the multimedia features, multiple JS engines and compilers, there are lots of stuff going on. Browsers are larger because the Web grew a lot (not in the sense of size but in complexity)
> Now we have to choose from the "correct" stream, download a 40 MB or larger installer, run it, change numerous about:config options to allow us to install our own custom unsigned extensions and to disable unwanted functionality that Mozilla has added, manually remove unwanted toolbar buttons, install a number of third-party extensions that also fix additional problems introduced by Mozilla, and in the end we're still stuck with a user interface and a user experience that isn't very good.
Firefox has always been customizable and the about:config feature enables lots of under the hood tweaks that are not possible everywhere. Making Firefox your own its part of what makes it great. Its a browser you can change to suit your needs, thats less common than people think. Your needs are not the same needs of others. As for running your unsigned extension, there will be six versions of Firefox available (stable, unbranded stable, beta, unbranded beta, dev edition and nightly). Of these six, only two will force addon signing. All the others are a tweak away.
> Now if we're developing extensions, we'll have to also jump through more hoops thanks to this signing process. You say it "takes only seconds", but I've seen enough comments here from other developers saying they've been waiting months for reviews. That's not acceptable.
Please don't mix addon signing with AMO review, they are different process with different objectives. Addon signing happens in seconds because its automated. The signed addon is returned to you in seconds and you're free to distribute it as you see fit. Now, if you want to have your addon on AMO then you need to submit to AMO review which may take a long time due to the lack of people and the overall complexity of reviewing that type of code.