Tor Browser is denying ESR policies.json. This should work because TB is ESR fork.

https://www.ghacks.net/2018/05/21/enterprise-policy-generator-add-on-for-firefox/

What: Create a file "TorBrowser/distribution/policies.json" to disable telemetry and other annoyances

Expected behavior: The browser obey policies.json because Tor Browser is based on Firefox ESR

Actual result: "Only Allowed on ESR" error message on Browser Console

added TorBrowserTeam201903R component::applications/tor browser owner::tbb-team priority::medium resolution::fixed severity::normal status::closed type::task labels

This is because of this check here:

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/cb7faaf6b4ad2528390186f1ce64618dea71031e/browser/components/enterprisepolicies/EnterprisePolicies.js#305

Amusingly, this means it should work on the Alpha bundle.

I don't know if Tor wants to support this however.

mcs/brade: What had been the reason for not using esr as the update channel for the stable series, given that Tor Browser is based on that series?

Trac:
Priority: High to Medium
Status: new to needs_information
Cc: N/A to mcs, brade

Replying to gk:

mcs/brade: What had been the reason for not using esr as the update channel for the stable series, given that Tor Browser is based on that series?

Kathy and I don't remember all of the details, but probably we knew we needed two update channels for our public releases and chose release and alpha. At this point (assuming we want to support the enterprise policy features), it might be easiest to patch the code mentioned in comment:1.

Replying to mcs:

Replying to gk:

mcs/brade: What had been the reason for not using esr as the update channel for the stable series, given that Tor Browser is based on that series?

Kathy and I don't remember all of the details, but probably we knew we needed two update channels for our public releases and chose release and alpha. At this point (assuming we want to support the enterprise policy features), it might be easiest to patch the code mentioned in comment:1.

Works for me.

Trac:
Status: needs_information to new

esr didn't exist then ;)

Here is a patch: https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/brade/tor-browser.git/commit/?h=bug29445-01&id=7ce43156780e3b91f35481cce1eb4afed56a4b0f

As an "escape hatch", support for enterprise policies can still be disabled by setting browser.policies.testing.disallowEnterprise = false (but I would guess that Mozilla only intends that pref to be used for automated tests).

Trac:
Status: new to needs_review
Keywords: N/A deleted, TorBrowserTeam201903R added

Looks good to me, merged to tor-browser-60.5.1esr-8.5-1 (commit 7ce43156780e3b91f35481cce1eb4afed56a4b0f).

Trac:
Status: needs_review to closed
Resolution: N/A to fixed

closed

mentioned in issue #29611 (moved)

mentioned in issue #29916 (moved)

mentioned in issue #31978 (moved)

moved to tpo/applications/tor-browser#29445 (closed)

mentioned in issue tpo/applications/tor-browser#31978 (closed)