It felt sluggish because they were forced to use the Metro UI toolkit. Had they used Win32, it would have blown Firefox and maybe Chrome out of the water.
addons.mozilla.org also contains Google Analytics. And since addons are not allowed to act on addons.mozilla.org, you have no choice but to ping Google every time you load a page there.
Mozilla is either stupid or ill-intentioned. It's 2019 so they've lost the benefit of the doubt for me.
If I had billions in the bank and you gave detailed instructions on how to pick up the breadcrumbs I leave on the table of a restaurant, I wouldn't give a shit. But if they care so much they are welcome to break into my house and take my computer
That one hasn't gone offline in years, so I've never thought of this. Perhaps you are right, but I assume that it should be easy enough to find new ones if you need them. I wouldn't consider this approach to be "high maintenance".
Then pirate it. What do you care? This is like pirating a show they refuse to put on Netflix. They don't give you the option to conveniently buy what you want, so pirate it.