So is the appearance of any modal window something that justifies filing tickets with Firefox?
It doesn't sound like that's PaulHoule's motivation anyway — he knows that these tickets are not going to be fixed, just closed — the point is to "pour just a little bit of sand in the gears".
If usability tickets are closed because the company doesn't want to bother, then maybe these gears deserve to have sand put in them.
I generally approve of subversive actions which are naturally damaging if and exactly if the accusation they are based on is true.
That is, the logic is something like "well, either it gets fixed, in which case it's a victory for good, or they're hypocrites who don't really care, in which case 1. it wastes their time and 2. they deserve to have their time wasted."
I dunno. I don't personally report many bugs in public software...
But reporting real problems because you are annoyed that problems keep appearing and don't get fixed doesn't look like a societal hurting behavior to me. It does look like personally hurting, but antagonizing the author because of this is a real societal hurting behavior.
It doesn't sound like that's PaulHoule's motivation anyway — he knows that these tickets are not going to be fixed, just closed — the point is to "pour just a little bit of sand in the gears".