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The way to obtain a permanent to link to a plugin, that is, the "Permanent Link to Plugin" link on the plugin details page, is clumsy. What users really expect is to be able to copy the URL from the browsers' address line. Again, see: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/398 Note how the "Permanent Link to Plugin" is the most visible item on the page. That's a direct result of this solution being so uncommon. The text size has to be large to make sure users find the link. If you make it smaller, you risk that users will miss it.
Changing to enhancement. The user does have a way to get a direct link to a plugin no matter how "clumsy" the implementation. I understand this isn't the best way to provide the direct linking feature but given the technology choice, JSF, this was the best implementation I could come up with. If you have an implementation method using JSF to make the user experience better, please speak up. The URL you mentioned, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/398 is a static HTML page and not a JSF JSP page. To achieve this style URL the plugin portal would have to be rewritten in a different technology. If I'm missing some obvious fix for this, someone please speak up.
The fact that the technology doesn't allow you to do what you need[1] doesn't mean you don't have a defect in your application. [1] I'm not sure at all it's not possible to do this in JSF. It might be the case it's not doable using the NB visual JSF editor alone and might require some coding. E.g. try using outputLink instead of commandLink. Also searching Google for "jsf commandlink http post" gives promising results. The URL I mentioned is not a static HTML page (note the "a" at the end, which makes the plugin ID invalid): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/398a
A defect is something broken with specified functionality. Here's the definition of a defect from the "Issue Type" link on this page. "Defect is a problem with an existing feature that is either not developed to spec or does not work as designed. These are often referred to as "bugs."" The specified functionality for this feature of the plugin portal is to provide a direct link to a plugin. Specifying "how" this should be done gets into implementation details. From that standpoint, the plugin portal does provide this functionality and therefore this is NOT a defect. Your opinion on how it should work is valuable but does not constitute a defect. The direct link capability is working "as designed".
Plugin Portal 2.0 provides nice permanent URLs to each plugin. Closing as fixed.