Counterpoints

Just use a hosts file

uBlock supports the parsing and applying of hosts files.

Using a hosts file at the OS-level rather than the uBlock-level is definitely the better solution for lists of malware domain, since these malware-linked domains would be blocked system-wide at the OS-level, and all applications would benefit from it (instead of just the browser in which uBlock is installed).

However, for lists of domain linked to ad servers, trackers, analytics, et al, this is not a good solution because you can't easily un-break web pages with a hosts file, which operates at the OS level.

With hosts file entries under the control of uBlock, it is possible to un-break web sites: a user can just disable uBlock for the web site which breaks, or an exception filter can be created to counter the blocking of a specific hostname appearing in a hosts file.

Many of the exception filters in "uBlock filters" are actually exception filters to counter entries in the hosts files included with uBlock.

Please report any issues arising from included hosts files; appropriate exception filters will be created.

uBlock is a fork of Adblock Plus code

No. Code is original; it was written from scratch. There are a very few places that code was used from other sources, and this is clearly identified. For example, for the element picker, CSS.escape from Mathias Bynens is embedded (because, unlike Firefox, Chromium does not yet support CSS.escape).