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Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

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Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#231

Post by DHowett »

StavrosK wrote: post #112
wamatt wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame really, but as an outsider, it wasn't clear that Persona was even given a chance to fail.

That's my impression as well. A friend and I created a pastebin as a fun weekend project this weekend ( https://www.pastery.net/ ) and we used Persona for auth, since it's so damn convenient. The only problem is that it loads a bunch of files on every request, and my questions about lazy-loading went unanswered. I really wish Mozilla would change their mind and start developing this again. It feels like they expected…

Incidentally, I launched a pastebin (https://ghostbin.com/) some time ago, used Persona for authentication, and absolutely loved it.

Pastery looks awesome. It appears that you're using Pygments server-side?

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#232

Post by wodenokoto »

steve19 wrote: post #122
Animats wrote: post #45

A few days ago, it looked like they were ditching Thunderbird so they could concentrate on their phone products. What's left besides Firefox? - "WebMaker", whatever that does. - Rust. - The $60 Mozilla hoodie. - Their world tour of meetups.[1] - The really fancy headquarters overlooking SF bay. A tight focus on Firefox might be a win. I'm looking forward to an all-Rust browser. [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contr…

Besides the HQ, what else is left is a $1 million/year Chair (up from $801k the year before), a Director on $874k (up from $779k) and a Treasurer on $908k (up from $613k) [0] [1] I do not begrudge high their salaries in the slightest, but I can't help but think bringing on folks with half the salary of the above employees would buy enough coders to do more innovation, which they really need. The Technical Lead in 201…

The foundation doesn't do any engineering work on Firefox. Paid coding is funded from the 300 million or so dollars a year the Mozilla corporation makes in search revenue.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3009646/search/mozilla-...

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#233

Post by quentinp »

yenda wrote: post #15
gkoberger wrote: post #9

Firefox appeared at a time when there was huge potential being stifled by a stagnant monopoly in the space, and people were desperate for something good. It filled a real need, and people loved it. FirefoxOS appeared at a time when there was huge potential being actively being pushed forward and innovated on by the two largest tech companies in the space, and people already had two great options to choose from. It fi…

FirefoxOS was a perfect fit for me on the paper but I never got how to buy one here in France. I'm stucked with Android and I don't like it.

Many Leclerc stores sold ZTE Open C phones in France. You can also use the ZTE online store: they're now at 50 euros, not 80 euros + discount. See http://www.ztefrance.com/smartphones/open-c/.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#234

Post by underwater »

striking wrote: post #65
spinchange wrote: post #43

I always wondered why they didn't try a tablet first. Like the Chromebooks, but in tablet form, heavy on Firefox branding. Maybe this too is something that would've been an 'also-ran' or market failure, but I still want one even as I type this.

What would that solve that a Chromebook wouldn't? Chromebooks already run Linux when so coerced, and are the most bulletproof computing platform for education and business. What could be special about the FirefoxBook? Perhaps, instead of expending that much effort to engineer a new tablet entirely from scratch, find an Android tablet and put a Mozilla sticker on it.

It seems like expectations would be lower for a tablet because they're a secondary device. With a phone there's a whole host of things you need to build (maps, mail, messages, FB, Twitter, etc.) because it's often the only device people have on them.

With a tablet I would at least have a good browser, which would cover most of my idle browsing. And if there is something I absolutely must do on Android then worst case is I pull out my phone and use that instead.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#235

Post by daleharvey »

So the headline is fairly misleading, Firefox OS is not cancelled and development will not be stopped. The strategy of trying to push distribution via carriers has not worked so we will no longer be doing that. The "Firefox OS" team was renamed to "Connected Devices" to reflect the fact we are not only building a smartphone, TV's are already being sold and other factors (iot / wearables etc) are being looked into.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#236

Post by niutech »

gutnor wrote: post #216
nextos wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really agree on this. They should focus on a browser that respects privacy and email that respects privacy (perhaps by resuming Thunderbird development). On top of that, I'd argue IM + video/audio chat that respects privacy is something that desperately needs better solutions. I'd push software forward, and then innovate on protocols. Peer to peer might be the only way to achieve true privacy.

Imagine a browser that has a privacy mode using tor ? Privacy in browser nowadays is privacy from your wife or kids, not privacy from anything on the server side. Seeing how hostile most of the western governments are toward privacy on the internet, that's probably not the best long term strategy for Mozilla though. They could quickly find themselves labelled terrorist organisation ( by mistake ) and have their accou…

Nonsense. Tor Browser is actually based on Mozilla Firefox and it has been alive for long. Nobody would be so mad to call the web browser vendor a terrorist organization.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#237

Post by [deleted] »

rockdoe wrote: post #138
rmxt wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call the desire to rid the web of ads "destructive" if you please, but don't call those wishes "self-destructive" from the user's perspective. It is completely within the user's prerogative to filter whatever content they wish to filter before it hits their eyeballs. Why should anyone feel bad about choosing what they want to look at it? For a sort of analogy, the presence of pay-to-read newspapers hasn't precluded t…

It's self-destructive because users who don't block ads are keeping sites alive for the users that do block them. If all the users block the ads, the site will need to scramble for a new income model, and for some the new model might not work out. Seems like a perfect example of self-destructive/tragedy-of-the-commons behavior to me.

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#238

Post by bobajeff »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #222
bobajeff wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure people do still care about privacy. It just might not be readily obvious how to profit from such people.

It's obvious: you sell them the tools that enhance their privacy with solid reviews and advertisements in right places. If people don't buy, they either didn't care enough about privacy or were poor. There's security companies selling hardened phone OS's, browsers, desktops... you name it. Most individuals or businesses, even with the money, just don't buy them or even research them much.

I bet they just don't deliver on their promise or do so at the expense of some fundamental use case.

Security and privacy are very hard issues to address. So any solution will be temporary, very restrictive or fall short of it's promise.

For instance you can't have total privacy even if you never use Google and use tracker blockers, erase your browser's fingerprint etc. you are still sharing information with servers you're visiting.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#239

Post by Rapzid »

Something that has been on my mind.. A lot of commenters keep saying there are two good options out there, but really the choice is more "iPhone. Yes or No?". If you don't want an iPhone you are going to end up with an Android device. I can't put iOS on my nexus 5.

There is a space there for another OS that you can put on your non-iphone. I just don't think that's Mozilla's space to fill. Really, in all practicality, this is a space Microsoft needs to fill. It's almost like the world is waiting for them to step it up. Their new open source strategy is going to produce some big plays along these lines; .net in particular. Think about the native and multi-arch work being done for it.. ARM for Windows10 and .net; where is it all going you think?

I can tell you that if I could load up Windows10 on my nexus5 even if just for a test drive I certainly would.

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