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“We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

discourse.mozilla-community.org

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Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#11

Post by BuckRogers »

I've always loved Mozilla products, having been a non-stop Firefox user since beta (if anyone reads this at Mozilla, never ever kill the toolbar RSS feed support!). Netscape prior, of course. I was hopeful for FirefoxOS and kept waiting for it to land in the US.

I've always felt that Mozilla should rebrand Firefox as simply 'Mozilla'. The Mozilla browser. Using their dinosaur logo as the mascot. It just sounds hipper, more catchy, marketing matters. Normals seem to consistently mangle Firefox as 'Foxfire' among other oddities. I think this would help progress the Mozilla foundation/corporation's efforts.

For interesting mobile initiatives, we still have Ubuntu Touch to keep an eye on. Their phone->PC docking idea is pretty good and makes a lot of sense.

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#12

Post by vacri »

paride5745 wrote: post #3

This is a good news. Firefox OS was never a real product, but a PoC. IMHO, Mozilla should absorb the Tor project and focus on Free Web technologies, e.g. a really Free email service and a Free cloud storage service. Yes, I intentionally use capitol F for Free. How to raise money? Freemium model. A good email+cloud storage service, with the optional pay model for using a custom domain. And stop attacking the Linux dis…

> And stop attacking the Linux distros for the Firefox trademark (forcing them to create the Iceweasel fork)

Debian's rules don't allow things that aren't free-free, and blocked the copyright-encumbered logo. Mozilla was protecting it's trademark and branding. Debian calling it iceweasel basically replaced the branding so that it could be used under Debian's rules. It turned out to be a fairly amicable result - debian still gets the software with full utility, and mozilla keeps their branding coherent (branding is important to making money with any model, but especially freemium).

Also, this licensing stoush was ten years ago; it's not like it's fresh wounds.

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#13

Post by dorfsmay »

detaro wrote: post #10
jchendy wrote: post #5

The article always qualifies it as Firefox OS for smartphones . Is there a non-smartphone version that they're keeping?

Yes, that's what the "connected devices"/IoT story is about. AFAIK there is right now a push in direction of Smart TVs (at least they asked people that made apps for phones if they don't want to make TV apps)

Interesting how they make a distinction, I find that used android phones loaded with Cyanogenmod are great IoT devices, dirt cheap, equipped with GPS, camera, screens, etc...

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#14

Post by ForHackernews »

BuckRogers wrote: post #11

I've always loved Mozilla products, having been a non-stop Firefox user since beta (if anyone reads this at Mozilla, never ever kill the toolbar RSS feed support!). Netscape prior, of course. I was hopeful for FirefoxOS and kept waiting for it to land in the US. I've always felt that Mozilla should rebrand Firefox as simply 'Mozilla'. The Mozilla browser. Using their dinosaur logo as the mascot. It just sounds hipper…

> I've always felt that Mozilla should rebrand Firefox as simply 'Mozilla'.

You're about ten years too late: http://www-archive.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#15

Post by neerdowell »

paride5745 wrote: post #3

This is a good news. Firefox OS was never a real product, but a PoC. IMHO, Mozilla should absorb the Tor project and focus on Free Web technologies, e.g. a really Free email service and a Free cloud storage service. Yes, I intentionally use capitol F for Free. How to raise money? Freemium model. A good email+cloud storage service, with the optional pay model for using a custom domain. And stop attacking the Linux dis…

> or including proprietary services (e.g. Pocket) forcing the creation of the Icecat fork.

Your timeline is off by about a decade. IceCat was first released in 2008 and the GNUzilla project has existed since 2005. Firefox added Pocket support in 2015.

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#16

Post by dorfsmay »

creshal wrote: post #2

> We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the version 2.6 release. Meanwhile, most FxOS phones (all three of them, I guess) are still stuck on 1.3 because Mozilla's update policy for it has always been even more broken than Google's. I won't miss it. My Fire E has been a paperweight for the past year because it was just useless – the base OS was never on par with even Android 2, and the fragmentat…

What do you mean about Thunderbird (beside getting rid of it)?

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#17

Post by BuckRogers »

ForHackernews wrote: post #14
BuckRogers wrote: post #11

I've always loved Mozilla products, having been a non-stop Firefox user since beta (if anyone reads this at Mozilla, never ever kill the toolbar RSS feed support!). Netscape prior, of course. I was hopeful for FirefoxOS and kept waiting for it to land in the US. I've always felt that Mozilla should rebrand Firefox as simply 'Mozilla'. The Mozilla browser. Using their dinosaur logo as the mascot. It just sounds hipper…

> I've always felt that Mozilla should rebrand Firefox as simply 'Mozilla'. You're about ten years too late: http://www-archive.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/

That was Mozilla Navigator, as opposed to Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla Suite was the package.

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#18

Post by kmfrk »

Some people seem gleeful about this, but Firefox OS is actually an excellent Smart TV OS, especially at a time where a lot of manufacturers feel comfortable inserting ads into people's TVs without their consent.

It's obviously ridiculous that this is something we need to deal with in the first place, but I'm definitely happy that I got one of the few TVs without a scummy OS.

The smartphone OS was always a vague idea that never materialized into anything. Part of that was probably a result of the frustration that we never really got that Nokia OS for lower-end devices. Instead we're left with Android.

I plan on making the TV OS a big parameter for the TVs I buy in the future. (Which feels about just as dumb as doing the same with future microwave ovens, but this is the world we live in.)

Fortunately I won't be buying a new TV within the next three years. I've genuinely been wondering whether I need to set up an intermediary Raspberry Pi ad-blocker to safeguard my Internet of nonsense at home.

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#20

Post by matzipan »

vacri wrote: post #12
paride5745 wrote: post #3

This is a good news. Firefox OS was never a real product, but a PoC. IMHO, Mozilla should absorb the Tor project and focus on Free Web technologies, e.g. a really Free email service and a Free cloud storage service. Yes, I intentionally use capitol F for Free. How to raise money? Freemium model. A good email+cloud storage service, with the optional pay model for using a custom domain. And stop attacking the Linux dis…

> And stop attacking the Linux distros for the Firefox trademark (forcing them to create the Iceweasel fork) Debian's rules don't allow things that aren't free-free, and blocked the copyright-encumbered logo. Mozilla was protecting it's trademark and branding. Debian calling it iceweasel basically replaced the branding so that it could be used under Debian's rules. It turned out to be a fairly amicable result - debia…

So which part of replacing the Firefox brand with Iceweasel is coherent branding?
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