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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”

#91

Post by Flimm »

toggle wrote: post #90
Flimm wrote: post #71

Can the mods edit the title? Mozilla officially stopped their development efforts of Firefox OS on smartphones, not the brand in general.

The title is accurate. People think of Firefox OS as a smartphone operating system; Mozilla is killing that off. They may be reusing the name on something else, but Firefox OS, (as we know it right now,) is being discontinued.

I honestly thought when I saw the title that Mozilla were now killing Firefox OS for Internet of Things, in addition for Firefox OS for phones. Turns out, the title was misleading. Plus, it's not the title of the article.

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

#92

Post by toomuchtodo »

nacs wrote: post #85
JohnTHaller wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is basically every single website you visit and all the data you share with them wittingly or unwittingly. Pocket isn't a password manager, it's a short scrapbook of things you want to read later.

Not every website I visit has its code integrated right into my open-source browser. And you can build a pretty accurate profile of a user from analyzing the content people mark to "read later" (and how long they spend reading them).

You don't get access to the source of any site you're sending HTTP GET or POST requests (dynamic content) to with Firefox, yet you're complaining about client code for Pocket?

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

#93

Post by davidgerard »

yebyen wrote: post #27
matzipan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not just replacing the Firefox brand, it's replacing the onus of responsibility for the package. When Debian packages your software, they insert their own patches, they do their own disparate issue tracking and release archive management, they are quite effectively a separate product. If they called it Firefox, by Debian, it would be equally damaging to the Mozilla mark (in a sense of trademark law.) If they did…

This goes way back - I was a documentation volunteer in the run-up to the Mozilla 1.0 launch in 2002, and Debian did all manner of weird things to their Mozilla package that we then had to sort through to distinguish from the mozilla.org binaries (e.g. someone had to make a list of Debian Mozilla useragents so we weren't specifically checking their behaviour).

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

#95

Post by cpeterso »

epoch1970 wrote: post #54
sp332 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla wants people to be able to trust the Firefox brand. They don't even use "Firefox" branding on their own nightly or dev builds. They only put it on software that's been through their own QA. So you're free to use the code, but they won't let you put the name or logo on any forks or even builds they haven't signed off on.

I think at this point that the Firefox brand has been tarnished, unfortunately. For many average users, the term "Firefox" reminds them of the slow browser they used to use before switching to Chrome. For more advanced users, the term "Firefox" reminds them of the browser that includes ads (even if these are being removed), has unnecessary functionality built in (Pocket, Hello), and has undergone questionable UI chan…

When the time comes, I think Mozilla should move on from the Firefox brand to an exciting new browser brand. Mozilla forked Phoenix from SeaMonkey. Microsoft forked Edge from IE.

When or if Mozilla can start merging the Servo engine or Electrolysis multi-process support into Firefox might be a good time. (I like the name Servo for the whole browser. :-) Like IE, Firefox has had a hard time shaking its old reputation (e.g., memory leaks and add-on breakage). A new brand says "this is something new; give us a try again."

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

#96

Post by nileshtrivedi »

Manishearth wrote: post #87
nacs wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pocket code in Firefox is open source, you can examine it yourself You can see the client side code but what Pocket is doing with all the data on the server side is completely opaque and source is unavailable.

This only matters if you use Pocket. This is no different from search integration. There's local code that lets you do Google/Yahoo/etc searches from the home page or the awesomebar. What these sites do with your data on the server side is unknown.

Firefox gives many choices for search integration. Perhaps something like that would have made Pocket more acceptable.

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

#97

Post by ironsides »

Manishearth wrote: post #87
nacs wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pocket code in Firefox is open source, you can examine it yourself You can see the client side code but what Pocket is doing with all the data on the server side is completely opaque and source is unavailable.

This only matters if you use Pocket. This is no different from search integration. There's local code that lets you do Google/Yahoo/etc searches from the home page or the awesomebar. What these sites do with your data on the server side is unknown.

The fact that we are still talking about Pocket being integrated in 2016 amazes me. Especially considering that Mozilla was designed and intended as a community project.

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

#98

Post by briandh »

toggle wrote: post #90
Flimm wrote: post #71

Can the mods edit the title? Mozilla officially stopped their development efforts of Firefox OS on smartphones, not the brand in general.

The title is accurate. People think of Firefox OS as a smartphone operating system; Mozilla is killing that off. They may be reusing the name on something else, but Firefox OS, (as we know it right now,) is being discontinued.

The title is not accurate. Regardless of whether "people" (excluding me, it seems) think of Firefox OS as a phone OS, Mozilla has been using the name in TV usage for two years [1].

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/01/06/mozilla-and-partner...

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

#99

Post by droopybuns »

The timing of this is terrible.

I feel that there is real evidence of Google influencing the regulatory landscape and we really need a viable alternative to google for people that can't afford an iPhone.

Google's data collection on android devices is so far past the creepy line (all under the dual use rationale of protecting users from bad things- cert abuse in chrome or malware prevention in verify apps).

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

#100

Post by wwweston »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #60

tl/dr: ffos is not dead, it's open source, and it's already a product, not a PoC. I probably read like a broken record at this point: Despite Mozilla dropping development on it, FirefoxOS is still not "dead". Open source things only die when no one has interest in them any more. AFAIK FirefoxOS is still the most open mobile operating system. If some other company decides to take up where mozilla left off, fork Firefo…

Wish I could give this more upvotes.
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