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

discourse.mozilla-community.org

101–110 of 156 posts

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

#101

It's kind of striking that last Saturday Mozilla held this talk @FOSDEM: https://fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/osd_firefox_os_why_we...

Not quite, looking at the slides.

It finishes up with two slides of "tough lessons" basically explaining why it failed as a phone OS, and then "what's next?" containing connected device plans. So it's pretty well in line with the announcement.

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Version numbers and menu placement have nothing to do with being "nannyish" or data collection. Can you name three good plugins? Removing an insecure legacy tech is not a big problem when the extension API is right there.

I said more nannyish AND chromelike. Three good plugins? Have nine. Here's my plugin load right now: * uBlock * Privacy Badger * HTTPS Everywhere * Calomel SSL Validation * FoxReplace * Vimperator (which used to be Pentadactyl before Mozilla decided that I can't use it anymore[1]) * Noscript * DevEdition theme enabler * 1Password And please spare me the "insecure legacy tech" argument. The new plugin architecture exp…

XUL is insecure legacy tech. There isn't a coherent argument otherwise: XUL is insecure in that it gives addons all the power of the browser, and XUL is legacy, unspecified, single-implementation-wedded XML stuff from the '90s whose functionality has been entirely superseded by HTML at this point. The idea that nothing can be insecure and legacy unless the new alternatives support absolutely everything the old technology did is absurd: that would prevent us from calling DOS "obsolete and legacy" because apps running in ring 0 can do things that apps running in ring 3 can't.

XUL may well be insecure legacy tech that performs a useful task for you, and that's why care is being taken to make sure the important extensions continue to work in the new Web Extensions world.

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

#103
post #59
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can choose from the older models, then, or use a monitor. I don't want the crappy smarts in my devices.

Again, where do we find one of those? Pretty much all stores carry only smart TVs in decent sizes.

TVs are monitors with a variety of extra features -- at a minimum, a tuner, but lots of others are normal now.

But you can get commercial displays which are just TV-likr monitors without the extra features. It doesn't take much online searching to find them; consumer retail outlets, however, don't carry them because they aren't what the industry thinks most consumers want.

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

#104

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…

So, are there anyone that are working on developing FFOS further? If not, it's dead for all practical purposes. Just like WebOS is dead even though that was open sourced as well.

I'm not excited at all to see what they do with connected devices, because I expect them (and their partners) to have a go at it for a couple of years and then shut it down when the next shiny new market opportunity appears.

I have no idea why Firefox would have an advantage in this space over Google/Android. I'd also trust them more, but I just don't see it.

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

#105

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…

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

What? GNU IceCat has nothing to do with Pocket. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat#Origins_of_the_name

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

#106

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…

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

The search bar is an equally proprietary backend service, and pretty much universally funds Mozilla, but I don't hear many complaints about it.

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

#107
post #80

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…

Sure thing. You can say about BSD as not all major players today deploy BSD servers, but the community is strill thriving. But I bet to you FFOS is going to be a much smaller community over time and eventually so small only those people are dogfooding themselves. Code will live on but nothing else and that's why people called it dead. There is a difference between dead in popular perception and dead eternally. Eventu…

Sure. But do you think FFOS will be closer to FreeBSD or closer to WebOS?

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

#108

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/

GTK 1! I never thought it existed :)

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

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said more nannyish AND chromelike. Three good plugins? Have nine. Here's my plugin load right now: * uBlock * Privacy Badger * HTTPS Everywhere * Calomel SSL Validation * FoxReplace * Vimperator (which used to be Pentadactyl before Mozilla decided that I can't use it anymore[1]) * Noscript * DevEdition theme enabler * 1Password And please spare me the "insecure legacy tech" argument. The new plugin architecture exp…

XUL is insecure legacy tech. There isn't a coherent argument otherwise: XUL is insecure in that it gives addons all the power of the browser, and XUL is legacy, unspecified, single-implementation-wedded XML stuff from the '90s whose functionality has been entirely superseded by HTML at this point. The idea that nothing can be insecure and legacy unless the new alternatives support absolutely everything the old techno…

> ...whose functionality has been entirely superseded by HTML at this point...

This is just not true. Not all functionality enabled by XUL can be executed with Web Extensions. Perhaps this will be so in the future.

> ...and that's why care is being taken to make sure the important extensions continue to work...

Who decides what extensions are "important" and therefore worthy of working in this new "web extensions world"? I guess my point is that if there were true parity between web extensions and XUL there would be no need for concern. However, that is not the case and we know many extensions cannot be recreated. Therein lies the problem. Many users will be negatively affected by this change and I am still trying to understand the benefit. For example, why are Web Extensions mutually exclusive to XUL extensions? I get that supporting both is inelegant, but it at least reflects the current reality of Firefox usage.

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

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. If the problem was note-saving integration, they should have built an open interface for it, and then maybe (maybe) endorsed Pocket as the reference implementation, featured in the extension gallery or on the start screen.

Bundling Pocket outright, like Mozilla was just another Silicon Valley company, was very shortsighted.

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