Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

groups.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 342 posts

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#31

Post by pjmlp »

lake99 wrote: post #21
yoavm wrote: post #6

So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so. Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.

I really want the Tizen project to succeed. It's tragic that this doesn't even run on mainstream Samsung devices. Talk about faith in their own work!

They have rebooted the complete platform already a few times, why should any developer waste time on Tizen?

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#32

Post by masklinn »

espadrine wrote: post #12
yoavm wrote: post #6

So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so. Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.

There are political avenues to explore. Just as Microsoft was hit hard by a number of anti-monopolistic EU decisions regarding Internet Explorer, Apple in particular could be the target of an action in that space. But this is the kind of thing that requires citizen action. Also, expecting the EU commission to be the only political consumer protection for multinational corporations is not ideal, there ought to be more…

> There are political avenues to explore. Just as Microsoft was hit hard by a number of anti-monopolistic EU decisions regarding Internet Explorer, Apple in particular could be the target of an action in that space.

That makes no sense whatsoever. MS was hit because they were leveraging their OS monopoly into driving out and destroying competitors in other categories, such as browsers. Apple is so far from a monopolistic position in the EU they have a minority marketshare.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#33

Post by pjmlp »

userbinator wrote: post #24
godzillabrennus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PC world was never really "open" it just didn't have DRM like Apple and Google want to. Are into their walled gardens. The market will force a correction at some point if the value is there for an open platform.

The PC was sure "open"... ever since IBM released the complete schematics and BIOS source code for the PC, XT, and AT. Maybe not in the OSHW/FOSS sense, but it was certainly open enough for tons of clones to flood the market. It's only been getting more closed since then.

They never released anything, Compaq reversed engineered them.

IBM tried to close the PC again with the PS/2 models but it was too late for them.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#34

Post by jbb555 »

padraic7a wrote: post #29
yoavm wrote: post #6

So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so. Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.

Ubuntu Touch is still going. It's up to it's 13th release now and I don't think it's a failed project. However I do think it's something that isn't yet ready for primetime, and it's going to be more a year or more before it is. In the meantime they are trying to iron out bugs, improve features and get more developer attention for it. Recently they've added support for React Native: https://github.com/CanonicalLtd/rea…

I didn't know that ubuntu had a phone. I wondered if it could be installed on my own phone? Doessn't seem to mention that on their website. Oh well perhaps I'll buy one "Note — all our devices are currently sold out"

Ok well I guess I'll stick to android then...

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#35

Post by creshal »

wott wrote: post #22

> While work at Mozilla on Firefox OS has ceased, we very much need to continue to evolve the underlying code that comprises Gecko, our web platform engine, as part of the ongoing development of Firefox. So, according to the history of past announcements, if I translate from Mozilla speak to normal English, Gecko will be abandoned in March 2017.

I don't think Servo is mature enough yet.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#36

Post by glenndebacker »

espadrine wrote: post #12
yoavm wrote: post #6

So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so. Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.

There are political avenues to explore. Just as Microsoft was hit hard by a number of anti-monopolistic EU decisions regarding Internet Explorer, Apple in particular could be the target of an action in that space. But this is the kind of thing that requires citizen action. Also, expecting the EU commission to be the only political consumer protection for multinational corporations is not ideal, there ought to be more…

"Apple in particular could be the target of an action in that space."

I never understood that people keep saying that. It's not because you make a lot of money that you will get under investigation for being a monopoly.

Microsoft was fined because it used it's marketshare to bulldoze into other markets. Apple marketshare is so small in comparison that it can do all the same stuff without disturbing anything.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#37

Post by creshal »

mintplant wrote: post #16
josteink wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While yes, it's kinda sad, I also think this was obvious the second the first Firefox OS phones were shipped. The idea was good, but the execution and result was completely underwhelming. And after the dud launch, whatever momentum had been there, simply dried out. Nothing major has happened since launch for Firefox OS, while Android and iOS have had several major releases. That it took Mozilla this many years after…

> it took Mozilla this many years after the fact to admit this failure The first Firefox OS phones shipped in early 2013. After spending around two years trying to make the project work, Mozilla stopped releasing new versions in May 2015 and officially started winding down the project by the end of 2015, as mentioned in the linked newsgroup post. So it wasn't really many years at all; also, it's hard to place the bla…

By middle 2014, many FirefoxOS phones were already months behind on updates and neither Mozilla nor the hardware vendors were putting any effort into supporting their own flagship devices. By that point, the app store was useless, because you couldn't install any apps on most devices due to ABI breakage between versions and a fragmentation worse than Android.

Neither CEO did anything to mitigate this issue. I don't know how that's not bad leadership.

(Not that updates would have helped much: 1.3.0, the last and only FxOS version my phone received – which is still sold by Alcatel – was much worse than Android 2.0 in terms of UX and stability. I have no idea how anyone thought this was in any way ready to ship.)

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#38

Post by creshal »

franze wrote: post #11

I still love my FirefoxOS Geeks Phone Keon 2013, it still is my go-to backpacking phone. ongoing long battery runtime, a decent browser for the https://mbasic.facebook.com/ , gmail HTML, hacker news. necessary apps are there and work fine: For me that's HERE maps & alarm function. I love it, because it's un-addicting. android and ios are designed to get your attention, all the time. FirefoxOS ist a tool that is there…

Yes, thanks Mozilla for making a timer app that by default neither beeps nor vibrates. Thankfully I only lost one oven load of food before I noticed.

And thanks Mozilla for making an OS that glitches out if you use the power button in the wrong moment, nothing wakes you up better than having to reboot your phone to stop the damn alarm clock.

FirefoxOS is such an unfinished shitfest. I have no idea how 1.3 passed QA. (Nor why Alcatel still isn't releasing any update, even though they're still selling the phone in question.)

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#39

Post by creshal »

maheart wrote: post #27
yoavm wrote: post #6

So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so. Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.

I'm a big supporter of GNU/Linux on the phone. I don't care if Jolla or Ubuntu don't ever make it as "major" players in the mobile OS world. I'd be perfectly happy with GNU/Linux mobile software that's as good as the Linux desktop. I run Linux on my desktop (and laptop), and we're 1% of desktop users. I'd be satisfied with 1% mobile market share. We don't need a billion users, all I want is a hacker-friendly platform…

If only there was any decent hardware for Jolla.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#40

Post by espadrine »

microtonal wrote: post #18
espadrine wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are political avenues to explore. Just as Microsoft was hit hard by a number of anti-monopolistic EU decisions regarding Internet Explorer, Apple in particular could be the target of an action in that space. But this is the kind of thing that requires citizen action. Also, expecting the EU commission to be the only political consumer protection for multinational corporations is not ideal, there ought to be more…

There are political avenues to explore. Just as Microsoft was hit hard by a number of anti-monopolistic EU decisions regarding Internet Explorer, Apple in particular could be the target of an action in that space. Why? In the 5 largest European markets, Android has 3/4th marketshare [1]. How can Apple be targeted for monopolistic behavior? [1] http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/11/android-is-eating-apples-i...

> How can Apple be targeted for monopolistic behavior?

Because they don't even allow other browser engines on their iOS platform, which is explicitly what was the subject of the "ballot box" ruling.

Monopolies are per-product class. Apple is responsible for both the hardware and the software. All it takes is having one of their products own half of its market.

… which, of course, could take a long time. It did happen for tablets circa 2011, I believe.

Post reply on HN