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Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

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Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#71

Post by maheart »

supergreg wrote: post #63
maheart wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're half-joking, but if this is something you're passionate about, there are things you can do (while there's still alternatives platforms...): 1. Purchase non-Apple, and non-Android devices (e.g. Jolla/SailfishOS, Ubuntu Touch devices) 2. Develop software for the alternative platforms -- that's what I do. It's a lot of fun programming on a GNU/Linux mobile. I write software in Python with 3rd party modules…

What GNU/Linux mobile? Can you elaborate on that?

I develop for SailfishOS. As I described in one of my other comments, it really is just "regular" GNU/Linux underneath:

>> I develop software for SailfishOS. It's like the Linux desktop. I SSH into my phone. zypper/pkcon install some dev tools (e.g. gcc, make, git). I initialise a Python virtualenv, pull down some libraries (e.g. Flask). I want to query SMS messages? I open an sqlite database on the filesystem. I can define services using systemd files. It really is "just Linux" underneath.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#72

Post by cmrdporcupine »

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.

You forgot WebOS, which has been open sourced since HP killed it.

There was a brief flurry of activity around it, including getting it run on older Nexus devices, then it petered out.

I submit that a big part of the problem is fragmentation of effort. There was no reason for Ubuntu, Mozilla, and WebOS all to be aiming at the same target at the same time in very similar ways but by different people.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#73

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

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.

People are worried about this now, but the time to have been worried was like 2009-2010, when iOS (I think??) could've claimed to have had a monopoly, at least in the US, and before iOS really got a mindshare into people going.

I could also say the same about people upset with Facebook-2009-2010 people!

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#74

Post by bartread »

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 was at Phonegap Europe 2013 and there was a big noise about Firefox OS (then still known as Boot to Gecko) there. It looked cool but it was always targeted at low-end, low-cost devices.

The problem with that, from my perspective as a developer, is that I don't want to develop apps for low-end devices because it's an enormous pain in the ass. The lack of horsepower and features means you're pretty much required to compromise your vision, unless you really are developing something very simple, or with minimal finessing.

On top of this, and this was even more so 3 years ago, today's high end devices are 2 years' time's low-to-mid-range devices. If it takes you 6-12 months to develop your app (again, depends on complexity) on today's high end hardware you'll be targeting the mid-range when you release. Of course, there's a bit more nuance to this because single core performance isn't really increasing that much, but you get the point.

Short version: targeting high end devices means you're developing for the future and not incurring the compromises (and, in fact, support overhead) of dealing with low-end kit.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#75

Post by vamur »

nir wrote: post #8
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.

As it stands you either give Apple complete control of you software/hardware or you give Google full access to every detail of your life. There should be a sticker "Don't blame me, I supported Firefox OS"

You can easily disable Google services on most Android devices. Or purchase a Cyanogenmod compatible device and use a third party store.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#76

Post by zerr »

maheart wrote: post #68
vbezhenar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with Android as a hacker-friendly platform?

Android (and Apple) have a relatively rigid development toolkit. For Android you develop using the Java programming language against the Android APIs. The NDK is available, and you can always hack up methods to call the Android APIs from your favourite programming language (e.g. Python) but it's cumbersome. I develop software for SailfishOS. It's like the Linux desktop. I SSH into my phone. zypper/pkcon install some…

Very interesting! Do you work at Jolla or are there any 3rd party jobs?

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#77

Post by vamur »

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…

It will fail if they don't improve performance and home UX. Adding APK support would also be a huge feature.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#78

Post by chx »

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.

It is very unlikely we will see a third alternative on phones. But, who said smartphones will be a mainstay for ever? There is clearly a major drive towards voice as the primary UI and if you are not screen constrained then interesting developments might occur.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#79

Post by tarancato »

lloeki wrote: post #57
teekert wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this a poor, skewing argument always made by at least one person here. For most FF is very responsive and there are no problems what so ever. And FF is not FF-OS.

> For most FF is very responsive and there are no problems what so ever. Open dev tools, type `for (;;) {}`. Notice the whole browser becomes unresponsive. This has been improved upon (as in it doesn't block the whole Firefox UI, just merely every single content tab) thanks to Electrolysis partially reaching stable but "there are no problems whatsoever" simply isn't true performance wise (and this is the most obvious…

I have an easy metric for that: when you're navigating, look at the "loading" spinner on the tab bar, and see how it almost always freezes every time a page is being drawn.

DOM painting/manipulation times in Gecko are a joke, probably the worst pain point of Firefox. And it's not the only one...

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#80

Post by voltagex_ »

maheart wrote: post #66
kbart wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I sure hope we can use GNU/Linux on phone one day. It wouldn't be that hard to make, given an unlocked hardware platform and open source drivers for baseband and graphics module. Actually, I have done a device very similar to smartphone in its hardware capabilities, but it was a commercial product limited in functionality. If I could get such hardware at home, I would definitely make some crude, hackish GNU/Linu…

Right now, thanks to libhybris[1] you can run glibc compiled systems (i.e. regular Linux, aka GNU/Linux) on top of proprietary Android drivers. [1] https://github.com/libhybris/libhybris

I'd pay for a tutorial that shows how to use libhybris to accomplish that.
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