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

81–90 of 342 posts

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#81

Post by AsyncAwait »

bwindels wrote: post #70
maheart wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The fairphone 2 is "fairly" hacker-friendly. The bootloader is not locked. They provide android stripped of google mobile services, and Ubuntu phone is reportedly 70% ported. Sailfish OS could also be an option if either Fairphone or Jolla port it. All of these setups still require binary blobs for firmware, but that's as good as it gets on mobile I think.

> Sailfish OS could also be an option if either Fairphone or Jolla port it.

It seems to have already happened[1].

[1] - https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris/Insta...

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#83

Post by bobajeff »

creshal wrote: post #35
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.

However, WebKit and Chromium are. They are already experimenting on an Electron based browser called Tolfino and on iOS Firefox is built using the WebView.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#84

Post by makomk »

Not only that, they're ripping out support for it from the Gecko code base, which means that the only way to get security updates for it will be to fork Gecko. I doubt anyone has the resources to do that. It's basically dead. (Every non-Firefox consumer of Gecko has met the same fate so far.)

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#85

Post by maheart »

zerr wrote: post #76
maheart wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I do not work for Jolla. I am in no way affiliated with Jolla, other than being part of the Jolla/SailfishOS/Maemo/Meego community. I try to support SailfishOS development (by buying Jolla devices, developing software for the platform and evangelizing its benefits).

The paid ecosystem around SailfishOS is non-existent, having said that Jolla are looking to hire: http://jolla.com/jobs

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#86

Post by AsyncAwait »

creshal wrote: post #39
maheart wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Fairphone 2 has decent* hardware specs[1] and it can run SailfishOS[2].

* approx. the same as OnePlus One, which partially[3] supports sailfish as well

[1] - https://shop.fairphone.com/en/ [2] - https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris/Insta... [3] - https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#87

Post by toyg »

josteink wrote: post #5
GTP wrote: post #4

Sad news for me

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…

> The idea was good

Maybe part of the idea, because the bit about targeting low-end phones was completely stupid from the beginning. It was launched at the same time that Nokia was crashing and burning while similarly targeting "emerging markets" with obsolete phones.

This was pointed out right away, and they just shrugged. There was (and is) a feeling that a lot of Mozilla employees are just looking for excuses to hack on something fashionable; that's a natural geek instinct, but an effective leadership should be in place to crack the whip when people go astray.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#88

Post by wahsd »

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.

To be fair, Android is a hot mess of dozens of, essentially, different OSs. On top of that, I am sure most people here laughed and chuckled about Windows Phone instead of supporting it or encouraging it or even just providing feedback to Microsoft. This is what your pretentious little snark wars get you, Android that so many years later is still a hot mess and iOS that is still a restricted environment that suits 99.9% of all consumers and provides them with a far superior user experience.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#89

Post by Sharlin »

carussell wrote: post #46
pjmlp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Compaq, on the other hand, was the first “PC clone” company. It’s a term that sounds rather quaint today. At the time, though, Compaq sent a shudder through the industry. Compaq reverse-engineered the IBM PC BIOS without ever looking at the BIOS code. That was harder than you might think, because IBM actually published the assembly code for the PC BIOS in its technical reference manuals. Compaq was able to prove that…

So the code was available but certainly not permitted to be used in a competing product without licensing. The BIOS had to be clean-room reverse engineered to legally build PC clones. If anything, the availability of the code made things more difficult for Compaq!
Post reply on HN