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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

#231

Post by freehunter »

truth_sentinell wrote: post #124
freehunter wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former long-time user of Windows Phone, it's not "unaddicting" in a way that's boring. There are plenty of apps to waste your time with. It's just that you don't need to. When I used Windows Phone, I didn't need to open an app to see the weather, or to see my text message, or to see my email. The live tiles made sure I could see all of that from the home screen. One glance across the screen and I knew everything…

So why did you leave it and what do you use now?

I left Windows Phone because of the hardware. I couldn't stand the capacitive buttons anymore, so I switched to an iPhone since it was the only flagship phone without capacitive system buttons. There is nothing that replaces Windows Phone live tiles though. The closest you can get is widgets but it's not even close to the same. There's no Twitter widget on iOS, for example. And the widget section is a completely different UI.

I took a major step back in UX because of poor hardware designs. I shouldn't be forced out of an app just because my finger slid a little bit off the screen and hit the home button.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#232

Post by themihai »

The main issue with FirefoxOS was the performance(of the devices and perhaps also the OS itself). I had the first firefox phones(I think the brand was ZTE) and they were basically rubbish(i.e. they had a 1sec or more lag). I would take a Nokia 6600 over that any day.

Mozilla tried to market it as a low cost alternative but nobody wants low cost rubbish. You are better of with a feature phone.

I think the biggest mistake was the reliance of the OS on javascript. It was dead on arrival or better said from start.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#233

Post by foota »

rocky1138 wrote: post #163
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 you haven't already, please consider the Pyra. It's a full Linux desktop in a phone-ish format and supports SIM cards for voice calling and text. https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/

That's like the phone equivalent of the F-35

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#234

Post by draw_down »

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'll say yes, we're stuck with the two. The resources required to create and maintain a decent, competitive mobile OS imply a need for a size of user base that no new entrant will be able to achieve in a reasonable time frame.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#235

Post by open-source-ux »

seanieb wrote: post #201
ksec wrote: post #166

Number 1 reason why I didn't pick up an Panasonic 4K TV, because i knew Firefox OS will be dead some day. And number one reason why I REALLY want an APPLE TV Set rather then Apple TV STB. Most of the Smart TV on the market today are total piece of Junk. They are what "Smart"phones were before the iPhone came out. As a matter of fact, SmartTV from China are pretty good on the software front, and lacking ( price cuttin…

Mozilla has zero focus. Their constantly creating new online initiatives and abandoning old ones. It's like groundhog day.

I agree. Examples: they abandoned their Persona project. At a time where identity, sign-in, authentication and security are as important as ever, they've left the field wide open to privacy-invasive companies like Google and Facebook.

Rather than build an OS, why not create the foundation or platform for others to build on? I am thinking of Electron here. Although, I am not a fan of Electron, the framework and approach are gaining a lot of traction with developers. Where is the slim, fast, embeddable Firefox engine that's easier to deploy and develop than Electron (and superior to the heavy embedded Chrome)?

What about offline capabilities for web apps? Firefox should be trailblazing in this space. This is a huge privacy advantage (amongst other things) over cloud-based systems.

I really want to see Firefox succeed, but am worried they have lost direction and focus, or even the ability to excite and inspire developers with their future plans.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#236

Post by runn1ng »

mikegerwitz wrote: post #91
runn1ng wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideologically, I like Replicant. Actually free-as-in-freedom version of Android, great! In reality though, it doesn't really work on most of modern phones, and on the ones it works on, there is no WiFi support. And the latest commit on the Replicant git (excluding website changes) is 8 months ago. And it has just one guy committing. So it didn't catch world's attention, apparently.

The Replicant project wrote a post in August describing work on Replicant 6: http://blog.replicant.us/2016/08/replicant-6-early-work-upst... My phone (Galaxy S3) uses Replicant, and I'm quite excited for the upgrade, which will fix a number of rather unfortunate issues. I'm more than willing to make such sacrifices, but it'd be nice (for example) to be able to take videos of my children, which the current version can…

Yeah. But again, it doesn't seem like there is a huge and vibrant developer community inspecting the code, implementing features and fixing bugs; looking at their gitlab and their redmine, it seems like there is almost no activity.

(It's possible I just don't understand the websites; looking at their GitLab and Redmine, I start to understand why is Github so popular; I cannot find anything there :(( )

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#237

Post by themihai »

ksec wrote: post #166

Number 1 reason why I didn't pick up an Panasonic 4K TV, because i knew Firefox OS will be dead some day. And number one reason why I REALLY want an APPLE TV Set rather then Apple TV STB. Most of the Smart TV on the market today are total piece of Junk. They are what "Smart"phones were before the iPhone came out. As a matter of fact, SmartTV from China are pretty good on the software front, and lacking ( price cuttin…

As far as I'm concerned I think you should get only the TV screen and choose your own 'smart' box.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#238

Post by themihai »

gman83 wrote: post #199
ksec wrote: post #166

Number 1 reason why I didn't pick up an Panasonic 4K TV, because i knew Firefox OS will be dead some day. And number one reason why I REALLY want an APPLE TV Set rather then Apple TV STB. Most of the Smart TV on the market today are total piece of Junk. They are what "Smart"phones were before the iPhone came out. As a matter of fact, SmartTV from China are pretty good on the software front, and lacking ( price cuttin…

I bought a 2015 Sony TV with Android TV and I'm very happy with it.

Do you really use any apps?(i.e. downloaded from the appstore) I have a LG(WebOS) but I never bothered to download any 3rd party apps.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#239

Post by qplex »

coldtea wrote: post #145
addicted wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A real open source OS? Youd equally well have asked what the point of Linux was before it picked up steam. Of course the big difference is that Linux succeeded while Firefox OS failed. But thats after the fact. I think something like Firefox OS is important, but probably wasnt something Mozilla should have undertaken when their key asset was under massive threat and it keeps dropping other stuff that, admittedly smal…

> Of course the big difference is that Linux succeeded while Firefox OS failed. But thats after the fact. The relevant big difference is that Linux filled a need and had a particular niche that had nothing to do with being "libre": it was good and costed nothing to run servers on. Big UNIX vendors charged an arm and a leg (and often required their own hw platforms to run), and their software was behind the times (to…

Actually being "free/open/libre" software has had everything to do with the success of Linux.

However, I've heard the high cost of UNIX licenses in the early 90s was the reason why Linus decided to start his project.

Also, Linux has never been "a failure" on the desktop: you seem to think that the definition of being successful is to have a complete monopoly.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#240

Post by aikah »

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…

> I love it, because it's un-addicting

You mean you love it because you hate using it?

> un-addicting.

Interesting marketing formula. "Un-addicting". Might be useful in the future to justify the uselessness of a product. "but it's a feature! it's un-addicting". It was so un-addicting Mozilla killed the project dead.

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