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

discourse.mozilla-community.org

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

#121

Post by xentronium »

bobajeff wrote: post #21
paride5745 wrote: post #3

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…

I would love to use a email/webmail service from Mozilla. It would have to be ads supported but there might not be as much of a stigma against it as with suggested tiles.

I agree, email from mozilla would be a killer. I'd pay for it.

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

#122

Post by hackuser »

This worries me, and not because I'm a user of FirefoxOS.

Much of Mozilla's value is its influence; its ability to push for open standards that prioritize end user's needs. Before mobile, when ~20% of the world uses Firefox to access your service, you couldn't ignore them. But without a meaningful presence on any mobile platform, how much influence does Mozilla have?

IoT is another huge space and I hope they have success building influence there.

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

#123

Post by hardwaresofton »

snom380 wrote: post #104
hardwaresofton wrote: post #60

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 w…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but WebOS was open sourced after it started failing, and it was only parts of webos that were first "open sourced". I think the contexts are different, from day one b2g has been open source, and has had a contingent of supporters.

Plus, WebOS never actually got as far as FirefoxOS did on physical devices -- FFOS is powering phones for people all across the world right now. From what I remember WebOS got mostly relegated ot tablets.

I understand and share some of your frustration with their seemingly indecisiveness and willingess to drop certain projects to chase other ones. But can you blame them? They're trying to stay profitable.

So I think they'd have a little bit of an advantage becuase they've essentially ported the web model to run on embedded devices, and I think that could make it easier for manufacturers to integrate. Instead of learning to make some special kind of android app (+ ide support of course), manufacturers only have to worry about making webpages, and using some `window.mozFridge.changeTemperature` API, rather than something heavier.

My statement was more about trust than some implicit advantage in IoT (though I think the case could be made that they do have some advantages).

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

#124

Post by mst »

pjmlp wrote: post #65
izacus wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where do you get those in sizes of 50"+ with proper remotes, color reproduction (HDMI color range!) and other functionality expected from a TV?

A trip down to any consumer store here in Germany?

Given most of us aren't in Germany, what's obvious to you presumably isn't obvious to the people downvoting you. If that's the case, providing links might help.

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

#125

Post by xanderstrike »

kmfrk wrote: post #78
majewsky wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not necessarily help. I accidentally bought a Smart TV about one year ago, an LG model with WebOS. I never dared connect it to the internet, but it was horrible nonetheless because the software was so abysmally slow. For example, to change a channel: 1. Grab the remote, press "5", press "OK". 2. Put down the remote. 3. Wait five seconds. 4. Overlay with "5" appears. 5. Wait five seconds. 6. Channel switches.…

Ugh, channel switching is such a goddamn pain, even on modern TVs. It blows my mind that this is still a bloody thing with fancypants TVs.

My audio receiver (Onkyo) changes channels instantly. The only thing my "smart" tv is connected to is the receiver and the wall. I have a computer a thousand times smarter than any tv.

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

#126

Post by 3ris3d »

i had the opportunity to work on the FF OS and it was very similar to building a chrome extension or phone-gap solution. This was back in 2013 and the interface, support was very sub par. I worked directly with FF on the deployment of our app! The devices / OS version mix played a big role in tuning, retuning nad detuning the app. I wondered how long would it take for FFto kill off the initiative! 2.5 years!!

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

#127

Post by hardwaresofton »

atomicUpdate wrote: post #118
hardwaresofton wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what I did was bought a beefier android phone (not that beefy, just a Nexus 5), and flashed FirefoxOS on it :) The default phones that FFOS comes with are pretty weak (except for the flame which wasn't that bad), but they have some pretty decent support for flashing popular phones. I don't blame you if you don't do that, obviously -- android is definitely easier to use and update, and better supported than Firefox…

> So what I did was bought a beefier android phone (not that beefy, just a Nexus 5), and flashed FirefoxOS on it :) Isn't going from Android to FFOS taking a few steps backwards?

No snark intended: In what way?

That's the obvious assumption (as in lots of friends have said that to me IRL), but I don't think it's completely true that I've taken a step backwards. Generally a modern smartphone has to do a few things "well":

- Make calls

- Text/message

- Enable ecosystems of useful functionality through apps

The only ways I can see FFOS as a step backwards is because of the lack of availability of some apps -- some apps only support native clients for android/ios. However, a lot of the more interesting/important apps do also support web users (i.e. instagram, facebook).

As far as actual phone performance goes, a lot of android variants are so bogged down with vendor garbage, increasingly heavy android versions that FFOS doesn't actually lag too far behind. It is certainly not always as snappy as android, but I consider it good enough.

I can definitely concede that I took a step backwards in app availability, but I took a step forward in privacy, and the ability to debug/verify my mobile OS, and that's worth it for me -- I also managed to NOT drop all the actual important phone stuff (making calls/texting), which is nice.

Is driving a manual car a step backwards from an automatic one? Yes, but it's not so cut and dry as to "never step back into managing your transmission yourself, always let a computer do it". For some people, the tradeoff is worth it/compelling.

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

#128

Post by dblohm7 »

somebehemoth wrote: post #82
Karunamon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users remember Firefox as the browser that gives them control over their experience Power users, or users? Among the crowd here, sure. But in the rest of the world? unlike Chrome which babysits and won't let you interfere with Google's need to harvest data. Firefox has been getting more and more nannyish and chromelike with every release. * There's the "let's throw out semantic versioning since Chrome already did it"…

> * There's the upcoming "all your plugins are going to break, many permanently" when XUL gets thrown out and the new hotness won't have feature parity at release (in other words, Firefox plugins will be as limited as Chrome plugins) As a long time firefox user this is the one that hurts the most. I honestly hope someone forks firefox to preserve this functionality. I know it is a losing proposition in the long run,…

You can change the API without removing functionality. WebExtensions are going to be based upon the Chrome extension API, but will be expanding on that so that many of the "uniquely Firefox" addons can still exist.

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

#129

Post by ajsalminen »

perlgeek wrote: post #62
ajsalminen wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't this a problem for Linux? Or Perl, Python, Drupal or many of the other packages that exist under their trademarked names in Debian and other distributions?

There are several options: * The logos might be under a free license * The logos might not even be shipped (not a big deal for Perl and Python, which are primariliy command line applications) * The trademark protection only includes the name, not the logo, and so it doesn't force the owner to defend its usage to keep the trademark. For example https://www.drupal.com/trademark mentions a drupal icon which is subject t…

Trademarks that are only for the name are actually handled differently? If that's the case it would explain it I suppose. First time I hear of this being a special case.

Yeah, Drupal has the wordmark branding and the community branding as separate things. I just brought up these examples because all of them have Debian packages that apparently have no issues being named after the project but there are of course numerous others.

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

#130

Post by ajsalminen »

martius wrote: post #83
ajsalminen wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't this a problem for Linux? Or Perl, Python, Drupal or many of the other packages that exist under their trademarked names in Debian and other distributions?

Firefox is a brand present in a highly competitive market. It's a brand known by consumers who are used to associate a name and a logo to an experience and can easily get confused (such as people seeing the "blue E icon" as the way to "start google" for instance). Mozilla protected more agressively its Firefox brand to cope with malware-stuffed clones which were hijacking the name. Projects such as VLC or Android pro…

I am aware of the reasoning they might have for this and was mostly asking about the parent's claim that Firefox is legally obligated to do this.

VLC is still gets packaged by Debian as VLC and even branding intact I believe. Chrome is a little different since you can't even build it so Debian's interest in including it instead of Chromium isn't probably all that high anyway.

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