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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

#261

Post by Torgo »

open-source-ux wrote: post #235
seanieb wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 approa…

They abandoned Persona because nobody used it and it cost money to operate. They tried promoting it, it wasn't enough to overcome social media SSO. I hate it, but they just lost.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#262

Post by cheiVia0 »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #258
rocky1138 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 page implies good battery life: "A 6000mAh battery means you have a companion that will be there for you, through use and at times other devices have given up long ago." But if you look deeper you find on their wiki: https://pyra-handheld.com/wiki/index.php?title=Battery "Everyday work load: 8 hours (without any power management features, tested on prototype April 2016)" 8 hours? This is a toy. Why is their head…

It's in your own quote - it was on a prototype, without any power management features. Once power management features are enabled, it will last longer.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#263

Post by _wmd »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #258
rocky1138 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 page implies good battery life: "A 6000mAh battery means you have a companion that will be there for you, through use and at times other devices have given up long ago." But if you look deeper you find on their wiki: https://pyra-handheld.com/wiki/index.php?title=Battery "Everyday work load: 8 hours (without any power management features, tested on prototype April 2016)" 8 hours? This is a toy. Why is their head…

I guess you have little experience with embedded bring-up, "without any power management features" is a fairly whopping qualifier, and quoting battery capacity is a far more useful indicator for a prerelease device.

I've been on projects where the dev builds would last 30 minutes on battery right up to days before initial factory run

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#264

Post by racl101 »

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's also Blackberry QNX and Windows mobile.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#265

Post by rocky1138 »

mmagin wrote: post #246
rocky1138 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A full Linux desktop screen wouldn't be used for long periods of time. The ideal situation is that we, as hackers, can build our own mobile UI free from the clutches of Apple and Google, and that you can just plug it into HDMI anywhere you are and get a full computer, which is something you can't do with any phone currently. To your question regarding SMS, there are already people working on it. A Vim plugin sounds e…

By full computer, you mean something of 'low-end chromebook' spec. Usable mobile power management and thermal design isn't really going to achieve what you get with a good laptop or desktop.

Very true! This hardly holds up to, say, a CAD$600 laptop. But, it'll be very handy to take traveling around the world or to visit my parents/nephew to play some Minecraft.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#266

Post by justincormack »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #125
justincormack wrote: post #93

There goes the chance of any updates on my Panasonic TV I guess... I wonder if there will even be security updates.

Maybe not security updates, but you may get some advertising updates[0]. [0]: http://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1...

Don't get those in this model/country...

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#267

Post by bobajeff »

dblohm7 wrote: post #228
bobajeff wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1) Tofino (which has now ended) was just an experimental testbed for trying some new browser concepts. It was easier for them to use Electron than to contend with Gecko's ossified embedding APIs. Hopefully positron ( https://github.com/mozilla/positron ) will allow us to use Gecko in the future. 2) Firefox iOS uses WebView not by choice, but because of Apple's App Store restrictions.

I didn't know Tolfino was ended already. I'm curious as whether the experiment ran it's course or if it was resources issue.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#268

Post by josteink »

toyg wrote: post #87
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…

> 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 h…

> Maybe part of the idea, because the bit about targeting low-end phones was completely stupid from the beginning

This really stood out for me as well. My impression was that they used it as a scape-goat for not having to immediately deliver a completely polished experience.

I mean... Who's going to be paying for a phone with top-tier hardware when the software limits it to do less than most Androids out there... since ever? No-one would buy that phone. So it would be impossible to get a hardware vendor to fund such a venture.

If they (at first) targeted lower ends phones, chances of getting something out would improve. And they did get something out! So that part worked.

Obviously from there on they should have made improvements, and when the software platform had become good enough to sell itself, you should expect it on higher tier phones too. That's at least how I envisioned that they planned to execute, which IMO wouldn't have been a terrible plan if they had followed up.

But ofcourse, we saw what happened, and it was obvious at launch that this wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Touché really. I would have a liked a third platform, based on open standards.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#269

Post by carussell »

pjmlp wrote: post #213
carussell wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the conversation is wandering now. The original comment wasn't about Compaq. (It didn't even mention it.) It was about the IBM PC and whether IBM "schematics and BIOS source code". Which they did. And regarding the burden that IBM's choice strained Compaq with, in the overall impact on the industry, any difficulty was by far offset by the benefits. If we're going to focus on BIOSes, for example, the fact th…

It is not wandering. All computers on those days had such manuals and extension slots. Had Compaq not done a clean room reverse engineering, everyone would have to license from IBM just like in other computer systems and the PC market would never have blossomed as it did. In fact we are just going back to those days in what concerns selling packaged hardware and software as one single product.

Geez, can we not do this?

Original commenter mentioned IBM's publication of its source code and schematics. You spoke up to dispute that it happened. You took action. As if to call them out and say, "Hey, just as a point of fact, that isn't true". But as a point of fact, it is true.

If you have some commentary that focuses on some other market/industry forces that you think were more salient, then fine, let's have that conversation. But don't dispute facts and then try to rewrite the record as if that's not what you did. This is text. We have the conversation on record, you know.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#270

Post by cpeterso »

pjmlp wrote: post #135
maheart wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Android is Linux on the phone. It's Linux kernel with stuff on top. Android is just the Linux kernel on the phone -- that's the issue I have with it. It comes with none of the other stuff that makes GNU/Linux great: philosophically/socially it's different, but on a technical level it's missing rest of the GNU/Linux stack (e.g. package management, and the plethora of developer tools -- including languages and libra…

And with Brillo and Fuchsia, Google is removing whatever is left of it.

What is Brillo taking away? I thought it was more a standardization of the HAL and Linux kernel?
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