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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

#301

Post by digi_owl »

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…

As long as it is systemd based it is not "just Linux".

BTW, it was actually in the Sailfish IRC dev chat that the whole "hire an assassin to take out Poettering" thing was uttered as a late night, off color, joke...

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#302

Post by deaddodo »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #72
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.

WebOS is licensed out to LG these days for their Smart TV's. It's still the commercial deal it's been since HP bought it from Palm.

Open WebOS is a different beast (much like how Mozilla wasn't Netscape Navigator), based on the open sourced components of WebOS.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#304

Post by maheart »

ghostly_s wrote: post #189
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…

Is Tizen any closer to this?

I honestly don't know what's happening with Tizen these days -- Samsung has invested money into it, but it has (IMO) very little to show. Again, my bias is showing, but I think Jolla (SailfishOS) and Canonical (Ubuntu Touch) have achieved infinitely more with smaller teams and less capital.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#305

Post by ksec »

vollmond wrote: post #196
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 want a dumb display and a smart STB -- because I don't want to have to replace a thousand-dollar display just to get new STB hardware. It's why I have a TV and a Roku, rather than a Roku TV. Why combine them when their upgrade cycles don't match up?

Also a fair point. But then I want a Real DUMP TV. Or a Display Panel only with speakers. A Single Port for the STB, and have everything attached via the STB, including the TV Aerial line. Why? Because i dont want a Remote for my Dump TV, another Remote for my STB, a remote for DVR etc. I want a single user interface to control my experience on my TV. We are well into 2016 and i dont see any improvement in sight.

The UX we currently have TV Sucks.

P.S - The problem with this solution is that no manufacture is willing to sell you a display panel only.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#306

Post by _ea1k »

LukeShu wrote: post #183
_ea1k wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking away those things doesn't make it not Linux. Adding those things wouldn't make it not Android. These guys could have had the best of both worlds.

He didn't say anything about it not being Linux; he said it isn't GNU/Linux, which it isn't, the GNU parts are missing.

A lot of the things that he mentioned (package management, even development tools) don't necessarily require a GNU stack.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#307

Post by ksec »

Torgo wrote: post #261
open-source-ux wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

UX were bad, it wasn't a marketing fault ( Although they did a poor job promoting it also ). User didn't understand what was going on, and therefore reluctant to use it.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#308

Post by ksec »

wodenokoto wrote: post #214
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 believe most of the top has been with mozilla since before Firefox.

Exactly the reason why they are still the way they are.

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#309

Post by andyidsinga »

type0 wrote: post #287
andyidsinga wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we're no more stuck with those two than we were with blackberry. things change in less than predictable ways. next big os front will be bringing embedded (read iot) from the old school to the new.

Wasn't it snapchat that released some strange techno-hipster glasses with camers just now. Eventually we will see embedded oled in them and hand gesture interfaces for more augmented reality.

yeah - hats off to them for getting in the IoT/wearable game. "snapholes"? :)

Re: Mozilla has stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS

#310

Post by nzp »

xanderstrike wrote: post #293
nir wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People reading HN could, but the general public doesn't really have that option.

Does the general public care though?

Not at all. A lot of people who gather at places like these don't seem to realise that ordinary people have much more pressing problems in life than running a phone OS they can tinker with.
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