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

discourse.mozilla-community.org

1–10 of 156 posts

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

#2
> We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the version 2.6 release.

Meanwhile, most FxOS phones (all three of them, I guess) are still stuck on 1.3 because Mozilla's update policy for it has always been even more broken than Google's.

I won't miss it. My Fire E has been a paperweight for the past year because it was just useless – the base OS was never on par with even Android 2, and the fragmentation killed the app market before it even existed.

If Mozilla handles FxOS for IoT like it did on smartphones (or like it handles Thunderbird), it won't survive another year.

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

#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 distros for the Firefox trademark (forcing them to create the Iceweasel fork) or including proprietary services (e.g. Pocket) forcing the creation of the Icecat fork.

Just be a Free and Open browser, with some good cloud services, and make money within a Freemium model (allowed by Free Software Foundation policies).

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

#4
The title is beyond editorializing into the factually incorrect territory, as they are not saying they're killing Firefox OS?

The pivot from phones to "connected devices" was already announced before[1] and this is just fleshing out that.

The language sounds a lot more like corporate-speak than what Mozilla's external communications usually are, I wonder if this is standard fare or if this team is coming from different cultures.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10716167

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

#7
post #2

> We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the version 2.6 release. Meanwhile, most FxOS phones (all three of them, I guess) are still stuck on 1.3 because Mozilla's update policy for it has always been even more broken than Google's. I won't miss it. My Fire E has been a paperweight for the past year because it was just useless – the base OS was never on par with even Android 2, and the fragmentat…

FWIW, Firefox OS 2.0 is actually pretty dang good. Update policy is still busted of course.

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

#8
The headline omits the important "for smartphones" clause:

> We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones

Other uses of the Firefox OS platform (at least the Gecko and Gonk layers) are still being developed, including for television:

> We will continue to assess the stack to determine fit with new projects coming through the innovation process [...] As of today, we have 3 projects that have passed the first gate including SmartTV, and about a dozen more projects are prepping for review.

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

#9

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…

Yes and they should allow us who want to actually use the capital F.. Free part of the licence to use your own servers for everything. It is really hard to do now with Sync in Firefox for example.

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

#10
post #5

The article always qualifies it as Firefox OS for smartphones . Is there a non-smartphone version that they're keeping?

Yes, that's what the "connected devices"/IoT story is about. AFAIK there is right now a push in direction of Smart TVs (at least they asked people that made apps for phones if they don't want to make TV apps)
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