Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones
http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/08/mozilla-will-stop-developing-and-selling-firefox-os-smartphones/
330 comments
Completely agree that they should turn their focus towards solving privacy and identity management.
I'm hoping that this might mean they can direct some resources towards Persona development again. Or at least experiment with something new in this area.
I'm hoping that this might mean they can direct some resources towards Persona development again. Or at least experiment with something new in this area.
+1 for Persona. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10436123
Re: privacy / security, I really wish they hadn't dropped Thunderbird.
Re: privacy / security, I really wish they hadn't dropped Thunderbird.
It's a shame really, but as an outsider, it wasn't clear that Persona was even given a chance to fail.
That's my impression as well. A friend and I created a pastebin as a fun weekend project this weekend (https://www.pastery.net/) and we used Persona for auth, since it's so damn convenient. The only problem is that it loads a bunch of files on every request, and my questions about lazy-loading went unanswered.
I really wish Mozilla would change their mind and start developing this again. It feels like they expected all major websites to support it on the first year, and, when that didn't happen, they decided to drop it.
I really wish Mozilla would change their mind and start developing this again. It feels like they expected all major websites to support it on the first year, and, when that didn't happen, they decided to drop it.
Incidentally, I launched a pastebin (https://ghostbin.com/) some time ago, used Persona for authentication, and absolutely loved it.
Pastery looks awesome. It appears that you're using Pygments server-side?
Pastery looks awesome. It appears that you're using Pygments server-side?
Serious question for you and your parent:
Why would a pastebin site need auth/login/userids ?
All I can think of is editing pastes, but isn't it easier to just create a new (anonymous) paste instead of editing ?
Why would a pastebin site need auth/login/userids ?
All I can think of is editing pastes, but isn't it easier to just create a new (anonymous) paste instead of editing ?
They're primarily for content ownership management.
I'd prefer not to have accounts, and Ghostbin tries to avoid keeping identifiable information around, but they do come in fairly handy for maintaining control of the things you've pasted and the right to revoke them.
Session cookies aren't quite up to the task, since they can't stick around forever and are difficult to bring with you between workspaces.
(edit to elaborate on "avoid keeping identifiable information": account names are hashed, the account never stores user identification, and a paste doesn't track which account created it. For most intents and many purposes, the creator of a paste is anonymous. We could get into drawing correlations between all the pastes owned by an account, but I'm not particularly interested in sitting around and doing that.)
I'd prefer not to have accounts, and Ghostbin tries to avoid keeping identifiable information around, but they do come in fairly handy for maintaining control of the things you've pasted and the right to revoke them.
Session cookies aren't quite up to the task, since they can't stick around forever and are difficult to bring with you between workspaces.
(edit to elaborate on "avoid keeping identifiable information": account names are hashed, the account never stores user identification, and a paste doesn't track which account created it. For most intents and many purposes, the creator of a paste is anonymous. We could get into drawing correlations between all the pastes owned by an account, but I'm not particularly interested in sitting around and doing that.)
Deletion. Modification of pastes and maintaining the same id (URL).
Though, these can be solved with tokens per post, it's tough to remember/maintain multiple tokens, doesn't work out in practice.
Though, these can be solved with tokens per post, it's tough to remember/maintain multiple tokens, doesn't work out in practice.
Preventing inundation with pastes. This is less of a problem for a small project like this compared to one of the major sites, whose server architecture is probably more robust.
That looks fantastic! I love what you've done with the UI. We do use Pygments, yep, same as you, looks like :)
I don't think I'd have started Pastery if I'd seen Ghostbin, as I was looking for a pastebin that wasn't ugly, and I hadn't found any that qualified.
Have you had any abuse problems at all?
I don't think I'd have started Pastery if I'd seen Ghostbin, as I was looking for a pastebin that wasn't ugly, and I hadn't found any that qualified.
Have you had any abuse problems at all?
With Thunderbird at least, the repo is open and available.
Does the same stand for Persona?
Perhaps instead of asking Firefox to do the legwork we should be contributing some of our own time to the projects we want to see succeed.
Does the same stand for Persona?
Perhaps instead of asking Firefox to do the legwork we should be contributing some of our own time to the projects we want to see succeed.
How is that relevant? Are you saying that Persona failed because they didn't get enough pull requests from other users?
I think they're saying that even if Mozilla may not decide to actively develop Persona anymore, Persona users and fans would be able to contribute to and further develop the project if the repo is "open and available."
That's not happening, unfortunately. Sometimes you need someone with weight to throw around, or with technical knowledge, or both.
Absolutely right. Dan Callahan's statement on why:
"with Mozilla Labs somewhat sudden dissolution, we were unexpectedly asked to demonstrate traction and commercial adoption that simply wasn't there."
Commercial adoption? What does that even mean in the context of MoCo? What does MoCo sell? And 24 months? Makes no sense, even for MoCo. Google is consistently a small player in the Cloud Computing Platform space. Their response: "we're not going away." MoCo has scores of millions in the bank. I'm still baffled.
"with Mozilla Labs somewhat sudden dissolution, we were unexpectedly asked to demonstrate traction and commercial adoption that simply wasn't there."
Commercial adoption? What does that even mean in the context of MoCo? What does MoCo sell? And 24 months? Makes no sense, even for MoCo. Google is consistently a small player in the Cloud Computing Platform space. Their response: "we're not going away." MoCo has scores of millions in the bank. I'm still baffled.
I think that for Persona in particular, "commercial adoption" would probably have meant "random startups deploying Persona as their customers' identity provider." The idea being that a government/nonprofit/enterprise can be convinced to adopt any old ridiculous thing if you say the right things about it, but "the market" (i.e. a critical mass of SMBs) will only adopt your product if it's giving them a higher ROI than the alternative.
Yeah I don't buy that either. Was there an ROI case made about the iPhone? I don't think so. There's no similar ROI case anyone could make for Firefox, either.
The original iPhone wasn't a platform (didn't have "apps"), remember; it had value without third party support. Persona, meanwhile, has no value apart from its adoption.
Obviously, it doesn't need adoption to "survive", but it does need adoption to succeed in its goals: rescuing users from stupid hack-job login systems.
I would compare it more to Chrome: Google made Chrome with the goal of getting the web to work better for some people, so they could more easily consume Google's various services. You could say that Chrome's bottom line was "increased Google service adoption": if Chrome renders faster and provides more HTML5 features, then Google gets more and happier customers for their products.
Mozilla doesn't have "services" that Persona is a loss-leader for, but there's still that same ROI calculation of whether Persona is achieving its goals, and measuring adoption rate is a good proxy for that.
The important thing, that Mozilla failed to do, was to actually understand what an adoption curve for something like Persona should look like, and what things affect it. They needed to heavily advertise it (to developers, not to users!) over about two years, and then start looking at the adoption curve.
Obviously, it doesn't need adoption to "survive", but it does need adoption to succeed in its goals: rescuing users from stupid hack-job login systems.
I would compare it more to Chrome: Google made Chrome with the goal of getting the web to work better for some people, so they could more easily consume Google's various services. You could say that Chrome's bottom line was "increased Google service adoption": if Chrome renders faster and provides more HTML5 features, then Google gets more and happier customers for their products.
Mozilla doesn't have "services" that Persona is a loss-leader for, but there's still that same ROI calculation of whether Persona is achieving its goals, and measuring adoption rate is a good proxy for that.
The important thing, that Mozilla failed to do, was to actually understand what an adoption curve for something like Persona should look like, and what things affect it. They needed to heavily advertise it (to developers, not to users!) over about two years, and then start looking at the adoption curve.
I really agree on this. They should focus on a browser that respects privacy and email that respects privacy (perhaps by resuming Thunderbird development).
On top of that, I'd argue IM + video/audio chat that respects privacy is something that desperately needs better solutions.
I'd push software forward, and then innovate on protocols. Peer to peer might be the only way to achieve true privacy.
On top of that, I'd argue IM + video/audio chat that respects privacy is something that desperately needs better solutions.
I'd push software forward, and then innovate on protocols. Peer to peer might be the only way to achieve true privacy.
Absolutely.
Although the market for centralized secure messaging is currently being served adequately by the likes of Signal and Telegram, centralized messaging platforms inevitably leak metadata.
I don't want to belittle the work done by teams that have already started work on distributed messaging platforms like Tox and Matrix (and my own proof-of-concept, Toc [1]), but Mozilla is in a much better position to tackle the problem of decentralized, private messaging that also has great UX, and not just in terms of sheer resources:
1) They have (or at least had) a decentralized identity management platform in Persona.
2) They have a decentralized, zero-knowledge data sync platform in Firefox Sync.
3) They have a lot of influence in the web standards community that they can leverage to push a new federated messaging protocol to succeed XMPP.
This is the kind of work that I think Mozilla should be doing, because they can do it better than anyone else who's willing (i.e. not for-profit corporations, because they have very little to gain by building decentralized apps and federated protocols that have no lock-in whatsoever).
[1] http://toc.im/
Although the market for centralized secure messaging is currently being served adequately by the likes of Signal and Telegram, centralized messaging platforms inevitably leak metadata.
I don't want to belittle the work done by teams that have already started work on distributed messaging platforms like Tox and Matrix (and my own proof-of-concept, Toc [1]), but Mozilla is in a much better position to tackle the problem of decentralized, private messaging that also has great UX, and not just in terms of sheer resources:
1) They have (or at least had) a decentralized identity management platform in Persona.
2) They have a decentralized, zero-knowledge data sync platform in Firefox Sync.
3) They have a lot of influence in the web standards community that they can leverage to push a new federated messaging protocol to succeed XMPP.
This is the kind of work that I think Mozilla should be doing, because they can do it better than anyone else who's willing (i.e. not for-profit corporations, because they have very little to gain by building decentralized apps and federated protocols that have no lock-in whatsoever).
[1] http://toc.im/
I would also include Ricochet[1] in the list of decentralized messaging tools, which is centered around Tor hidden services.
[1] https://ricochet.im
[1] https://ricochet.im
Also, Mozilla already had some IM support (XMPP, twitter, and yahoo, I think) in Thunderbird / Instantbird. IRC too, but that's a different sort of messaging.
They're trying something with Firefox Hello. Unfortunately, short of Google open sourcing Hangouts and making it a truly open protocol, I don't see a change happening in the IM space any time soon =/
I think that's a little overly pessimistic. Look how quickly Slack went from non-existent to huge in the messaging space.
Isn't Slack just another proprietary platform? They may leverage some open protocols, but I don't see how Slack decentralizes messaging. Am I missing something?
It doesn't, the point is there's still room for this space to be disrupted.
Imagine a browser that has a privacy mode using tor ? Privacy in browser nowadays is privacy from your wife or kids, not privacy from anything on the server side.
Seeing how hostile most of the western governments are toward privacy on the internet, that's probably not the best long term strategy for Mozilla though. They could quickly find themselves labelled terrorist organisation ( by mistake ) and have their account frozen ( by mistake ) for a long period of time ( due process, can't rush those stuff )
Seeing how hostile most of the western governments are toward privacy on the internet, that's probably not the best long term strategy for Mozilla though. They could quickly find themselves labelled terrorist organisation ( by mistake ) and have their account frozen ( by mistake ) for a long period of time ( due process, can't rush those stuff )
Nonsense. Tor Browser is actually based on Mozilla Firefox and it has been alive for long. Nobody would be so mad to call the web browser vendor a terrorist organization.
Clearly you don't follow the UK news, the UK govt. have been toying with banning Tor (encryption in general) for a couple of years.
Here is a recent article about it http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/11/tor-should...
Here is a recent article about it http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/11/tor-should...
If they targeted Mozilla all hell would break loose. Mozilla is no Napster! They would have one heck of a fight on their hands. I don't believe they would win.
> I really agree on this. They should focus on a browser that respects privacy and email that respects privacy
I'd love to see it happen, but who would the money come from?
I'd love to see it happen, but who would the money come from?
The problem is solving privacy and identity management in the mobile space is hard given how vertically integrated both the iOS and Android eco-systems by Apple and Google respectively. Firefox (and Opera) had failed to make any headway into Android in the years prior.
To be fair , the market niche for a phone that doesn't try to imprison you or ransom you to the highest bidder, hasn't yet been served.
In the internet-landscape, Mozilla is the one that tries to intervene on the user's behalf against commercial interests. Maybe they thought they could do the same for the much more competitive mobile market.
The bigger problem i think is that Mozilla didn't make a phone that appealed to influencers - the high tech crowd similar to the early adopters for Firefox. Instead they tried to go for the emerging markets that was already well served by other alternatives, and who aren't ideal early adopters. From what i saw the user experience and quality of their Platform wasn't top notch either (and html apps still suck in 2015).
Ubuntu was on the right track with Ubuntu Edge (the Indiegogo campaign showed that there was definitely a demand for it), but they set their goals too high and since then they seem to be dragging their feet in getting into the market.
In the internet-landscape, Mozilla is the one that tries to intervene on the user's behalf against commercial interests. Maybe they thought they could do the same for the much more competitive mobile market.
The bigger problem i think is that Mozilla didn't make a phone that appealed to influencers - the high tech crowd similar to the early adopters for Firefox. Instead they tried to go for the emerging markets that was already well served by other alternatives, and who aren't ideal early adopters. From what i saw the user experience and quality of their Platform wasn't top notch either (and html apps still suck in 2015).
Ubuntu was on the right track with Ubuntu Edge (the Indiegogo campaign showed that there was definitely a demand for it), but they set their goals too high and since then they seem to be dragging their feet in getting into the market.
The stock Android on my Nexus 6 does a pretty good job actually. In a sense FirefoxOS is more limited than Android. You can't run an alternative browser on it for example.
On Android you can install a custom launcher to get rid of that annoying Google Search bar, you can replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo's app, you can install Firefox for Android on it and completely replace Chrome, you can install apps from third party sources like F-Droid or Amazon's Appstore. In Marshmallow the previously broken permissions system has been finally redesigned. Chrome for Android is pretty cool lately, as it also does push notifications, the app manifest and it does a much better job for making web apps first class citizens than Safari on iOS or Firefox on Android or whatever Opera is doing. You can actually run Facebook in your Android browser now and pretend that it's a native app.
And Android is also open source, I mean yes, while it's dependent on Google's Play services, like for push notifications or its location services, those can be replaced and Android is very much fork-able. Hey, Amazon did it.
Ubuntu was doomed from the start and Android is light years away from its competition imho. I mean, experiments are cool, but if your mobile OS is less usable than Android from 5 years ago, that's a failed experiment.
On Android you can install a custom launcher to get rid of that annoying Google Search bar, you can replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo's app, you can install Firefox for Android on it and completely replace Chrome, you can install apps from third party sources like F-Droid or Amazon's Appstore. In Marshmallow the previously broken permissions system has been finally redesigned. Chrome for Android is pretty cool lately, as it also does push notifications, the app manifest and it does a much better job for making web apps first class citizens than Safari on iOS or Firefox on Android or whatever Opera is doing. You can actually run Facebook in your Android browser now and pretend that it's a native app.
And Android is also open source, I mean yes, while it's dependent on Google's Play services, like for push notifications or its location services, those can be replaced and Android is very much fork-able. Hey, Amazon did it.
Ubuntu was doomed from the start and Android is light years away from its competition imho. I mean, experiments are cool, but if your mobile OS is less usable than Android from 5 years ago, that's a failed experiment.
Android seems to be getting better with each new release from a security & privacy perspective, but still has a long ways to go. As a long time rose-tinted-glasses-wearing FOSS fan and android user, i have to say that iOS is still far ahead of Android in terms of security and privacy. Furthermore Apple seems to keep innovating in that regard.
You could go with custom launcher/mod/rom/ route but that brings its own possible set of problems - performance, battery life, broken functionality (some banking apps wont run on rooted phones), more spyware(from launchers), etc. It is not an acceptable solution for the masses.
Amazon - well they are just another company trying to ransom/loot you. Cyanogen mod is promising if they can overcome challenges (how many apps work without google play services?).
Furthermore Google play services is deeply embedded into android, whose key purpose is to ransom you to the highest bidder. Android is fundamentally compromised by the conflicting business interests of its primary developer (Google).
edit: I wouldn't say that Ubuntu was doomed from the start, but they certainly missed the boat.
You could go with custom launcher/mod/rom/ route but that brings its own possible set of problems - performance, battery life, broken functionality (some banking apps wont run on rooted phones), more spyware(from launchers), etc. It is not an acceptable solution for the masses.
Amazon - well they are just another company trying to ransom/loot you. Cyanogen mod is promising if they can overcome challenges (how many apps work without google play services?).
Furthermore Google play services is deeply embedded into android, whose key purpose is to ransom you to the highest bidder. Android is fundamentally compromised by the conflicting business interests of its primary developer (Google).
edit: I wouldn't say that Ubuntu was doomed from the start, but they certainly missed the boat.
The market niche is/was nicely being served by Jolla. (At least outside US. But as mentioned they are bankrupt atm. And the phone is old - still nice imho)
Outside of hacker news, I haven't heard of Firefox OS even once. They had no marketing to speak of, and you have to complete HARD on marketing to get into that market.
"If you build it they will come" isn't a valid benchmark when there's already two options with massive market share that consumers are more or less happy with.
(Since it's talked about in some replies, I live in the US).
"If you build it they will come" isn't a valid benchmark when there's already two options with massive market share that consumers are more or less happy with.
(Since it's talked about in some replies, I live in the US).
Just as a counterpoint, I regularly saw Firefox os+phone ads on giant billboards in central Warsaw.
If there was to be any market interest, I thought their targeting and marketing efforts like this were pretty spot-on.
If there was to be any market interest, I thought their targeting and marketing efforts like this were pretty spot-on.
Oh yeah, I've read about them targeting some specific countries (Spain, Brazil, Poland, etc). So it might be that the parent commentator lives elsewhere and didn't get targeted :)
Telefónica, the major carrier in Spain, sold some Firefox OS phones years ago under the promise that there would be a version of WhatsApp for Firefox OS soon. That never happened. They eventually stopped selling them.
(Not implying there is any correlation between those two last facts.)
(Not implying there is any correlation between those two last facts.)
There is Whatsapp client Loqui IM.
They were targeting developing countries like Central Eu, South Am, Asia, rather than North Am. The market there is huge.
I live in Poland and I was lucky that I could easily find a cheap FxOS phone, which actually I am using now. This is the only truly private phone available here. It is a pity that Mozilla abandoned it. Bigger pity is that people do not give a sht about their privacy and open standards.
I live in Poland and I was lucky that I could easily find a cheap FxOS phone, which actually I am using now. This is the only truly private phone available here. It is a pity that Mozilla abandoned it. Bigger pity is that people do not give a sht about their privacy and open standards.
I live in Spain, but never saw someone using a Firefox OS phone there.
>"If you build it they will come"
The feedback I received from the people that tested the platform development wise was that they had not built it yet.
The feedback I received from the people that tested the platform development wise was that they had not built it yet.
They have done a lot of marketing with their partner Orange in Africa. They promoted 40$ phones. It didn't get much traction because users in Africa already had good viable Android phones for that price tag.
The last time I checked (about a year ago), their web site said that the project is not ready for public. I bought a firefoxos device in October 2014 which came with FirefoxOS 1.3, and got to agree that it wasn't ready for public.
So that explains the lack of marketing.
So that explains the lack of marketing.
They didn't seem to make any effort to get it into the hands of people who might actually talk about it either. I follow a ton of hardware reviewer types and never once saw Firefox OS phones come up. I know literally one person who bought one out of curiosity.
Not to mention that FirefoxOS wasn't even properly built. I have yet to see (and given today's news, probably will never see) a review of FirefoxOS where the reviewer doesn't mention the OS crashing multiple times.
I used one as my primary device for 2 years. It worked fine. All I needed was voice, sms, a browser, mail reader and a modem (wifi tethering). I had bought a dev device for $75.
Somewhere in the FF OS 2.x series, an upgrade seriously made the keyboard unusable, and I never knew where to turn for bug trackers / support. I had also tried to make IPv6 work, experimented a bit with the app system.. I'm an average programmer, but I participate in a few large projects.. Firefox has always been a mystery to me, with lots of code names and hard to use bug tracker.
Huge fan of Mozilla otherwise, so hurts a bit to say this.. other than that, it was a functional phone for 2 years.
Somewhere in the FF OS 2.x series, an upgrade seriously made the keyboard unusable, and I never knew where to turn for bug trackers / support. I had also tried to make IPv6 work, experimented a bit with the app system.. I'm an average programmer, but I participate in a few large projects.. Firefox has always been a mystery to me, with lots of code names and hard to use bug tracker.
Huge fan of Mozilla otherwise, so hurts a bit to say this.. other than that, it was a functional phone for 2 years.
My Alcatel with FxOS 2 does not crash at all.
Also, I wonder how the public would react by hearing "Firefox""OS". The browser running the computer, would the idea inspired or confused them ? ChromeOS is from Google, they're known to make smartphones and Android so it's less strange to jump the shark. But Mozilla ...
According to IDC the Worldwide Smartphone Market in 2015:
@downvoter: it's a forcast by the well known IDC, also the current market share (2015) is interesting on its own
Android ... 81.2%
iOS ... 15.8%
Windows Phone ... 2.2%
Others ... 0.8%
Android ... 82.6%
iOS ... 14.1%
Windows Phone ... 2.3%
Others ... 0.9%
@downvoter: it's a forcast by the well known IDC, also the current market share (2015) is interesting on its own
Same 'forecasters' that had WP over 20% in 2015, lol.
http://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/idc21.jpg
http://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/idc21.jpg
When you know nothing about future trends the current state is the best estimate. This explains both predictions.
Will Windows Phone/ Windows Mobile be around 2019, as a die-hard WP user, I hope so. I just do not like those icon based OSes.
I suspect the Universal Windows Platform will have a significant impact. Especially the ability to dock your phone with an external display/keyboard/mouse. For a large portion of the market it displaces the need for a second computing device. Microsoft is much further along on this front than both Android and iOS.
I've been able to (and have done so) plug my android phone into a usb hub with mouse and keyboard and into a 1080p screen for quite a few years now.
Of course, there's relatively little that truly takes advantage of that set up, and making the user experience more pleasant would make a huge difference, but android understands mouse and keyboard input just fine. Microsoft may be somewhat further along on this front, but I don't think it's as much as you think - the apps that can run in this way are not full windows applications, and there are relatively few of them at present.
Of course, there's relatively little that truly takes advantage of that set up, and making the user experience more pleasant would make a huge difference, but android understands mouse and keyboard input just fine. Microsoft may be somewhat further along on this front, but I don't think it's as much as you think - the apps that can run in this way are not full windows applications, and there are relatively few of them at present.
>Microsoft may be somewhat further along on this front, but I don't think it's as much as you think - the apps that can run in this way are not full windows applications.
But that is going to soon change as MS is working with Intel to launch Intel powered phones (x86). [1]
Regardless of whether Windows phone succeeds or not, I believe the path they are taking will eventually be where all the OSes will end up. The saying "The best camera is the one that is with you" may hold true for computers in the future.
Imagine hotels & coffee shops offering a dock for rooms/tables and the only thing you need is your phone. Plug it in and voila!, your personalized desktop with all its settings and data. This might even be secure, cost effective and more efficient method for portable desktop.
[1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-launching-intel-pow...
But that is going to soon change as MS is working with Intel to launch Intel powered phones (x86). [1]
Regardless of whether Windows phone succeeds or not, I believe the path they are taking will eventually be where all the OSes will end up. The saying "The best camera is the one that is with you" may hold true for computers in the future.
Imagine hotels & coffee shops offering a dock for rooms/tables and the only thing you need is your phone. Plug it in and voila!, your personalized desktop with all its settings and data. This might even be secure, cost effective and more efficient method for portable desktop.
[1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-launching-intel-pow...
It's not just the raw capabilities that are important. This is something Apple has understood for a long time. Microsoft is figuring it out.
The Motorola Atrix had an optional attachment that turned it into a "webtop" (basically a laptop case that used your phone as the CPU): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G
Microsoft continues to shoot itself in the foot here. Nearly two years ago at BUILD they announced universal apps for Xbox One. A year later the new term, Universal Windows Platform (UWP), was being used and another promise of opening up Xbox to app developers. Xbox has yet to really open up for app devs.
The second leg of UWP's 'write a single app and have it go everywhere' was mobile. We've all seen how that's been going.
The final (and biggest/main) leg is traditional Windows. They whiffed badly with the Windows RT devices. Now all the tablets are running the full-blown OS. That means they all run Win32 apps.
Win32 is good enough so why would a developer port their app to UWP when the first two legs are either unavailable or have a very small install base of customers?
The second leg of UWP's 'write a single app and have it go everywhere' was mobile. We've all seen how that's been going.
The final (and biggest/main) leg is traditional Windows. They whiffed badly with the Windows RT devices. Now all the tablets are running the full-blown OS. That means they all run Win32 apps.
Win32 is good enough so why would a developer port their app to UWP when the first two legs are either unavailable or have a very small install base of customers?
> Win32 is good enough so why would a developer port their app to UWP when the first two legs are either unavailable or have a very small install base of customers?
All the new APIs since Windows 8 are only available in WinRT.
For example, the upgrade path to MFC is XAML, which is only available for WinRT applications.
All the new APIs since Windows 8 are only available in WinRT.
For example, the upgrade path to MFC is XAML, which is only available for WinRT applications.
> Especially the ability to dock your phone with an external display/keyboard/mouse. For a large portion of the market it displaces the need for a second computing device. Microsoft is much further along on this front than both Android and iOS.
From a software perspective, Android has supported this forever. From a hardware perspective, there've been Android devices where accompanying docking solutions was heavily marketed, though none in the last few years, because its something users keep not really wanting in practice, even if they conceptually like the idea in the abstract.
Plus, a substantial fraction of the price and size of a "second computing device" that's larger than your phone is going to be the display, so docking doesn't really solve much of anything (especially when the devices are all cloud connected.) There's zero friction moving between by Android phone and my 12" tablet -- with BT keyboard and, if I felt like using one, BT mouse. And I could use the BT keyboard and mouse with the phone itself, if I wanted to. Either device could connect to an external monitor via HDMI with an inexpensive adaptor (and either can cast its display via Google Cast.)
What, in practical terms, does docking solve?
From a software perspective, Android has supported this forever. From a hardware perspective, there've been Android devices where accompanying docking solutions was heavily marketed, though none in the last few years, because its something users keep not really wanting in practice, even if they conceptually like the idea in the abstract.
Plus, a substantial fraction of the price and size of a "second computing device" that's larger than your phone is going to be the display, so docking doesn't really solve much of anything (especially when the devices are all cloud connected.) There's zero friction moving between by Android phone and my 12" tablet -- with BT keyboard and, if I felt like using one, BT mouse. And I could use the BT keyboard and mouse with the phone itself, if I wanted to. Either device could connect to an external monitor via HDMI with an inexpensive adaptor (and either can cast its display via Google Cast.)
What, in practical terms, does docking solve?
Monitors aren't obsoleted nearly as quickly as computer hardware and most consumers have a TV. You can take peripherals you already own and make a 1-plug docking station without significant cost. The lynchpin is user-experience and Microsoft is chasing it directly. Android is just trying to be everything for everyone. The docking stations were pimped by the OEMs without support from the ecosystem. I suspect Microsoft is more aggressively preparing for the death of the laptop/desktop. If only to save themselves from the Innovator's dilemma.
> Monitors aren't obsoleted nearly as quickly as computer hardware and most consumers have a TV.
And most people don't want to dock their computing device to their TV as a monitor; there are uses for TV-as-output device, and they're well-covered by things like Google Cast and similar technologies.
> You can take peripherals you already own and make a 1-plug docking station without significant cost.
Only if I already own peripherals; i.e., if I already have a desktop or a laptop that I use with external peripherals instead of just the built-in interface. And, I only need a "docking station" if those peripherals are wired, rather than, say, Bluetooth.
Which might be the case for the monitor, sure, but you can already do that. HDMI dongles or cables -- the only one-plug docking station you need in a world with Bluetooth mice and keyboards -- are readily available and not expensive for existing, non-Windows mobile devices.
And most people don't want to dock their computing device to their TV as a monitor; there are uses for TV-as-output device, and they're well-covered by things like Google Cast and similar technologies.
> You can take peripherals you already own and make a 1-plug docking station without significant cost.
Only if I already own peripherals; i.e., if I already have a desktop or a laptop that I use with external peripherals instead of just the built-in interface. And, I only need a "docking station" if those peripherals are wired, rather than, say, Bluetooth.
Which might be the case for the monitor, sure, but you can already do that. HDMI dongles or cables -- the only one-plug docking station you need in a world with Bluetooth mice and keyboards -- are readily available and not expensive for existing, non-Windows mobile devices.
I may have misunderstood the ethos of your original comment. Physical docking is likely transient. My comments are directed more towards 2019 and "universal" applications. I took docking to mean: The single action process by which you connect a complete set peripherals to your phone/tablet.
I think it's supposed to be cheaper to own one powerful device + screen and keyboard, than having to buy two separate powerful device.
Windows Phone, if it survives, will eventually become very much like those icon based OSes.
The UI can be changed on Android and there are a lot of launchers which has a windows phone style:
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=windows+launcher&c=ap...
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=windows+launcher&c=ap...
Bizarre that this opinion got downvoted, but I agree. It would be nice to have a thriving ecosystem of mobile OS's. I'm a WP user also and will be going Android for my next go round, maybe iOS after that. Would have been nice to try Firefox OS after that.
So install an Android launcher that doesn't use icons. They are available.
What is it that makes you a die-hard WP user? As someone who works for a company with mobile applications, we've had a hard time seeing the value in this platform and I'd like to change that.
As an app developer, the lack of users makes WP uninteresting. But it has a slick, original interface and visual style, that has manage very smooth animation on even slow hardware, so it should be no wonder that there are people who fall in love with it.
> And yes, I realize that users don't care about privacy. But nobody cared about web standards, either: it's all about packaging. That's Mozilla's strength.
The difference with browsers was that improvements in the browser led to clear improvements in web browsing experience, which even the least technically minded could notice. What changes in privacy and identity are Mozilla going to pioneer that result in obvious benefits that those who don't know anything about these issues (i.e. the majority) will notice and clearly attribute to Mozilla's products? I really wish there were such things but I have yet to see any presented.
The difference with browsers was that improvements in the browser led to clear improvements in web browsing experience, which even the least technically minded could notice. What changes in privacy and identity are Mozilla going to pioneer that result in obvious benefits that those who don't know anything about these issues (i.e. the majority) will notice and clearly attribute to Mozilla's products? I really wish there were such things but I have yet to see any presented.
The clearest and simplest thing they could do is implement ad blocking in an ethical manner. All the other players have commercial agendas either for or against advertising. Mozilla is really the only player that can come to the table with clean hands and implement a solution that is fair to all sides.
Why would the user care about "ethical" manner (especially since it still allows ads) over crude, remove all ads, manner?
Are you asking why do people care about ethics? That's a philosophical question almost. But at some point people do. We agree to laws that people shouldn't murder each other, even if you find it might be manifestly in your interests to knock someone off. I think most "ordinary" people do feel at least a tiny bit guilty about nuking every single ad on web sites that they use regularly. I know I do.
>Are you asking why do people care about ethics?
No. I'm asking why the parent thinks people WILL care about such ethics.
Between "ethical ad-removal: keeps some ads" and "non-ethical: it removes all of them", I don't think most people will give it a second though to go for the "no ads" option.
And they certainly won't go out of their way to find if there an "ethical ad-removal" option even exists in the first place.
>I think most "ordinary" people do feel at least a tiny bit guilty about nuking every single ad on web sites that they use regularly. I know I do.
I think those are probably outliers. The same way people (millions) didn't give a damn about skipping ads with their TiVo's or what have you.
No. I'm asking why the parent thinks people WILL care about such ethics.
Between "ethical ad-removal: keeps some ads" and "non-ethical: it removes all of them", I don't think most people will give it a second though to go for the "no ads" option.
And they certainly won't go out of their way to find if there an "ethical ad-removal" option even exists in the first place.
>I think most "ordinary" people do feel at least a tiny bit guilty about nuking every single ad on web sites that they use regularly. I know I do.
I think those are probably outliers. The same way people (millions) didn't give a damn about skipping ads with their TiVo's or what have you.
> Between "ethical ad-removal: keeps some ads" and "non-ethical: it removes all of them
You're making up a choice that doesn't exist. No browser presents people with that choice. The choice is: by default you get ads. If they don't upset you, you do nothing. Only if they upset you a lot, you will seek out an ad blocker. Ethical ad blocking means blocking things that significantly degrade the experience of the page or harms the user (such as through privacy violation), while not blocking things that don't harm the user.
So the answer to your question, why WILL people care about ethics - I think they care about not being harmed by slow pages and privacy violation. That is a way of saying they care about other people being ethical to them, and not harming them. A browser that doesn't harm them by default is something they will like. Other browsers will not implement such defaults because there is no standard to support it and the parties who currently make browsers cannot agree on one because they are fundamentally conflicted by their commercial interests.
You're making up a choice that doesn't exist. No browser presents people with that choice. The choice is: by default you get ads. If they don't upset you, you do nothing. Only if they upset you a lot, you will seek out an ad blocker. Ethical ad blocking means blocking things that significantly degrade the experience of the page or harms the user (such as through privacy violation), while not blocking things that don't harm the user.
So the answer to your question, why WILL people care about ethics - I think they care about not being harmed by slow pages and privacy violation. That is a way of saying they care about other people being ethical to them, and not harming them. A browser that doesn't harm them by default is something they will like. Other browsers will not implement such defaults because there is no standard to support it and the parties who currently make browsers cannot agree on one because they are fundamentally conflicted by their commercial interests.
I care.
I will always use the "remove all ads" answer, no matter what.
I'm still on metered bandwidth. And when I'm not at work, ads are another vector for malware.
I'll pass.
I will always use the "remove all ads" answer, no matter what.
I'm still on metered bandwidth. And when I'm not at work, ads are another vector for malware.
I'll pass.
Or maybe instead they could just make completely new, unique product. Something like Iphone was in its first release.
Firefox OS seems to be something between Android and IOS. They are trying to solve all the problems of those two but on the end are just average. Just another OS that really looks like Android for regular user.
Redesign everything and rethink the basics - go the way Windows Phone went, but with open environment and much more developer friendly space. Widnows Phone is an amazing piece of UIX and with great ideas, but it failed regarding supporting developers and making its store user friendly. This is where Firefox should aim, not another "better" version of something everyone knows to well.
Firefox OS seems to be something between Android and IOS. They are trying to solve all the problems of those two but on the end are just average. Just another OS that really looks like Android for regular user.
Redesign everything and rethink the basics - go the way Windows Phone went, but with open environment and much more developer friendly space. Widnows Phone is an amazing piece of UIX and with great ideas, but it failed regarding supporting developers and making its store user friendly. This is where Firefox should aim, not another "better" version of something everyone knows to well.
They shouldn't be off doing their own thing in the "not Google / Apple / Microsoft" phone scene. Canonical, the now dieing Jolla, and Mozilla were all doing their own thing and years later Ubuntu Touch is still an unfinished mess with no forseeable legit launch worth mentioning (3rd parties have sold Ubuntu Touch phones, and the UX was awful), Jolla is bankrupt, and Mozilla just gave up.
Plasma Mobile has the right idea. Build the platform, let communities form around the layers above it (and below it) and just try to get people working together on one goal (especially since all these mobile OS projects are all using Qt, all using Wayland, all using Linux). Lets just hope the KDE guys don't vaporware this one like Plasma Active, it sure would be lovely if Unity 8 got rebased on top of it, and used xdg-app like the community is pushing towards. Firefox could even get in on it as the default browser with great integrated webapp support.
Plasma Mobile has the right idea. Build the platform, let communities form around the layers above it (and below it) and just try to get people working together on one goal (especially since all these mobile OS projects are all using Qt, all using Wayland, all using Linux). Lets just hope the KDE guys don't vaporware this one like Plasma Active, it sure would be lovely if Unity 8 got rebased on top of it, and used xdg-app like the community is pushing towards. Firefox could even get in on it as the default browser with great integrated webapp support.
Once again, average user when first in touch with Plasma Phone will say "Oh, is this new Android?". All of them unique mobile OS's look the same at first glance. And first glance is most important. Windows Phone did amazing job in that, to bad they screwed almost everything else.
Also it sounds like your comment is technical point of view. Users dont care of that. If mobile system cannot attract regular users, then it is dead.
Also it sounds like your comment is technical point of view. Users dont care of that. If mobile system cannot attract regular users, then it is dead.
Its not really about attracting users though, its about getting phones in stores that users are buying. The market of users that shop for a device, looking for specs and features, is a tiny fraction of the market of phone users, the vast majority of which are regularly ripped off by carriers to buy underpowered overpriced iphones or Android handsets.
If you don't get on Sprint / AT&T / Verizon / Tmobile store shelves you are DOA before you even think about appealing to users switching.
But something like Plasma Mobile does not need to care too much about that. If it has the technicals right, and can run Android apps, it can be an enthusiast platform nobody else adopts because Google has strong armed manufacturer control to keep that kind of competition off store shelves if they wanted to. Its also incredibly expensive to buy market share like that, something none of these participants have the money to do.
If you don't get on Sprint / AT&T / Verizon / Tmobile store shelves you are DOA before you even think about appealing to users switching.
But something like Plasma Mobile does not need to care too much about that. If it has the technicals right, and can run Android apps, it can be an enthusiast platform nobody else adopts because Google has strong armed manufacturer control to keep that kind of competition off store shelves if they wanted to. Its also incredibly expensive to buy market share like that, something none of these participants have the money to do.
It's most definitely about attracting users. When we started OnePlus we specifically set out to ignore stores and carriers and instead focus on making a product that people would love and put it in a price range that made it accessible to everyone. If we had made the same product but instead approached stores and carriers to sell it they would have ignored us. If we were lucky they might have done a deal with us that would have been shitty for us and good for them.
Since we took the opposite approach, focused on product first and demonstrated user traction and sales the stores and carriers came to us to talk and it changed the whole power dynamic.
Every year brings several new mobile brands to the market. Most you will never hear of because they're not exciting or special. They don't focus on making users excited about their unique product, rather they focus on business deals that even if they go through end up in no sales.
Since we took the opposite approach, focused on product first and demonstrated user traction and sales the stores and carriers came to us to talk and it changed the whole power dynamic.
Every year brings several new mobile brands to the market. Most you will never hear of because they're not exciting or special. They don't focus on making users excited about their unique product, rather they focus on business deals that even if they go through end up in no sales.
But OnePlus still only sells at most a few million units a year - since Oxygen OS is just an Android fork, its still Android, and you don't have the problem of marketshare adoption to attract app developers that any of the non-Android based mobile OSes would have. And thats why I said Plasma Mobile is most interesting, since its not for commercial purposes where success is measured in adoption. The Nexus phones and other devices that are rarely commercially available in stores sell fractions of the units that generic LG and Samsung phones on those shelves do. You can make a business selling a good Android phone out there, but for a mobile OS that needs a good chunk of market share to stay viable, limiting yourself to those seeking you out puts you at an insurmountable disadvantage to getting a foothold large enough to attract developers.
> The market of users that shop for a device, looking for specs and features, is a tiny fraction of the market of phone users, the vast majority of which are regularly ripped off by carriers to buy underpowered overpriced iphones or Android handsets.
This might be so in US, but in most European countries we buy our phones ourselves with pre-paid options.
This might be so in US, but in most European countries we buy our phones ourselves with pre-paid options.
FirefoxOS was a perfect fit for me on the paper but I never got how to buy one here in France. I'm stucked with Android and I don't like it.
Many Leclerc stores sold ZTE Open C phones in France. You can also use the ZTE online store: they're now at 50 euros, not 80 euros + discount. See http://www.ztefrance.com/smartphones/open-c/.
ZTE was selling their ZTE Open C which came with FirefoxOS 1.3 on ebay.co.uk, that's where I bought it from. I lived in the UK at the moment but I believe they were shipping it worldwide.
Checked the ebay listings again, there are a few sellers from Australia, the USA but seems like the ZTE listing is gone.
Checked the ebay listings again, there are a few sellers from Australia, the USA but seems like the ZTE listing is gone.
Don't buy the ZTE Open, it was a terrible phone
I had it. As far as I remember, it was a reasonable phone, especially for the price tag. The hardware was working ok and most of the issues were OS-related. The USB socket broke down after a bit more than half a year, however, I dropped the phone quite a few times, so couldn't blame the manufacturer.
The problem I had with it was when it was in my pocket for a couple hours, I would pull it out and it would be off. I'd have to pop the cover and pull the battery to get it to boot back up. If it wasn't for that, it wouldn't have been totally terrible.
I dunno. From what i am seeing, Apple and Google are busy rearranging UI deck chairs.
The major problem of FirefoxOS though was trying to pitch the whole "everyone can (re)write apps" to a market that is all about user lock-in.
Every OEM and carrier wants to be the landlord of the phone "owner", taking a bite out of everything the user does with the device.
But if every app is a web page, and all the code is out in the open, it is quite easy for the user to disable and strip out rent extraction code.
And yes your right about Mozilla being distracted. And sadly they are not alone. The whole FOSS world seem hell bent on wasting energy doing all kinds of shiny projects and social outreach.
I'm tempted to call it the curse of SXSW.
The major problem of FirefoxOS though was trying to pitch the whole "everyone can (re)write apps" to a market that is all about user lock-in.
Every OEM and carrier wants to be the landlord of the phone "owner", taking a bite out of everything the user does with the device.
But if every app is a web page, and all the code is out in the open, it is quite easy for the user to disable and strip out rent extraction code.
And yes your right about Mozilla being distracted. And sadly they are not alone. The whole FOSS world seem hell bent on wasting energy doing all kinds of shiny projects and social outreach.
I'm tempted to call it the curse of SXSW.
> But if every app is a web page, and all the code is out in
> the open, it is quite easy for the user to disable and
> strip out rent extraction code.
And there is also the issue that if your app is just the web page, it is either universal and thus crap on all devices, or highly customized for each platform at which point it would be easier and less messy just to write it natively.
How big is the ratio of people using adblockers/YouTube downloader add-ons etc vs. those capable of writing them?
Yeah right, I was excited by the idea that we might be able to download all kinds of cool UI's for our phones.
I was thinking of developing a really minimalistic almost commandline interface for my notes, address book, dialer and calendar.
I would love to see what cool creative people could come up with.
I was thinking of developing a really minimalistic almost commandline interface for my notes, address book, dialer and calendar.
I would love to see what cool creative people could come up with.
Even if they themselves do not know, they know where to find someone that knows. I am pretty much the go to tech support of family and friends, for example.
All good points.
"it's all about packaging. That's Mozilla's strength."
On this we start to deviate. I think its all about platform. And you only get mainstream users on your platform if its awesome in the "mainly used" ways.
Its like the difference between a doctorate of psychology vs medicine. With one you can help people who really want to be helped, the other, you can give someone a flu shot and they are treated.
"it's all about packaging. That's Mozilla's strength."
On this we start to deviate. I think its all about platform. And you only get mainstream users on your platform if its awesome in the "mainly used" ways.
Its like the difference between a doctorate of psychology vs medicine. With one you can help people who really want to be helped, the other, you can give someone a flu shot and they are treated.
Privacy is a poor angle to pursue. It's old, and so we know, as you said, that people don't care.
They have a real chance if they ride the social justice and progressivism train, though. It's hot and unlike privacy, people care about it a lot. They've already set the precedent with the Eich controversy. They just need to double down and start promoting it better. Take initiative instead of being reactive. Not too hard when the organizations you're up against are gigantic multi-billion-dollar companies who can't afford to fire every conservative employee, not comply with government regulations their audience views negatively, or kowtow too hard to diversity for fear of angering the technolibertarians.
They have a real chance if they ride the social justice and progressivism train, though. It's hot and unlike privacy, people care about it a lot. They've already set the precedent with the Eich controversy. They just need to double down and start promoting it better. Take initiative instead of being reactive. Not too hard when the organizations you're up against are gigantic multi-billion-dollar companies who can't afford to fire every conservative employee, not comply with government regulations their audience views negatively, or kowtow too hard to diversity for fear of angering the technolibertarians.
I'm pretty sure people do still care about privacy. It just might not be readily obvious how to profit from such people.
It's obvious: you sell them the tools that enhance their privacy with solid reviews and advertisements in right places. If people don't buy, they either didn't care enough about privacy or were poor. There's security companies selling hardened phone OS's, browsers, desktops... you name it. Most individuals or businesses, even with the money, just don't buy them or even research them much.
all of these take terrible trade offs.
people want a good product AND privacy AND security.
Not fucking OR.
OR will NEVER win. A secure and/or private thing that you can't use simply CANNOT win vs something that actually works. If it doesn't work well being secure or anything missing the point why people even get the tool.
Sadly many companies totally miss that and think they'll get lucky. That's sort of sad.
OR will NEVER win. A secure and/or private thing that you can't use simply CANNOT win vs something that actually works. If it doesn't work well being secure or anything missing the point why people even get the tool.
Sadly many companies totally miss that and think they'll get lucky. That's sort of sad.
"people want a good product AND privacy AND security. Not fucking OR."
That's true. The problem is: what is a good product? Good is relative to what the insecure garbage on the market is offering. You can move fast, drastically add complexity, keep it extra cheap, and so on if quality or security aren't on the table. So, a good product that meets one's needs can look like a bad one if it's secure and makes right tradeoffs vs the "good product" that sells its users out.
One simple example is how several companies did high assurance VPN's whose trusted computing base was very difficult to hack. Yet, to get there, they had to eliminate most features competition was adding to their all-in-one appliances. I pointed out one could just chain them together with the high assurance solution being the interface to untrusted network. Rest of functionality can be in next device. Even such a simple scenario was almost always rejected as it was cheaper or simpler to have one do-it-all(-like-crap) device.
Apply such logic throughout entire industry and we have whole, insecure stacks that can't be made better without sacrifice. Nonetheless, companies keep trying with medium-assurance, full-featured appliances that are easy to configure. They sell very few and most go out of business. Enough said.
That's true. The problem is: what is a good product? Good is relative to what the insecure garbage on the market is offering. You can move fast, drastically add complexity, keep it extra cheap, and so on if quality or security aren't on the table. So, a good product that meets one's needs can look like a bad one if it's secure and makes right tradeoffs vs the "good product" that sells its users out.
One simple example is how several companies did high assurance VPN's whose trusted computing base was very difficult to hack. Yet, to get there, they had to eliminate most features competition was adding to their all-in-one appliances. I pointed out one could just chain them together with the high assurance solution being the interface to untrusted network. Rest of functionality can be in next device. Even such a simple scenario was almost always rejected as it was cheaper or simpler to have one do-it-all(-like-crap) device.
Apply such logic throughout entire industry and we have whole, insecure stacks that can't be made better without sacrifice. Nonetheless, companies keep trying with medium-assurance, full-featured appliances that are easy to configure. They sell very few and most go out of business. Enough said.
It's obvious: you sell them the tools that enhance their privacy with solid reviews and advertisements in right places. If people don't buy, they either didn't care enough about privacy or were poor.
I think this differs highly per region. In some European countries, people are very privacy-aware. I know quite a number of people who refuse to use Google's services or Dropbox, because of privacy reasons.
As for security companies selling hardened phones, etc. They are typically very expensive and/or inconvenient.
I think this differs highly per region. In some European countries, people are very privacy-aware. I know quite a number of people who refuse to use Google's services or Dropbox, because of privacy reasons.
As for security companies selling hardened phones, etc. They are typically very expensive and/or inconvenient.
Re privacy-aware
Guess I need to try to market stuff in Europe instead. ;)
Re expensive or inconvenient
They're often perceived as expensive. Truth is most COTS is too cheap: corners cut everywhere to get it at that price point which gives unrealistic expectations on price. So, key firewall or server is five digits instead of three to four. Don't need many of them but good luck selling even one. Always will be an uphill battle.
Far as convenience, that can be improved on and some apps are very convenient. The users' cut-off point is the real issue. Do they want one thoughtless step for everything? Can't do secure comms that was as verification requires extra step somewhere. Same with trust or key mgmt in other things. Im with us eliminating unnecessary complexity & technical stuff but users need to meet us halfway on convenience angle.
Guess I need to try to market stuff in Europe instead. ;)
Re expensive or inconvenient
They're often perceived as expensive. Truth is most COTS is too cheap: corners cut everywhere to get it at that price point which gives unrealistic expectations on price. So, key firewall or server is five digits instead of three to four. Don't need many of them but good luck selling even one. Always will be an uphill battle.
Far as convenience, that can be improved on and some apps are very convenient. The users' cut-off point is the real issue. Do they want one thoughtless step for everything? Can't do secure comms that was as verification requires extra step somewhere. Same with trust or key mgmt in other things. Im with us eliminating unnecessary complexity & technical stuff but users need to meet us halfway on convenience angle.
I bet they just don't deliver on their promise or do so at the expense of some fundamental use case.
Security and privacy are very hard issues to address. So any solution will be temporary, very restrictive or fall short of it's promise.
For instance you can't have total privacy even if you never use Google and use tracker blockers, erase your browser's fingerprint etc. you are still sharing information with servers you're visiting.
Security and privacy are very hard issues to address. So any solution will be temporary, very restrictive or fall short of it's promise.
For instance you can't have total privacy even if you never use Google and use tracker blockers, erase your browser's fingerprint etc. you are still sharing information with servers you're visiting.
Many server appliances or hardened distros did exactly what their counterparts could but with much less risk. Either went nowhere or made small amounts of money. Meanwhile, insecure garbage and spyware prevails at multi-billion dollar amounts. I think people have made their preferences clear in practice even if in theory they want it more private.
And some people are "pretty sure" the hyper advanced alien Xenu used hydrogen bombs to detonate all volcanoes on earth simultaneously and capture everyone's thetans. Unless you have any evidence, you're just going to have to resign yourself to the idea that most people won't believe you.
Their income source is the advertising industry that works via surveillance of their users. I mean, their money comes mainly from search traffic but it's something to factor in when considering them being a private browser.
Phoenix appeared at a time when web browsers were bloated, and it was refreshing to have a minimalist app that simply browsed the web. It wasn't that potential was being stifled; other browsers had too many features. It was that we could download a small binary on dial-up, that opened up quickly and just did what we needed without any fluff.
Notice that last part about downloading? That's the key. We could download Phoenix, and run it. I can't download FirefoxOS, and run it. My devices are locked to what they can run. If mobile appliances were like personal computers, then a Phoenix could rise. But it's a completely different situation, so there is no way to compete like you could with web browsers.
Notice that last part about downloading? That's the key. We could download Phoenix, and run it. I can't download FirefoxOS, and run it. My devices are locked to what they can run. If mobile appliances were like personal computers, then a Phoenix could rise. But it's a completely different situation, so there is no way to compete like you could with web browsers.
Actually you can, just about. I've got b2gdroid[0] installed on my Android phone, which gives you the Gaia experience as your home screen, and access to the built-in applications as well as being a launcher for your Android apps.
It's not ideal, as the integration points don't appear to be fully worked out and it doesn't always perform very well, but I'm sure it could be turned into essentially a downloadable FirefoxOS as a hook to try to get people to get a native device next time, if some development effort was available.
[0]: https://github.com/fabricedesre/b2gdroid
It's not ideal, as the integration points don't appear to be fully worked out and it doesn't always perform very well, but I'm sure it could be turned into essentially a downloadable FirefoxOS as a hook to try to get people to get a native device next time, if some development effort was available.
[0]: https://github.com/fabricedesre/b2gdroid
Good point, maybe a hack that would be runnable from android to override it on the phone would have done the trick
Hear, hear. Instead of pushing for an alternative against data vampires like Google, they push their own weird cloud services ("Firefox Sync") and... videochat? Didn't they suddenly have some weird, pop-up-by-default videochat thing in one of their recent releases?
I actually always liked the idea of a FirefoxOS. Linux style operating system alternatives could need a proper fucking GUI and general average-user-oriented design. Firefox is amazing at that for a non-profit, they could actually pull it off.
I actually always liked the idea of a FirefoxOS. Linux style operating system alternatives could need a proper fucking GUI and general average-user-oriented design. Firefox is amazing at that for a non-profit, they could actually pull it off.
"Hello" (videochat) is pretty neat, imho. You can share tabs, video/voice and chat. It's great for training users. All you have to do is send an URL, and it works in Chrome too.
It's based on HTML5, but because of how webrtc has to punch through firewalls, it uses one of their partners to initiate the connection (Telefonica?). After that it's mostly peer to peer.
It's based on HTML5, but because of how webrtc has to punch through firewalls, it uses one of their partners to initiate the connection (Telefonica?). After that it's mostly peer to peer.
But when they tried to pioneer privacy respecting ads in the new tab window, they were repeatedly and roundly criticised here, too...
That's not the kind of innovation that users want, nor is it the kind that they truly benefit from.
In general, users don't want any ads at all showing in their browser.
They don't want them as part of web pages, they don't want them embedded in videos, and they surely don't want them as part of the browser itself!
This should have been obvious given the popularity of various ad-blocking extensions for Firefox.
Going against the obvious wishes of a product's users is something that's deserving of criticism.
In general, users don't want any ads at all showing in their browser.
They don't want them as part of web pages, they don't want them embedded in videos, and they surely don't want them as part of the browser itself!
This should have been obvious given the popularity of various ad-blocking extensions for Firefox.
Going against the obvious wishes of a product's users is something that's deserving of criticism.
I wanted to see what they would promote — and still was disappointed, as there was no option to show _only_ the promoted links (I prefer to access history by typing a part of the site name into the address bar).
I do block anything that I notice if it looks like a tracker, but I am ready to believe that Mozilla's description of client-side ad selection was correct.
I do block anything that I notice if it looks like a tracker, but I am ready to believe that Mozilla's description of client-side ad selection was correct.
Users want to have their cake and eat it too. Following the users wishes when they're self-destructive is bad, and you should feel bad.
Ads are enormously important for a lot of quality content out there to exist. Destroying them now, without good alternatives, is destructive to the web.
Ads are enormously important for a lot of quality content out there to exist. Destroying them now, without good alternatives, is destructive to the web.
Call the desire to rid the web of ads "destructive" if you please, but don't call those wishes "self-destructive" from the user's perspective. It is completely within the user's prerogative to filter whatever content they wish to filter before it hits their eyeballs. Why should anyone feel bad about choosing what they want to look at it?
For a sort of analogy, the presence of pay-to-read newspapers hasn't precluded the presence of free-to-read newspapers (New York Times vs. Metro [1]), nor has free-to-read papers killed off pay-to-read newspapers, which are generally higher quality. Savvy digital content providers will find a way to still make money, even if it's not ads as they exist today.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_International
For a sort of analogy, the presence of pay-to-read newspapers hasn't precluded the presence of free-to-read newspapers (New York Times vs. Metro [1]), nor has free-to-read papers killed off pay-to-read newspapers, which are generally higher quality. Savvy digital content providers will find a way to still make money, even if it's not ads as they exist today.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_International
It's self-destructive because users who don't block ads are keeping sites alive for the users that do block them. If all the users block the ads, the site will need to scramble for a new income model, and for some the new model might not work out.
Seems like a perfect example of self-destructive/tragedy-of-the-commons behavior to me.
Seems like a perfect example of self-destructive/tragedy-of-the-commons behavior to me.
This is a perfect example of a changing market driving out incumbents that have been unable to adapt. The internet is probably better off without them.
There are plenty of websites which exist that have two options for revenue, either take ads, or make people pay to view your content. Some websites are purely driven by the users' content, and there isn't a real revenue model, so that's what your left with, either the users pay, or someone else does. Bills gotta be paid, but when push comes to shove, users don't pay the bills for a lot of this type of content, so ad's are the only option left.
There is no middle ground. It's not as easy as "your website offers so little that it shouldn't exist", it's simply "users block ads, and they don't want to pay for access", so there's really no great options here.
However, ad's don't have to be pure evil. Sure they might be not be preferred, but we can totally create an environment in which we have non-intrusive, non-privacy invading advertisements, it's just a matter of figuring it out.
There is no middle ground. It's not as easy as "your website offers so little that it shouldn't exist", it's simply "users block ads, and they don't want to pay for access", so there's really no great options here.
However, ad's don't have to be pure evil. Sure they might be not be preferred, but we can totally create an environment in which we have non-intrusive, non-privacy invading advertisements, it's just a matter of figuring it out.
Sure they might be not be preferred, but we can totally create an environment in which we have non-intrusive, non-privacy invading advertisements, it's just a matter of figuring it out.
The ad industry had enough time to figure this out and went from bad to terrible - from popups to distribution of trojans (due to a lack of quality control). It's not surprising that people are fed up with advertisements. Any loss of income is the publisher's own fault, because they allowed ads to get completely out of hand.
Bills gotta be paid, but when push comes to shove, users don't pay the bills for a lot of this type of content, so ad's are the only option left. There is no middle ground.
I am surprised by the lack of imagination on a news site for startups ;). There are all kinds of possibilities that haven't really been explored. Music was considered to be a lost cause 5 or 10 years ago when CD had collapsed and everyone and their dog was using Bittorrent or other peer to peer networks. Now there is a quickly growing ecosystem of streaming music services.
The ad industry had enough time to figure this out and went from bad to terrible - from popups to distribution of trojans (due to a lack of quality control). It's not surprising that people are fed up with advertisements. Any loss of income is the publisher's own fault, because they allowed ads to get completely out of hand.
Bills gotta be paid, but when push comes to shove, users don't pay the bills for a lot of this type of content, so ad's are the only option left. There is no middle ground.
I am surprised by the lack of imagination on a news site for startups ;). There are all kinds of possibilities that haven't really been explored. Music was considered to be a lost cause 5 or 10 years ago when CD had collapsed and everyone and their dog was using Bittorrent or other peer to peer networks. Now there is a quickly growing ecosystem of streaming music services.
[deleted]
Sure.
And at one point people just wanted IE compatibility for their webpages to load.
If you accept that targeted ads are a part of the web eco system, then its absolutely within the remit of Mozillas mission to explore how to serve targeted ads while respecting privacy.
And at one point people just wanted IE compatibility for their webpages to load.
If you accept that targeted ads are a part of the web eco system, then its absolutely within the remit of Mozillas mission to explore how to serve targeted ads while respecting privacy.
As a user I really don't care about ads. Unless, of course, they are those annoying hover ads or auto-playing video ads or they slow down the browser.
So far, informally, every person I've seen write something like this works in marketing, works for a company that makes revenue from advertising, or is somehow monetarily incentivized to have a web where "users" widely agree to view ads. Obviously, there's no causation (perhaps those people naturally gravitate towards fruitful work that doesn't bother them), but it seems to be a pretty reliable (read: so far 100%) correlation.
Are you the combo breaker?
Are you the combo breaker?
[deleted]
"Pioneer"? Really? Is the bar so low now that embedding ads into the browser is considered innovative?
That's not what they did. They embedded targeted ads that respected your privacy, by having all targeting done client side and not sending information about you back to the server.
That the general public doesn't care about that is one thing, that all the people crtizising them here don't seem to care is another.
That the general public doesn't care about that is one thing, that all the people crtizising them here don't seem to care is another.
Showing privacy-respecting ads in the browser does nothing to improve the state of the advertising on the Web itself.
I'm not saying they didn't make mistakes in the way they did this. If they had introduced a MozAdNetwork for websites that respects your privacy, they would not have faced that backlash in all likelihood.
How is letting someone else pay them to waste my time beyond criticism?
[deleted]
and mobile email
e-mail
Most of you are probably not aware that Opera Software (where I spent a decade on Opera Mini/Mobile) went down the same rabbit hole around 2002-2006, spending many many man-years building a web-based (pre-smartphone) phone UI platform using web technologies. The product name was "Opera Platform". Here are some screenshots:
http://imgur.com/on4gHdi
It failed for the same, predictable reasons: Yes, there are many web developers in the world compared to the number of (in this example) embedded rtos UI C/C++ developers. However, on resource-constrained platforms (as phones tend to be, since they are battery-powered) it's really hard and requires brilliant developers to be able to build web-based UIs that can compete in performance with non-web-based UIs built by (in comparison) not-so-brilliant developers.
And on top of this, Mozilla decided to shoot for (super) low-end devices as their main target - presumably because their bizdev people had spotted a theoretical opportunity, but failed to connect with engineering, or vice-versa. The first time I saw that I just laughed out loud, to be honest.
They actually have a time-honored tradition of following in the footsteps of Opera when it comes to ways of making money. Those sponsored tiles introduced in Firefox last year? Opera did that in 2008/2009-ish. (Not to mention the concept of a graphical speed dial on the new tab page itself...) That Google search field to the right of the URL field? Opera pioneered that business model in 2001 - followed by Mozilla and Apple half a decade later. Sorry, I get carried away. :D
http://imgur.com/on4gHdi
It failed for the same, predictable reasons: Yes, there are many web developers in the world compared to the number of (in this example) embedded rtos UI C/C++ developers. However, on resource-constrained platforms (as phones tend to be, since they are battery-powered) it's really hard and requires brilliant developers to be able to build web-based UIs that can compete in performance with non-web-based UIs built by (in comparison) not-so-brilliant developers.
And on top of this, Mozilla decided to shoot for (super) low-end devices as their main target - presumably because their bizdev people had spotted a theoretical opportunity, but failed to connect with engineering, or vice-versa. The first time I saw that I just laughed out loud, to be honest.
They actually have a time-honored tradition of following in the footsteps of Opera when it comes to ways of making money. Those sponsored tiles introduced in Firefox last year? Opera did that in 2008/2009-ish. (Not to mention the concept of a graphical speed dial on the new tab page itself...) That Google search field to the right of the URL field? Opera pioneered that business model in 2001 - followed by Mozilla and Apple half a decade later. Sorry, I get carried away. :D
> And on top of this, Mozilla decided to shoot for (super) low-end devices as their main target - presumably because their bizdev people had spotted a theoretical opportunity, but failed to connect with engineering, or vice-versa.
Having been there (ex mozillian, lots of time spent on FFOS), I wouldn't characterize it like this. The leaders of the project were two engineers, not a pointy hair on their heads (at least at first).
There were certainly plenty of us who felt like trying to cram this much into a low-end device was insanity (when was the last time you saw any web browser use under 128mb of ram?), and we definitely raised this objection. I feel like the pathology I observed was more planning fallacy / overoptimism on the part of engineering leaders than anything else (I'd certainly be the last to claim that I've never been guilty of that).
There's also another fallacy that I don't have a name for, which is basically "this is the only (way we see how) to do it, so we're going to make it work." That is, it was hard to imagine a FFOS device competing with a high-end device, so they decided to focus on the low end. That's the only way we can do it, so we'll make it work. But that causes you to perhaps lose sight of the real question: "can we make it work?"
It's not clear to me whether FFOS would have had a shot if not for the focus on low-end hardware. Having been there, I feel like the architecture itself was really hard to program against. Bugs that should have been easy -- "make sure the alarm clock actually goes off", "don't leak apps" -- required lots of specialized knowledge and time to fix. But certainly a lot of time was also spent on performance/memory optimization.
Just my two cents. A lot of smart people worked hard on this project for many years, and there were many impressive technical accomplishments along the way. Look up Nuwa if you're interested; that shit is nuts.
> They actually have a time-honored tradition of following in the footsteps of Opera when it comes to ways of making money.
"Opera had it first" indeed. :)
Having been there (ex mozillian, lots of time spent on FFOS), I wouldn't characterize it like this. The leaders of the project were two engineers, not a pointy hair on their heads (at least at first).
There were certainly plenty of us who felt like trying to cram this much into a low-end device was insanity (when was the last time you saw any web browser use under 128mb of ram?), and we definitely raised this objection. I feel like the pathology I observed was more planning fallacy / overoptimism on the part of engineering leaders than anything else (I'd certainly be the last to claim that I've never been guilty of that).
There's also another fallacy that I don't have a name for, which is basically "this is the only (way we see how) to do it, so we're going to make it work." That is, it was hard to imagine a FFOS device competing with a high-end device, so they decided to focus on the low end. That's the only way we can do it, so we'll make it work. But that causes you to perhaps lose sight of the real question: "can we make it work?"
It's not clear to me whether FFOS would have had a shot if not for the focus on low-end hardware. Having been there, I feel like the architecture itself was really hard to program against. Bugs that should have been easy -- "make sure the alarm clock actually goes off", "don't leak apps" -- required lots of specialized knowledge and time to fix. But certainly a lot of time was also spent on performance/memory optimization.
Just my two cents. A lot of smart people worked hard on this project for many years, and there were many impressive technical accomplishments along the way. Look up Nuwa if you're interested; that shit is nuts.
> They actually have a time-honored tradition of following in the footsteps of Opera when it comes to ways of making money.
"Opera had it first" indeed. :)
Well at least it is refreshing to learn there are Moz, or ex Moz who think better. I think the conclusion is simply,
planning fallacy / overoptimism on the part of engineering leaders than anything else
So yes, Mozilla is simply a poorly ran organization.
planning fallacy / overoptimism on the part of engineering leaders than anything else
So yes, Mozilla is simply a poorly ran organization.
To be fair, the "low-end" devices Firefox OS were targeting were miles more powerful than what Opera Platform targeted a decade prior, and JS VMs are far quicker than they were a decade prior… I'm not sure it's so obvious that low-end devices doomed it to failure (of course, you actually worked on this stuff unlike me!).
I think it's worthwhile to remember at the time Firefox OS launched much of Android ran on the Dalvik VM, so it wasn't so clear cut that the approach was so doomed to fail.
I think it's worthwhile to remember at the time Firefox OS launched much of Android ran on the Dalvik VM, so it wasn't so clear cut that the approach was so doomed to fail.
(Hi Geoffrey, ltns! :) )
The execution of the code, be it javascript on some modern engine or Java/Dalvik bytecode - that isn't typically the performance bottleneck. It is fast enough now.
I'm not an expert on this (this is where I thread on thin ice), but my understanding is that the HTML/CSS logdoc/layout tree model is inherently non-performant compared to a more traditional hierarchical windowed object oriented model. It is too easy to write HTML/CSS that is not performant (it's way too easy to accidentally cause performance issues), while it is a lot more natural to write performant windowing/OO code. And inversely, harder to write code that is not performant.
The execution of the code, be it javascript on some modern engine or Java/Dalvik bytecode - that isn't typically the performance bottleneck. It is fast enough now.
I'm not an expert on this (this is where I thread on thin ice), but my understanding is that the HTML/CSS logdoc/layout tree model is inherently non-performant compared to a more traditional hierarchical windowed object oriented model. It is too easy to write HTML/CSS that is not performant (it's way too easy to accidentally cause performance issues), while it is a lot more natural to write performant windowing/OO code. And inversely, harder to write code that is not performant.
(Hi. :))
It depends a lot on what you're doing, and how much data you're processing. If we go by the premise that you're processing more data locally than you would in a web app (because you don't need to worry about the latency and you don't have a server to do the pre-processing and filtering of the data before it reaches the client), then actual VM performance is more significant. The last time I looked at any profiles of browsers on Gmail or FB, JIT'd code actually accounts for several of the most expensive functions (and you will notice if you disable the JIT). JS performance does matter—even if DOM performance dominates in the case of the common website (and note that Mozilla has actually been doing quite a lot of interesting work around teaching the JS VM more about the DOM, including rewriting parts in JS, which allows JIT optimisation to happen).
It's definitely true that it's easier to write non-performant code using HTML/CSS (and <canvas> and WebGL don't really help here—because it's hard to ensure data gets correctly passed to accessibility layers), but I think that the majority of mobile apps are simple enough for it to not be a concern.
It depends a lot on what you're doing, and how much data you're processing. If we go by the premise that you're processing more data locally than you would in a web app (because you don't need to worry about the latency and you don't have a server to do the pre-processing and filtering of the data before it reaches the client), then actual VM performance is more significant. The last time I looked at any profiles of browsers on Gmail or FB, JIT'd code actually accounts for several of the most expensive functions (and you will notice if you disable the JIT). JS performance does matter—even if DOM performance dominates in the case of the common website (and note that Mozilla has actually been doing quite a lot of interesting work around teaching the JS VM more about the DOM, including rewriting parts in JS, which allows JIT optimisation to happen).
It's definitely true that it's easier to write non-performant code using HTML/CSS (and <canvas> and WebGL don't really help here—because it's hard to ensure data gets correctly passed to accessibility layers), but I think that the majority of mobile apps are simple enough for it to not be a concern.
I haven't done profiling of firefox os on a crappy device...
but my suspicion is that it really is as simple as: even really-well-optimized html/css/js that needs to go through a browser core will suffer performance-wise compared to something with 10-15 less layers of indirection. (Like a traditional windowing toolkit.)
The Android UI toolkit isn't exactly efficent (ha!), but still seems to beat Firefox OS on super-low-end hardware judging from the reviews I have seen.
The internal windowing toolkit and java-like mini language with a VM that we made for Opera Mini 5/Opera Mobile 10 with both J2ME and C VM implementations was like 3x faster than the Android UI toolkit with Dalvik for typical windowing tasks. Without any super-fancy optimizations...
but my suspicion is that it really is as simple as: even really-well-optimized html/css/js that needs to go through a browser core will suffer performance-wise compared to something with 10-15 less layers of indirection. (Like a traditional windowing toolkit.)
The Android UI toolkit isn't exactly efficent (ha!), but still seems to beat Firefox OS on super-low-end hardware judging from the reviews I have seen.
The internal windowing toolkit and java-like mini language with a VM that we made for Opera Mini 5/Opera Mobile 10 with both J2ME and C VM implementations was like 3x faster than the Android UI toolkit with Dalvik for typical windowing tasks. Without any super-fancy optimizations...
As a practical matter, my experience of using FirefoxOS everyday is that performance is not the main issue. Of course it could undoubtedly be improved, but it's acceptable, particularly once you put it onto reasonable hardware (i.e. not the $40 phones).
Much more problematic is the lack of "premium content" i.e. services that — even if they are basically just webapps — don't work except on Android/iOS. This is a particularly vicious cycle; it's hard to convince anyone to put in the effort to support minority platforms, and it's hard to get users unless you support the same content as other platforms (see also: Windows Phone, which by all accounts is an excellent product that almost no one uses).
There's also the fact that FirefoxOS is some years behind the other platforms in terms of developers and the competition has ~infinite resources, which means that some parts are lagging behind feature wise.
Having said all of that, I don't think that Opera is a bad analog for the difficulties FirefoxOS faces, only it's not Opera Platform specifically but Presto in general. It had the same kind of issues with limited support from content creators and relatively available resources.
Much more problematic is the lack of "premium content" i.e. services that — even if they are basically just webapps — don't work except on Android/iOS. This is a particularly vicious cycle; it's hard to convince anyone to put in the effort to support minority platforms, and it's hard to get users unless you support the same content as other platforms (see also: Windows Phone, which by all accounts is an excellent product that almost no one uses).
There's also the fact that FirefoxOS is some years behind the other platforms in terms of developers and the competition has ~infinite resources, which means that some parts are lagging behind feature wise.
Having said all of that, I don't think that Opera is a bad analog for the difficulties FirefoxOS faces, only it's not Opera Platform specifically but Presto in general. It had the same kind of issues with limited support from content creators and relatively available resources.
The indirection is a problem with existing browser implementations (and some spec issues, such as lack of Typed CSSOM, which is the current subject of work in the WGs). There is no fundamental reason that I can see as to why there needs to be a gap between the hardware and the graphics and layout of Web apps.
CSS isn't less efficient than a traditional windowing model. In fact, its declarative nature is a big help when adopting legacy content to modern architectures. The "WM_PAINT/C++ code that calls GDI" model is not easy to adapt to multicore and GPUs.
This is not to say that the browsers of today are optimally architected, of course. (In fact, I think they're quite suboptimally architected for 2015 hardware. The "it's too easy to fall off the fast paths" problem of HTML/CSS is a symptom of legacy browser architecture, not a problem with the layout/styling model.)
This is not to say that the browsers of today are optimally architected, of course. (In fact, I think they're quite suboptimally architected for 2015 hardware. The "it's too easy to fall off the fast paths" problem of HTML/CSS is a symptom of legacy browser architecture, not a problem with the layout/styling model.)
Opera platform was not running modern mobile touchscreen apps a decade ago.
The problem is that the phones currently dominating the market in developed countries have native apps, with slick interfaces - enabled by mid to high end SoCs.
Trying to produce vaguely similar experiences with low-end SoCs is going to be very hard, even without the additional handicap of doing everything with web technologies.
If anything, the only way that could've worked in the current market is on ultra high-end phone hardware, and with a focus on privacy & security to attract the rich & technically savvy end of the market.
The problem is that the phones currently dominating the market in developed countries have native apps, with slick interfaces - enabled by mid to high end SoCs.
Trying to produce vaguely similar experiences with low-end SoCs is going to be very hard, even without the additional handicap of doing everything with web technologies.
If anything, the only way that could've worked in the current market is on ultra high-end phone hardware, and with a focus on privacy & security to attract the rich & technically savvy end of the market.
+1 interesting.
Started using Opera since ~2000 and really liked it. Really innovative (tabs, mouse gestures, download manager, ...) and fast! Even an email client was included :) !
But replaced it with Firefox by the time FF had tabs and was fast enough, due to 'trust/privacy' reasons. For the same reasons I do not use chrome.
And if FF keeps disappointing me and Opera gains trust I can imagine a switch :) (hmmh, but how if closed source?)
Started using Opera since ~2000 and really liked it. Really innovative (tabs, mouse gestures, download manager, ...) and fast! Even an email client was included :) !
But replaced it with Firefox by the time FF had tabs and was fast enough, due to 'trust/privacy' reasons. For the same reasons I do not use chrome.
And if FF keeps disappointing me and Opera gains trust I can imagine a switch :) (hmmh, but how if closed source?)
"We" (I have since left Opera Software) really screwed it up with the desktop browser around 2004. Management (i.e. the then-CEO Jon) was too worried about recurring revenue to pull that obnoxious ad banner in the free version until it was too late. At the time the desktop Opera had superior performance compared to Mozilla/Firefox.. but wasn't free/ad-less. It was really depressing to watch. (But at the same time, I didn't have to make payroll for 170 people each month, so who am I to judge those decisions without having detailed insights into the financials? I guess I am expressing my frustration of the lack of a silicon valley-style funding.)
To his credit, Jon a year later championed that Opera Mini needed to be free/without "in your face ads" in the critical first couple of years. This allowed it to reach 250+ million monthly actives (it still has that!). And we did came up with really lucrative monetization models later on that worked without sacrificing the user experience.
To his credit, Jon a year later championed that Opera Mini needed to be free/without "in your face ads" in the critical first couple of years. This allowed it to reach 250+ million monthly actives (it still has that!). And we did came up with really lucrative monetization models later on that worked without sacrificing the user experience.
I'll argue there was a later screw-up on the desktop browser (and really mobile too): Unite sucked resources from much for a long while, failure to tackle some of the technical debt (things that manifested itself such as the integer maths used for percentage values in CSS, contrary to every other browser out there, and that went unchanged as layouts became increasingly complex and the web relied ever more heavily on CSS), and in later years general lack of investment (while Opera was posting record profits on a quarterly basis) in Presto leading it to fall further and further behind the competition causing ever worsening site-compatibility issues.
Well, yeah, there was a serious of screwups. :)
I don't buy the argument about a lack of investment in Presto. IIRC there were like 90 (most of them really good) people working on Presto at its peak. And we still couldn't keep up. (And most of those issues were about lacking desktop market share, which caused sites to de-prioritize Opera, anyway.)
I don't buy the argument about a lack of investment in Presto. IIRC there were like 90 (most of them really good) people working on Presto at its peak. And we still couldn't keep up. (And most of those issues were about lacking desktop market share, which caused sites to de-prioritize Opera, anyway.)
From memory it was a touch more than 90—and while I never ceased to be amazed by what we achieved with the resources we had, everyone else was expanding while Opera didn't, despite clearly having the money to do so.
When it comes to lacking desktop market share, it's undeniable that has an effect on site compatibility—people kept on supporting IE6 till a few years ago, after all, despite all its flaws. If Opera had more marketshare, it could've afforded to not keep up (though then we'd have articles about how Opera is the new IE!). I think, however, site compatibility was less about marketshare in later years and more about ancient incompatibilities (percentages rounding down, keyboard events, range events, selection, document loading/unloading) that were increasingly important in an increasingly dynamic web. People were deliberately deciding not to support Opera at that point because it involved more than a trivial amount of work because of bugs like those and the lack of marketshare.
When it comes to lacking desktop market share, it's undeniable that has an effect on site compatibility—people kept on supporting IE6 till a few years ago, after all, despite all its flaws. If Opera had more marketshare, it could've afforded to not keep up (though then we'd have articles about how Opera is the new IE!). I think, however, site compatibility was less about marketshare in later years and more about ancient incompatibilities (percentages rounding down, keyboard events, range events, selection, document loading/unloading) that were increasingly important in an increasingly dynamic web. People were deliberately deciding not to support Opera at that point because it involved more than a trivial amount of work because of bugs like those and the lack of marketshare.
Do you mind sharing a few of those lucrative / non-annoying monetization models? I'm curious. And thanks for the insights into opera!
For desktop: Search engine affiliation deals became increasingly lucrative (partly dependent on the market), especially for the defaults (in both the search engine bar and the search box on the new tab page, which were sold separately). The other major source of income for desktop was the default Speed Dial settings.
There's a fair overview available in the quarterly reports.
There's a fair overview available in the quarterly reports.
I think that's still too recent, sorry. People might get upset. Ask me again in five years. :)
Apologies, I didn't mean to ask for anything proprietary; I should have made that clearer. Just what someone familiar with the product would know.
No worries.
Actually, when I checked just now I saw that I can share it since they actually have published a nice brochure about the scheme :).
http://www.operasoftware.com/content/download/5572/205427/ve...
Basically the scheme was: get lots and lots of users. Then go to each operator and say.. hey.. you know these users that you are having a really hard time to monetize because you don't have a direct in-app/phone channel to them? We have an app that (for example) 20 million of your customers use every month. Our offer to you is that for a cost for X USD/month/user we will expose your services in the default speed dial of this app that your customers love to use. This worked exceptionally well.
Actually, when I checked just now I saw that I can share it since they actually have published a nice brochure about the scheme :).
http://www.operasoftware.com/content/download/5572/205427/ve...
Basically the scheme was: get lots and lots of users. Then go to each operator and say.. hey.. you know these users that you are having a really hard time to monetize because you don't have a direct in-app/phone channel to them? We have an app that (for example) 20 million of your customers use every month. Our offer to you is that for a cost for X USD/month/user we will expose your services in the default speed dial of this app that your customers love to use. This worked exceptionally well.
Opera was the only browser that would run acceptably on my even-then-way-old 16 MB-RAM machine back in 2000.
We could add Ubuntu to this list, unfortunately. As a side note, I bet cordova/phonegap and Ionic have had more apps built with the web platform on top of existing platforms than these devices have (probably by several orders of magnitude). I just feel like a new OS and device platform is the wrong way to achieve the goal of preserving the open web.
> The product name was "Opera Platform".
Thank you - I didn't know about this.
Thank you - I didn't know about this.
It was interesting to follow this experiment but have to admit it was against the odds since day 1 (and it's especially easy to say so in retrospective).
In terms of regular users, there are tons of dirt cheap chinese no-name android devices that more or less work. For 100 euros, you can get an acceptable Android phone from a major manufacturer (LG, etc). FirefoxOS was competing in a similar price range, however offered much less to the end user. I guess it's fair to say that it didn't deliver any extra value.
When I was using FirefoxOS and poking around the code base, I saw potential in their web-first platform as an introduction to programming. It's much easier to write some basic HTML, CSS and JS than to figure how to do the equivalent in Java for Android, etc.
However, things like ionic or phonegap and reasonably good, and it's hard to compete with them as they produce something fairly acceptable and available to run on the vast majority of the smartphones.
At the end of the day, I really appreciate Mozilla's work on this project. Thanks to all the volunteers who contributed to the project. You are amazing people :)
In terms of regular users, there are tons of dirt cheap chinese no-name android devices that more or less work. For 100 euros, you can get an acceptable Android phone from a major manufacturer (LG, etc). FirefoxOS was competing in a similar price range, however offered much less to the end user. I guess it's fair to say that it didn't deliver any extra value.
When I was using FirefoxOS and poking around the code base, I saw potential in their web-first platform as an introduction to programming. It's much easier to write some basic HTML, CSS and JS than to figure how to do the equivalent in Java for Android, etc.
However, things like ionic or phonegap and reasonably good, and it's hard to compete with them as they produce something fairly acceptable and available to run on the vast majority of the smartphones.
At the end of the day, I really appreciate Mozilla's work on this project. Thanks to all the volunteers who contributed to the project. You are amazing people :)
Agreed, my favorite thing about Firefox OS was always the "blank-slate" approach to writing apps for it, based on web technologies. Of course, that was good and bad - there was more room for experimentation, but you had to do more work to get the widgets and smooth animation that come for free from iPhone/Android SDK.
Thank you for your positive attitude.
A few days ago, it looked like they were ditching Thunderbird so they could concentrate on their phone products. What's left besides Firefox?
- "WebMaker", whatever that does.
- Rust.
- The $60 Mozilla hoodie.
- Their world tour of meetups.[1]
- The really fancy headquarters overlooking SF bay.
A tight focus on Firefox might be a win. I'm looking forward to an all-Rust browser.
[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/events/
- "WebMaker", whatever that does.
- Rust.
- The $60 Mozilla hoodie.
- Their world tour of meetups.[1]
- The really fancy headquarters overlooking SF bay.
A tight focus on Firefox might be a win. I'm looking forward to an all-Rust browser.
[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/events/
Besides the HQ, what else is left is a $1 million/year Chair (up from $801k the year before), a Director on $874k (up from $779k) and a Treasurer on $908k (up from $613k) [0] [1]
I do not begrudge high their salaries in the slightest, but I can't help but think bringing on folks with half the salary of the above employees would buy enough coders to do more innovation, which they really need. The Technical Lead in 2013 got $179,000 (the job is not listed in the financials in 2014).
The those three top job cost the equivalent of 20% of the Foundations revenue in the 2014 year ($13.5 million, more or less evenly split between donations and "program service revenue").
[0] Year end 2013 Financials: https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2013_Mozilla_Found...
[1] Year end 2014 Financials: https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2014_Mozilla_Found...
Edit: revised 2014 figures higher as I was not looking at total compensation.
I do not begrudge high their salaries in the slightest, but I can't help but think bringing on folks with half the salary of the above employees would buy enough coders to do more innovation, which they really need. The Technical Lead in 2013 got $179,000 (the job is not listed in the financials in 2014).
The those three top job cost the equivalent of 20% of the Foundations revenue in the 2014 year ($13.5 million, more or less evenly split between donations and "program service revenue").
[0] Year end 2013 Financials: https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2013_Mozilla_Found...
[1] Year end 2014 Financials: https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2014_Mozilla_Found...
Edit: revised 2014 figures higher as I was not looking at total compensation.
The foundation doesn't do any engineering work on Firefox. Paid coding is funded from the 300 million or so dollars a year the Mozilla corporation makes in search revenue.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3009646/search/mozilla-...
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3009646/search/mozilla-...
What's left besides Firefox?
You state that as if it's a bad thing. It's the best news I heard in years! Firefox could certainly use more engineering resources especially with the recently extended platform coverage (iOS).
You state that as if it's a bad thing. It's the best news I heard in years! Firefox could certainly use more engineering resources especially with the recently extended platform coverage (iOS).
SeaMonkey? Or is there practically no connection left with Mozilla? (I still use Composer for maintaining some basic stuff and use it on my netbook where it ironically is faster than Firefox).
4 days ago, I read a Mozilla employee writing "Seamonkey does not interest anyone inside Mozilla. Who would nowadays use a Netscape-like tool?".
I use Seamonkey because it has sane UI interface elements like "buttons+text" that are actually larger than 15 pixels so that I can click on them without having to exactly aim my mouse on a tiny little button.
My guess is that every Firefox developer still runs a 2007 Asus eeebook with a 7" screen. I got more pixels than I care to count, so I just want a UI that scales in proportion with the screen.
Just one example why Seamonkey is important (for me at least).
Just one example why Seamonkey is important (for me at least).
Firefox on Windows respects the DPI settings (unlike Chrome!). So if you enable the relevant options in Windows' display settings, everything in the Firefox UI and webpages, including icons gets scaled up appropriately.
So it actually does exactly what you want?!
So it actually does exactly what you want?!
>My guess is that every Firefox developer still runs a 2007 Asus eeebook with a 7" screen.
I can assure you that they do not, because Firefox requires heavy tweaking to run comfortably in 1 gigabyte of RAM.
Seamonkey is real nice though.
I can assure you that they do not, because Firefox requires heavy tweaking to run comfortably in 1 gigabyte of RAM.
Seamonkey is real nice though.
So it seems like Firefox OS itself will continue to be iterated upon, it's just that Mozilla will no longer try to use it as a means to create a third commercial way as opposed to iOS/Android: http://firefoxoscentral.com/2015/12/firefox-os-is-dead-firef...
Remember, the point of Firefox OS was not to challenge or take over the market with Firefox OS devices. It was to develop web APIs for phone things, like the dialer, video, voice, accelerometer, etc. And they succeeded! That's why the statement says "We are proud of the benefits Firefox OS added to the Web platform". Other browsers adopted the tech, and all phone browsers are better off for the project. That's a win.
That sounds like a post-rationalization to me. All I heard was that this was how they expected to survive without Google. It was expected to bring a lot of revenue.
Yes, but I was never involved so I don't have to rationalize anything :)
Source?
You can read the original announcement with the list of goals here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mozilla.dev.platf...
there used to be a website - arewemobileyet.com which listed the API's that we identified as necessary to make FxOS possible.
You can find it in web.archive - http://web.archive.org/web/20140401194921/http://arewemobile...
We successfully standardized most of them! :)
there used to be a website - arewemobileyet.com which listed the API's that we identified as necessary to make FxOS possible.
You can find it in web.archive - http://web.archive.org/web/20140401194921/http://arewemobile...
We successfully standardized most of them! :)
Those were the publicly announced goals. You must be really naive if you think those were the actual goals.
Those were the actual goals.
Next time you want to spread theories and rumors, check background of who you are questioning ;)
Source: I work at Mozilla and on Firefox OS project.
Next time you want to spread theories and rumors, check background of who you are questioning ;)
Source: I work at Mozilla and on Firefox OS project.
I got that. I am just questioning whether you and the executive management at Mozilla had the same goals.
I'm pretty sure about it. Please, remember that B2G for quite a while was a "homemade style" experiment started by Andreas.
It took Mozilla quite a while before executive team started considering it and investing in it.
The post I linked sums up the vibe from the very beginning. I believe that there was time when the goals have shifted to aim at producing a real product and gaining market share etc., but the original goals are stated in the post and I believe we are very successful in accomplishing them.
It took Mozilla quite a while before executive team started considering it and investing in it.
The post I linked sums up the vibe from the very beginning. I believe that there was time when the goals have shifted to aim at producing a real product and gaining market share etc., but the original goals are stated in the post and I believe we are very successful in accomplishing them.
Random industry gossip. From real people obviously, but noone I can name.
Firefox OS was a hedge against the situation where the dominant mobile platform didn't allow competing web engines, the other one was run by a competitor, and mobile was far outpacing desktop in amount of users.
The hedge failed, so Mozilla is in a tricky situation that it can be kicked out of the mobile ecosystem entirely by its competitors.
The hedge failed, so Mozilla is in a tricky situation that it can be kicked out of the mobile ecosystem entirely by its competitors.
There was a lot of money and work invested by Mozilla and their strategic partners in FxOS (e.g. Telefonica) to actually make a dent in the market.
Mozilla is shifting to use their web platform for connected devices and IoT efforts. The IoT space is a mess right now and I think that Mozilla could do a lot of good there.
I think that Firefox OS as a phone operating system will always be available for hackers to port and install on their own devices.
I think that Firefox OS as a phone operating system will always be available for hackers to port and install on their own devices.
"The IoT space is a mess right now"
But is also almost entirely vapour.
Seeing this news gave me relief that Mozilla might be pulling their heads out of the clouds chasing fantastical dreams of mobile platforms, but if anything IoT is worse!
But is also almost entirely vapour.
Seeing this news gave me relief that Mozilla might be pulling their heads out of the clouds chasing fantastical dreams of mobile platforms, but if anything IoT is worse!
>almost entirely vapour
I work for an M2M company whose been around for 25 years now, in some form or another. M2M is the backbone of IoT and while it isn't as glamorous, it's a large space. Industrial gases, especially helium, are very lucrative right now.
I work for an M2M company whose been around for 25 years now, in some form or another. M2M is the backbone of IoT and while it isn't as glamorous, it's a large space. Industrial gases, especially helium, are very lucrative right now.
M2M makes sense. It's great for devices that are not classically connected via the Internet to communicate with each other. It's very helpful in the industrial and medical fields.
However, IoT devices should not be consumer-facing tech. IoT devices are on average far more expensive and have shoddy software/firmware. Even when the software is fixed, IoT will remain a niche range of products until their quality surpasses that of the traditional version of the product. From a business perspective, anything IoT hardly makes sense as a standalone product.
M2M is a fantastic field. But IoT is not.
However, IoT devices should not be consumer-facing tech. IoT devices are on average far more expensive and have shoddy software/firmware. Even when the software is fixed, IoT will remain a niche range of products until their quality surpasses that of the traditional version of the product. From a business perspective, anything IoT hardly makes sense as a standalone product.
M2M is a fantastic field. But IoT is not.
IoT lacks consistant "full-stack" standards. Someone as big as Mozilla could make things less messier by adopting standards on some/all layers of IoT. This is an area worth exploring "for the greater good".
Foe me IoT lacks the problem that needs solving. And we do know what happens to the solutions without the problem.
I'll be graduating in a few months and I study embedded/IoT.
And as someone who spent the last 2 years digging in the corners of IoT, I agree that IoT can seem to be over-engineering problems that don't exist.
But the market is there, and it is huge. (mainly industrial, energy & transport applications)
IoT now is like the early personal computers, they were too expensive and almost no one knew why they needed them.
But the market is there, and it is huge. (mainly industrial, energy & transport applications)
IoT now is like the early personal computers, they were too expensive and almost no one knew why they needed them.
Would you recommend your favourite resources for techies to dig into this space?
Hard to say, there are so many.
- I'd start with embedded environments: Arduino / STM32(F1/F4) / RaspberryPi see how to code for them and how to make them talk to each other (UART/SPI/I2C/CAN...)
- Then I'd check how simple kernel modules are made, and try to mess around the kernel in raspberryPi and make something that outputs a value on the terminal and via I2C.
- I'd check the "concept" of middlewares and start by something simple WComp[0] (written in C#). It is not used in the industry but it gives you a pretty good sens of how things should work.
- For beginners I'd recommend to use Parse[1] for any project where you need a "cloud" infrastructure (Database, API, users, privileges,...)
- You should also check how fully distributed systems (that operate in a peer-to-peer manner) work.
- After that it comes to ressource optimisation and things like that.
EDIT (You should also check these) :
- UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) is way to get devices to automatically discover and understand each other.
- MQTT: publish-subscribe TCP/IP messaging protocol (I use it for push notifications)
[0] : http://www.wcomp.fr
[1] : https://www.parse.com/
- I'd start with embedded environments: Arduino / STM32(F1/F4) / RaspberryPi see how to code for them and how to make them talk to each other (UART/SPI/I2C/CAN...)
- Then I'd check how simple kernel modules are made, and try to mess around the kernel in raspberryPi and make something that outputs a value on the terminal and via I2C.
- I'd check the "concept" of middlewares and start by something simple WComp[0] (written in C#). It is not used in the industry but it gives you a pretty good sens of how things should work.
- For beginners I'd recommend to use Parse[1] for any project where you need a "cloud" infrastructure (Database, API, users, privileges,...)
- You should also check how fully distributed systems (that operate in a peer-to-peer manner) work.
- After that it comes to ressource optimisation and things like that.
EDIT (You should also check these) :
- UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) is way to get devices to automatically discover and understand each other.
- MQTT: publish-subscribe TCP/IP messaging protocol (I use it for push notifications)
[0] : http://www.wcomp.fr
[1] : https://www.parse.com/
IoT is better for R&D now, because its going to happen (if not through a nice clean adoption but rather through sheer force of will).
Mobile was already mature with a well entrenched duopoly when FFOS began. IoT is still up for grabs.
Mobile was already mature with a well entrenched duopoly when FFOS began. IoT is still up for grabs.
IoT is an open opportunity in general, but it doesn't really mesh with what Mozialla has done in the past.
Mozilla very well could change their focus and compete in that space, but a newcomer without any entrenched ideas would be better off. So would a big company with the resources to spin off and fund a relatively independent branch to work in IoT.
Mozilla's only big success has been Firefox. Firefox succeeded because it was competing in a market with only one other player, and that player wasn't innovating at all.
Now the browser market is different and firefox remains popular because of free software nerds, people who like its customization power (something that Mozilla is risking with its recent changes to addons, although it looks like they're treading carefully), and people who switched to it from internet explorer because their kids told them to and don't care to use Chrome.
Mozilla is good at disrupting, including both developing a superior product and getting people to care about it, but they're bad at... basically everything else, business wise. Like any organization they can get better, but doing so would require a level of change that might ultimately just make them less good at what they are good at. It seems that's what they're trying to do, and it seems that's what's happening.
gkoberger's toplevel comment[1] might offer a good opportunity. They started down this path with personas, but then abandoned it when they couldn't make developers care about it. Maybe they've lost their touch.
It pains me to say it, since they've done so much good for the things I care about, but Mozilla's time might be ending.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698997
Mozilla very well could change their focus and compete in that space, but a newcomer without any entrenched ideas would be better off. So would a big company with the resources to spin off and fund a relatively independent branch to work in IoT.
Mozilla's only big success has been Firefox. Firefox succeeded because it was competing in a market with only one other player, and that player wasn't innovating at all.
Now the browser market is different and firefox remains popular because of free software nerds, people who like its customization power (something that Mozilla is risking with its recent changes to addons, although it looks like they're treading carefully), and people who switched to it from internet explorer because their kids told them to and don't care to use Chrome.
Mozilla is good at disrupting, including both developing a superior product and getting people to care about it, but they're bad at... basically everything else, business wise. Like any organization they can get better, but doing so would require a level of change that might ultimately just make them less good at what they are good at. It seems that's what they're trying to do, and it seems that's what's happening.
gkoberger's toplevel comment[1] might offer a good opportunity. They started down this path with personas, but then abandoned it when they couldn't make developers care about it. Maybe they've lost their touch.
It pains me to say it, since they've done so much good for the things I care about, but Mozilla's time might be ending.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698997
> The IoT space is a mess right now and I think that Mozilla could do a lot of good there.
I think that platforms with a thriving ecosystem in other markets have an advantage over Firefox OS, and Firefox OS doesn't offer any compelling advantages over, say, Linux (since at the kernel level, that's what it IS) to offset that disadvantage.
I think that platforms with a thriving ecosystem in other markets have an advantage over Firefox OS, and Firefox OS doesn't offer any compelling advantages over, say, Linux (since at the kernel level, that's what it IS) to offset that disadvantage.
I don't know if this counts as IoT but if they made a good Smart Watch I could use as a phone (standalone) and browse the web on I'd buy it. I keep waiting for someone to come out with this but still nothing.
I was curious and found this for anyone else who may be interested: https://wiki.mozilla.org/FlyWeb
tldr; sad but ultimately no problem, it's just up to the open source community to maintain b2g (boot2gecko) now. It's already a more-than-functional platform, excited to take part in porting it and maintaining it from here on out, because I'll still be using it.
As a person that runs FirefoxOS on my main phone (LG Nexus 5 running FFOS v2.5), this sucks to hear. I used to own a Flame which was the developer reference phone and basically the best ffos phone you could buy except the fx0 which is for sale only with contract in japan (or very very expensively otherwise), and it was pretty good phone, and got better with every update.
However, as far as FirefoxOS (aka b2g/boot2gecko) itself goes, it's open source, so it's got a life of it's own (though it may be significantly less contributed to from now on) -- and I'm totally OK with that. I will continue to run FirefoxOS because it still does the things it should (makes calls, text messages, use apps) -- and can be (relatively) easily ported to existing phones (some flagships).
Sad day, but also kind of fine, because they did what they set out to do, and I'm running this OS on my phone, and it's verifiably not garbage (I think it's great). Looking forward to a leaner, meaner, faster Firefox on my desktop -- I'll be getting my hands dirty with FFOS on my phone in the meantime.
As a person that runs FirefoxOS on my main phone (LG Nexus 5 running FFOS v2.5), this sucks to hear. I used to own a Flame which was the developer reference phone and basically the best ffos phone you could buy except the fx0 which is for sale only with contract in japan (or very very expensively otherwise), and it was pretty good phone, and got better with every update.
However, as far as FirefoxOS (aka b2g/boot2gecko) itself goes, it's open source, so it's got a life of it's own (though it may be significantly less contributed to from now on) -- and I'm totally OK with that. I will continue to run FirefoxOS because it still does the things it should (makes calls, text messages, use apps) -- and can be (relatively) easily ported to existing phones (some flagships).
Sad day, but also kind of fine, because they did what they set out to do, and I'm running this OS on my phone, and it's verifiably not garbage (I think it's great). Looking forward to a leaner, meaner, faster Firefox on my desktop -- I'll be getting my hands dirty with FFOS on my phone in the meantime.
Guess it's up to Canonical to make Ubuntu Touch a viable open source smartphone OS - are there even devices running it that are being sold in the U.S.?
Did not expect that Sailfish OS would outlive Firefox OS.
Did not expect that Sailfish OS would outlive Firefox OS.
Ubuntu Touch cannot compete. It will have been 3 years since its announcement while still being a buggy disaster.
Not one of these camps alone can come close to Android. If they had worked together - Firefox, Sailfish, Ubuntu, and Plasma, even WebOS - we may not have the defeated corpses of a dozen half baked dreams but instead have a common phone platform that were truly open and community driven.
As it is, the only way to compete with Android is with a better software stack (the ADK and bionic / surfaceflinger stack is awful hacked togther crap, and Linux / Wayland / QT promise to be way better if they ever ship a marketable result) and an open governance model. And what about Tizen? It exists, it is even shipping on a few devices, and you can contribute upstream patches, albeit with the same kind of bullshit copyright assignment that Ubuntu and the FSF use. Why exactly aren't we supporting that platform? Because we aren't the rulers? If its open we can fork it, and its mostly GPL so nobody can close it off again.
I still think Plasma Mobile might be the salvation. Outside of the kiddish Gnome vs KDE trolls (nobody working on either project actually engages in that crap, since both projects share protocols to inter-operate most of the time via freedesktop standards) everyone should be able to get behind that as the base to put Unity 8 / Firefox / whatever Sailfish's shell is on top, plus if Shashlik ever works you get Android apps, which are pretty much required.
Not one of these camps alone can come close to Android. If they had worked together - Firefox, Sailfish, Ubuntu, and Plasma, even WebOS - we may not have the defeated corpses of a dozen half baked dreams but instead have a common phone platform that were truly open and community driven.
As it is, the only way to compete with Android is with a better software stack (the ADK and bionic / surfaceflinger stack is awful hacked togther crap, and Linux / Wayland / QT promise to be way better if they ever ship a marketable result) and an open governance model. And what about Tizen? It exists, it is even shipping on a few devices, and you can contribute upstream patches, albeit with the same kind of bullshit copyright assignment that Ubuntu and the FSF use. Why exactly aren't we supporting that platform? Because we aren't the rulers? If its open we can fork it, and its mostly GPL so nobody can close it off again.
I still think Plasma Mobile might be the salvation. Outside of the kiddish Gnome vs KDE trolls (nobody working on either project actually engages in that crap, since both projects share protocols to inter-operate most of the time via freedesktop standards) everyone should be able to get behind that as the base to put Unity 8 / Firefox / whatever Sailfish's shell is on top, plus if Shashlik ever works you get Android apps, which are pretty much required.
As much as I respect Mozilla, when the user experience is worse than a cheap Android 1.6, you should know you've got a problem. It's cool that they tried, but on one hand if you want an open-source OS it makes much more sense to fork Android, and yes I believe Ubuntu is doomed as well.
And for Mozilla this may mean more resources spent into Firefox for Android, a mobile browser that is turning out to be the browser of choice for power users due to its extensions, an awesome browser that could use some love from Mozilla as it's lagging behind Chrome in terms of standards relevant for mobiles (e.g. push notifications, app manifest). And Firefox on the desktop needs some love as well. The multiprocess support is almost there, except for a list of bugs that keep delaying it.
Mozilla has many things on its plate. Firefox OS is a cool experiment, but it didn't work, so time to move on.
And for Mozilla this may mean more resources spent into Firefox for Android, a mobile browser that is turning out to be the browser of choice for power users due to its extensions, an awesome browser that could use some love from Mozilla as it's lagging behind Chrome in terms of standards relevant for mobiles (e.g. push notifications, app manifest). And Firefox on the desktop needs some love as well. The multiprocess support is almost there, except for a list of bugs that keep delaying it.
Mozilla has many things on its plate. Firefox OS is a cool experiment, but it didn't work, so time to move on.
> And for Mozilla this may mean more resources spent into Firefox for Android, a mobile browser that is turning out to be the browser of choice for power users due to its extensions, an awesome browser that could use some love from Mozilla as it's lagging behind Chrome
Exactly the thing Mozilla should do - focus on Firefox and maybe even continue to invest in making Thunderbird better. There are a lot of reasons why that approach is more likely to succeed.
Exactly the thing Mozilla should do - focus on Firefox and maybe even continue to invest in making Thunderbird better. There are a lot of reasons why that approach is more likely to succeed.
Tizen (https://www.tizen.org/) is open source and is keeping up.
To be fair, Jolla is having some financial turmoil just at the same time. There were some (possibly temporary) lay-offs, and deliveries of the new tablet are delayed.
If you want an open source smartphone OS, why not just use Android (AOSP)?
Because the apps ecosystem is getting more and more locked into Play Services, which are not part of AOSP.
Fdroid apps work well for me. I did not install gapps at all.
And how is the app ecosystem on other open source mobile operating systems?
The internet is pretty fine, except for a prevalence of webkit only sites on mobile.
Do you really think so? What are some of the best internet apps?
I think a native app will always give a better experience because they can always just contain a browser view (it's basically a superset). Plus native code will always be more efficient and in mobile, that matters.
I think a native app will always give a better experience because they can always just contain a browser view (it's basically a superset). Plus native code will always be more efficient and in mobile, that matters.
A native app is already lost at the start because it requires the user to install it. Also at least on Android I don't buy the efficiency argument at all, Java and JavaScript are both JITed. You think Java JITs better than asm.js?
The integration argument is decent, but it's only really relevant for apps that get a lot of use, not the long tail of stuff that you use once or twice.
The integration argument is decent, but it's only really relevant for apps that get a lot of use, not the long tail of stuff that you use once or twice.
> A native app is already lost at the start because it requires the user to install it
The billions of installed apps indicates that the friction isn't significant.
> I don't buy the efficiency argument at all, Java and JavaScript are both JITed
That's how everything worked back in the Gingerbread days. Android's ART system compiles applications to native code when they are installed. You can also install actual native code with Android's NDK.
If you like the idea of asm.js, then you should check out Go on Android. It does the same thing - offers a restricted set of the language that runs very fast.
There's definitely a subset of apps that work very well in a browser. But you can do more, faster, with lower power consumption with native apps.
The billions of installed apps indicates that the friction isn't significant.
> I don't buy the efficiency argument at all, Java and JavaScript are both JITed
That's how everything worked back in the Gingerbread days. Android's ART system compiles applications to native code when they are installed. You can also install actual native code with Android's NDK.
If you like the idea of asm.js, then you should check out Go on Android. It does the same thing - offers a restricted set of the language that runs very fast.
There's definitely a subset of apps that work very well in a browser. But you can do more, faster, with lower power consumption with native apps.
Because Google has almost completely stopped pushing things to AOSP and instead keeps all the goodies locked under their proprietary apps. There is no AOSP for their "Okay, Google" stuff for instance. Most Google AOSP functionality is stuck in Android 2.x days.
I don't think that argument makes any sense. The options seem to be write everything from scratch or take AOSP and write only the services. The latter option makes a lot more sense to me.
The biggest problem with forking Android is that all of the apps will be developed for Google's flavor of Android. Which generally means you need to try to remain compatible with it, with ends with "you have to follow Google's development direction". And Google's development direction, of course, is selected by Google's business interests.
> Which generally means you need to try to remain compatible with it, with ends with "you have to follow Google's development direction"
You certainly don't need to do any of that. Amazon didn't do that and they have a pretty successful line of tablets. Even their crappy phone was far better than the Firefox OS phone.
Firefox could fork AOSP, break compatibility (if they want), rename it, and never look back. If they did this, they would be far ahead of where they are right now with Firefox OS.
You certainly don't need to do any of that. Amazon didn't do that and they have a pretty successful line of tablets. Even their crappy phone was far better than the Firefox OS phone.
Firefox could fork AOSP, break compatibility (if they want), rename it, and never look back. If they did this, they would be far ahead of where they are right now with Firefox OS.
Amazon DOES have to do that. Each version of their OS is based on a version of Google's version of Android. And they have to follow Google in re-implementing every Google API as an Amazon API as quickly as possible so they don't lose compatibility with apps.
Good point.
Still, any AOSP fork needs to track Google's version only if they want to run applications built for Google's version of Android.
The first iteration of Firefox's mobile OS didn't run any Android apps so it would be no loss if their fork of AOSP also didn't run Android apps. That's why I would suggest renaming so that people don't think they can install Android apps.
Still, any AOSP fork needs to track Google's version only if they want to run applications built for Google's version of Android.
The first iteration of Firefox's mobile OS didn't run any Android apps so it would be no loss if their fork of AOSP also didn't run Android apps. That's why I would suggest renaming so that people don't think they can install Android apps.
The question then is... why would you build on Android? It's not exactly the zippiest platform around these days. The primary pain point for alternative platforms like Windows Phone or any other "third OS" is the lack of apps. Which is the case for keeping compatibility. If you're going to drop it, why not at least focus on a more performant core to your platform?
Also, currently Android has been ruled as copyright infringement from Oracle over Java APIs. It may be advisable to avoid building your own new OS on those same APIs.
Also, currently Android has been ruled as copyright infringement from Oracle over Java APIs. It may be advisable to avoid building your own new OS on those same APIs.
> It's not exactly the zippiest platform around these days.
It's zippy enough, especially when you look at all the different platforms it works on. It's pretty far behind iOS, but then iOS has only a few platforms to worry about. Android is probably good enough especially when you factor in power consumption.
In the end though, it's all about trade-offs. Going with an Android fork gives you a pretty solid base to build off of. It's a nice option for app developers because the tools for Android development are excellent and the OS is well understood.
It's zippy enough, especially when you look at all the different platforms it works on. It's pretty far behind iOS, but then iOS has only a few platforms to worry about. Android is probably good enough especially when you factor in power consumption.
In the end though, it's all about trade-offs. Going with an Android fork gives you a pretty solid base to build off of. It's a nice option for app developers because the tools for Android development are excellent and the OS is well understood.
[deleted]
Linux as a platform took off because it was possible for a smart user to install it on hardware they already had.
If there had of been a way to install Firefox OS on an iPhone or Android phone, I would have certainly tried it out. Mozilla really needed to target power users, but it was just too hard to get hold of the hardware - both hardware availability and the stupid state of carrier contracts are to blame here.
I don't know that Mozilla's business model works if they are not bundling their software to a licensed phone, but it's a shame that the mobile platforms can't be opened up the same way desktops are.
If there had of been a way to install Firefox OS on an iPhone or Android phone, I would have certainly tried it out. Mozilla really needed to target power users, but it was just too hard to get hold of the hardware - both hardware availability and the stupid state of carrier contracts are to blame here.
I don't know that Mozilla's business model works if they are not bundling their software to a licensed phone, but it's a shame that the mobile platforms can't be opened up the same way desktops are.
Yup. That was one thing I was really hoping Ubuntu Touch would give me a chance with, their whole "install on Android" thing. But it's supported on a pittance of device options.
Currently mobile hardware is in a space where the OS has to be custom built for the hardware choices of that particular phone manufacturer, unlike PCs which have a robust system of drivers you have some manner of control over as a user. Seems to be the biggest limitation.
Currently mobile hardware is in a space where the OS has to be custom built for the hardware choices of that particular phone manufacturer, unlike PCs which have a robust system of drivers you have some manner of control over as a user. Seems to be the biggest limitation.
I love the work of Mozilla in the browser space, Thunderbird, Rust and online freedom.
Having web pages as native apps goes back to Web Widgets on Series 60 phones, followed by WebOS.
On the Series 60, almost everyone favoured native Symbian and J2ME apps to web widgets.
WebOS sadly failed to gain major traction.
Windows Phone and Android devices can be obtained by fairly low prices and have the advantage of native apps, Webviews besides the browser. On Windows Phone the WinRT is exposed to packaged web apps.
So although I respect their efforts, I never really understood the effort, given that they were under the same OEM constraints as Android and the reviews of the available devices weren't that great.
Having web pages as native apps goes back to Web Widgets on Series 60 phones, followed by WebOS.
On the Series 60, almost everyone favoured native Symbian and J2ME apps to web widgets.
WebOS sadly failed to gain major traction.
Windows Phone and Android devices can be obtained by fairly low prices and have the advantage of native apps, Webviews besides the browser. On Windows Phone the WinRT is exposed to packaged web apps.
So although I respect their efforts, I never really understood the effort, given that they were under the same OEM constraints as Android and the reviews of the available devices weren't that great.
So the headline is fairly misleading, Firefox OS is not cancelled and development will not be stopped. The strategy of trying to push distribution via carriers has not worked so we will no longer be doing that. The "Firefox OS" team was renamed to "Connected Devices" to reflect the fact we are not only building a smartphone, TV's are already being sold and other factors (iot / wearables etc) are being looked into.
Is anyone actually surprised by this announcement? It feels like Mozilla tries a lot of things, but rarely gets traction on any of them.
Mean while, Firefox isn't getting that much better and seems to be loosing marketshare.
What's the long-term plan?
Mean while, Firefox isn't getting that much better and seems to be loosing marketshare.
What's the long-term plan?
Shovel more crap like Pocket and Hello into their flagship product and pray that something sticks?
Agreed, it seems like they're rapidly running out of options. It's getting a little concerning.
Agreed, it seems like they're rapidly running out of options. It's getting a little concerning.
Good. I can't remember anyone other than Mozilla actually being excited about Firefox OS. It seemed like a massive sinkhole on the company's part that drew resources away from the development of the browser.
Every Firefox OS article on HN seems to have gotten 50 comments from excited people. These are apparently the 50 phones they sold worldwide.
I wish we got that percentage of satisfied users ;)
Something that has been on my mind.. A lot of commenters keep saying there are two good options out there, but really the choice is more "iPhone. Yes or No?". If you don't want an iPhone you are going to end up with an Android device. I can't put iOS on my nexus 5.
There is a space there for another OS that you can put on your non-iphone. I just don't think that's Mozilla's space to fill. Really, in all practicality, this is a space Microsoft needs to fill. It's almost like the world is waiting for them to step it up. Their new open source strategy is going to produce some big plays along these lines; .net in particular. Think about the native and multi-arch work being done for it.. ARM for Windows10 and .net; where is it all going you think?
I can tell you that if I could load up Windows10 on my nexus5 even if just for a test drive I certainly would.
There is a space there for another OS that you can put on your non-iphone. I just don't think that's Mozilla's space to fill. Really, in all practicality, this is a space Microsoft needs to fill. It's almost like the world is waiting for them to step it up. Their new open source strategy is going to produce some big plays along these lines; .net in particular. Think about the native and multi-arch work being done for it.. ARM for Windows10 and .net; where is it all going you think?
I can tell you that if I could load up Windows10 on my nexus5 even if just for a test drive I certainly would.
I always wondered why they didn't try a tablet first. Like the Chromebooks, but in tablet form, heavy on Firefox branding. Maybe this too is something that would've been an 'also-ran' or market failure, but I still want one even as I type this.
What would that solve that a Chromebook wouldn't?
Chromebooks already run Linux when so coerced, and are the most bulletproof computing platform for education and business. What could be special about the FirefoxBook?
Perhaps, instead of expending that much effort to engineer a new tablet entirely from scratch, find an Android tablet and put a Mozilla sticker on it.
Chromebooks already run Linux when so coerced, and are the most bulletproof computing platform for education and business. What could be special about the FirefoxBook?
Perhaps, instead of expending that much effort to engineer a new tablet entirely from scratch, find an Android tablet and put a Mozilla sticker on it.
It seems like expectations would be lower for a tablet because they're a secondary device. With a phone there's a whole host of things you need to build (maps, mail, messages, FB, Twitter, etc.) because it's often the only device people have on them.
With a tablet I would at least have a good browser, which would cover most of my idle browsing. And if there is something I absolutely must do on Android then worst case is I pull out my phone and use that instead.
With a tablet I would at least have a good browser, which would cover most of my idle browsing. And if there is something I absolutely must do on Android then worst case is I pull out my phone and use that instead.
Literally nothing except a different form factor. FWIW, I wish there were Chrometablets too. The Pixel C is headed this way in form, but unfortunately toward Android and native apps instead of ChromeOS and the Web.
> The Pixel C is headed this way in form, but unfortunately toward Android and native apps instead of ChromeOS and the Web.
The web -- though not Google's non-standard Chrome apps through the browser, as yet -- works quite well on Android.
The web -- though not Google's non-standard Chrome apps through the browser, as yet -- works quite well on Android.
Indeed. I use Android devices and think the market is headed toward native vs. the web too, I just hope it's not zero sum. ChromeOS is arguably less functional than Android, but there are use cases for it, and its stripped-down, web-only nature, in many respects is a feature, not a bug. I also really don't like commercial app stores. Discovery is terrible and then who wants to try a couple different versions of an app, before finding the best in class, if not immediately obvious? At least with web apps discovery is easier and switching costs much lower. Native apps also feel less configurable, less extensible, silo'ed off, and don't offer the freedom software provides for on a desktop anyway. I know this all may change in the future - I'm hopeful it does!
They did try the tablet space. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox_OS/TCP
I signed up for the contribution program, received a tablet, built and ran updates on it, participated in Discourse discussions and wanted to do more. Sadly, builds started breaking, they weren't attended to, and the program died a slow death.
I signed up for the contribution program, received a tablet, built and ran updates on it, participated in Discourse discussions and wanted to do more. Sadly, builds started breaking, they weren't attended to, and the program died a slow death.
Damn you. I want one too now.
> “We are proud of the benefits Firefox OS added to the Web platform and will continue to experiment with the user experience across connected devices. We will build everything we do as a genuine open source project, focused on user experience first and build tools to enable the ecosystem to grow.
This doesn't necessarily mean that Firefox OS is over. It means that it's over on the phone but it might move to those "connected devices". I bet Mozilla will release a more precise statement soon.
This doesn't necessarily mean that Firefox OS is over. It means that it's over on the phone but it might move to those "connected devices". I bet Mozilla will release a more precise statement soon.
What is the future of Mozilla and of open platforms?
1) Without FirefoxOS, what is Mozilla's future on mobile devices? The Firefox browser, while I think it's great, has very low adoption on mobiles. I'm not sure content-blockers are enough, and they now need the platform owner's cooperation to get their product in front of users (i.e., to get into the app store and to be compatible with the user systems).
2) Without a future on mobile devices, what is Mozilla's future? How influential can they be while playing no role on the most popular Internet platform?
3) Without a player on mobile devices, what is the future of open platforms in general? On the desktop there are several mature operating systems and ecosystems but what is there on mobile? Can open platforms be relevant without a presence on mobile? Where are the BSDs for mobile? GNU tools? Vim?
There are Android forks, but they depend on the continued generosity of the market leader (to release AOSP, a version of Android designed for that purpose). And having looked around for a good option, I can report that the various forks are unambitious, provide little to differentiate themselves from Android, and their organization and support don't inspire confidence.
1) Without FirefoxOS, what is Mozilla's future on mobile devices? The Firefox browser, while I think it's great, has very low adoption on mobiles. I'm not sure content-blockers are enough, and they now need the platform owner's cooperation to get their product in front of users (i.e., to get into the app store and to be compatible with the user systems).
2) Without a future on mobile devices, what is Mozilla's future? How influential can they be while playing no role on the most popular Internet platform?
3) Without a player on mobile devices, what is the future of open platforms in general? On the desktop there are several mature operating systems and ecosystems but what is there on mobile? Can open platforms be relevant without a presence on mobile? Where are the BSDs for mobile? GNU tools? Vim?
There are Android forks, but they depend on the continued generosity of the market leader (to release AOSP, a version of Android designed for that purpose). And having looked around for a good option, I can report that the various forks are unambitious, provide little to differentiate themselves from Android, and their organization and support don't inspire confidence.
I bought one of the Fx0 phones last month.
Sad to hear this news. I wanted to move away from Android and iOS, and saw FFOS as the only viable option.
They should've mass produced whatever the developer phone was, the Flame I think? Sell it to consumers as a flagship, supported by Mozilla devs, and community devs...
Sad to hear this news. I wanted to move away from Android and iOS, and saw FFOS as the only viable option.
They should've mass produced whatever the developer phone was, the Flame I think? Sell it to consumers as a flagship, supported by Mozilla devs, and community devs...
I'm saddened by this because I am not a fan of the current state in mobile where everything is an app. I liked their idea of having 'apps' be about the open web. Sure, native apps can be great but I don't want to be locked in to anyone's proprietary platform.
Looks like Smart Feature Phones won't materialize :( https://youtu.be/JIiIjjIsuzc
Though they aren't quite saying that, I guess there'll be no new Firefox OS Smart TV's, too? http://www.techradar.com/news/television/6-best-smart-tv-pla...
Though they aren't quite saying that, I guess there'll be no new Firefox OS Smart TV's, too? http://www.techradar.com/news/television/6-best-smart-tv-pla...
Hate to say it, but good. Firefox OS was going in a backwards direction. The UI was designed for low-res screens, and it ran mostly on hardware barely better than the iPhone 1, except with JS.
Something like this could have been the future if Webassembly was ready for prime time - you could have 'native' apps all running on top on Firefox, on top of the Android/CM base.
Anyhow, hopefully Mozilla refocuses their efforts on Firefox, Rust and Webassembly, and regain relevance.
Something like this could have been the future if Webassembly was ready for prime time - you could have 'native' apps all running on top on Firefox, on top of the Android/CM base.
Anyhow, hopefully Mozilla refocuses their efforts on Firefox, Rust and Webassembly, and regain relevance.
That's too bad but like everyone else said pretty obvious what the outcome would be.
I wonder what a third player in the mobile OS market would look like and if it's even possible at this point. Microsoft is basically number 3 at this point, right? Yet they have so little market share that companies are activity leaving their marketplace.
I wonder if the next mobile OS isn't an OS that requires apps to survive but, instead, offers a crazy amount of integration experiences. For instance if someone came up with a way to unify how to call a car then integrate that directly into the phone (so ultimately it wouldn't matter if it was Uber, Lyft or even yellow cab).
Maybe not the best example but I'm getting the feeling creating a phone that needs apps to be highly functional is simply not possible at this time and another angle is needed to break in.
I wonder what a third player in the mobile OS market would look like and if it's even possible at this point. Microsoft is basically number 3 at this point, right? Yet they have so little market share that companies are activity leaving their marketplace.
I wonder if the next mobile OS isn't an OS that requires apps to survive but, instead, offers a crazy amount of integration experiences. For instance if someone came up with a way to unify how to call a car then integrate that directly into the phone (so ultimately it wouldn't matter if it was Uber, Lyft or even yellow cab).
Maybe not the best example but I'm getting the feeling creating a phone that needs apps to be highly functional is simply not possible at this time and another angle is needed to break in.
> Microsoft is basically number 3 at this point, right?
Currently they are the only option to Android for those that cannot afford an iOS device, usually in countries where the majority go for pre-paid and average salaries are on the 1000 € or lower range.
But if the current trend continues, given the current Windows Phone 10 expectations, it might become a two horses race.
Currently they are the only option to Android for those that cannot afford an iOS device, usually in countries where the majority go for pre-paid and average salaries are on the 1000 € or lower range.
But if the current trend continues, given the current Windows Phone 10 expectations, it might become a two horses race.
Ubuntu Phone looks interesting and has great potential with the conergence
It will be good to know how resource hungry Ubuntu Touch OS is. That's one problem with Android. It requires a Hexa Core processor and 3GB RAM for super smooth performance. Almost all flagship Android devices have heating issues and they seem to need much bigger batteries than iOS devices.
Thunderbird: stopped.
FirefoxOS: stopped.
Rust: as nice as the language is, I can see it become irrelevant in the rise of Swift (and tons of developers already using and praising it).
so the last thing that remains is the very core of mozilla: firefox. But then version 42 hit me, disabled the support for custom themes, leaving me alone with a crappy UI I can't stand any longer to the point I uninstalled Firefox forever.
As others have already mentioned: from several sessions of customer development out in the streets, I can confirm that privacy is something that no-one has really interest in, let alone pay a penny for it nowadays.
I'd love to know what Mozilla's vision of the future is, given that the points above are real and Firefox itself becomes more and more an awful "me too!" of other, better browsers.
FirefoxOS: stopped.
Rust: as nice as the language is, I can see it become irrelevant in the rise of Swift (and tons of developers already using and praising it).
so the last thing that remains is the very core of mozilla: firefox. But then version 42 hit me, disabled the support for custom themes, leaving me alone with a crappy UI I can't stand any longer to the point I uninstalled Firefox forever.
As others have already mentioned: from several sessions of customer development out in the streets, I can confirm that privacy is something that no-one has really interest in, let alone pay a penny for it nowadays.
I'd love to know what Mozilla's vision of the future is, given that the points above are real and Firefox itself becomes more and more an awful "me too!" of other, better browsers.
> Rust: as nice as the language is, I can see it become irrelevant in the rise of Swift (and tons of developers already using and praising it).
How are Rust and Swift in the same language niche at all?
How are Rust and Swift in the same language niche at all?
I was waiting for a Firefox OS phone with great hardware, but that didn't seem to materialize (AFAIK). Making both high end and low end phones together, perhaps in different volumes, could have helped. Focusing only on the extreme low end with poor hardware was probably a mistake.
While I'm unhappy that Mozilla is not going to focus on Firefox OS smartphones, I do consider this as an experiment that organizations like Mozilla ought to do. I'm sure there were a lot of things accomplished (like some mentioned in the comments for phone APIs) and a lot of things learned. These will in turn help other initiatives.
Now, please put Thunderbird back on the development track with the same priority as Firefox. :) And while you're at it, we want Persona too! :)
While I'm unhappy that Mozilla is not going to focus on Firefox OS smartphones, I do consider this as an experiment that organizations like Mozilla ought to do. I'm sure there were a lot of things accomplished (like some mentioned in the comments for phone APIs) and a lot of things learned. These will in turn help other initiatives.
Now, please put Thunderbird back on the development track with the same priority as Firefox. :) And while you're at it, we want Persona too! :)
Hugely disappointing. Actually love my Open C once I upgraded it to FxOS 2.2
Dear Mozilla, I hate IoT devices. I don't want them. They are security exploits incarnate. At least a phone is useful, why the hell do I really need a microwave with an IP address? I don't.
Dear Mozilla, I hate IoT devices. I don't want them. They are security exploits incarnate. At least a phone is useful, why the hell do I really need a microwave with an IP address? I don't.
I must say I'm not entirely surprised, though part of me wished they had gone through with it, would of been interesting to have more than just 2 options for a phone. I am reminded of PalmOS though for some reason, similar project if I remember correctly.
Try Jolla so your dreams can be crushed twice.
I wonder if Jolla has a higher chance of survival, because it's niche enough to be focused, rather than chasing after a world market. Sailfish OS might outlive Ubuntu Touch.
Jolla is pretty much insolvent at the moment. Does not really look good. http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/20/jolla-running-out-of-runway...
I really wanted them to merge themselves in as an alternate userland mode for cyanogenmod and any other AOSP. I'm not sure if microsoft's investment in cyanogenmod was a response to those kinds of possibilities..
I was always waiting for a credible Firefox OS phone in the US; ready to buy immediately on arrival. Nothing ever arrived. The phones were weak by Android phone standards, expensive by low-end Android phone standards, and often didn't support all of the bands of my carrier and so would have had less connectivity in remote locations.
I'm disappointed, though. I looked forward to a more open phone built by an organization I trust. Google is barely OK. Apple is not even that. Microsoft is improving, but still out of the running in terms of openness.
I'm disappointed, though. I looked forward to a more open phone built by an organization I trust. Google is barely OK. Apple is not even that. Microsoft is improving, but still out of the running in terms of openness.
That's a shame and awful. Web apps should really be winning this fight against "native". Firefox OS was our greatest warrior. Or wasn't it?
They failed because they missed the great opportunity of promoting ad-hoc and mesh applications in their API and security model as first class citizens.
I'm surprised this project didn't pivot into something more like ChromeOS. The market there, as proven by Chromebooks. As others have mentioned, Mozilla could have played up the security/privacy aspect of a "Firefox-book".
As a smartphone OS, I don't see what problems Firefox OS solves. Both iOS and Android have great browsers, and can pin webapps to their homescreens.
As a smartphone OS, I don't see what problems Firefox OS solves. Both iOS and Android have great browsers, and can pin webapps to their homescreens.
I'm writing from my buggy, crashing ZTE Open C... And this is the final straw: I've had it Mozilla.
It's not me, it's you. You were the symbol of informatics progress in the right direction, but now you're just another pusher of one size fits all crapware. Hope this changes again because we need a good guy in this space.
Now to finally remove the slow, crashing behemoth that has become Firefox...
It's not me, it's you. You were the symbol of informatics progress in the right direction, but now you're just another pusher of one size fits all crapware. Hope this changes again because we need a good guy in this space.
Now to finally remove the slow, crashing behemoth that has become Firefox...
Two days ago when Mozilla discontinues Thunderbird, people cheering "oh yeah, finally they can focus on firefoxOS", the same people are yelling Mozilla should focus on their mission (the browser)?
Not to mention rust, it's adoption is nowhere comparable to Java, see what happened to Sun, I would boldly say Mozilla's mission has completed.
Not to mention rust, it's adoption is nowhere comparable to Java, see what happened to Sun, I would boldly say Mozilla's mission has completed.
A federated web payment infrastructure would be the holy grail Mozilla could build a life around.
Lots of headlines at HN from Mozilla these days.
Tried Firefox OS emulator and it's fine, but not impressed enough to actually to get a real device.
Yes they better focus on privacy/identity and revamp Thuderbird to make it a unique product.
Tried Firefox OS emulator and it's fine, but not impressed enough to actually to get a real device.
Yes they better focus on privacy/identity and revamp Thuderbird to make it a unique product.
Revamping Thunderbird has already been ruled out by one of those previous headlines. Mozilla has cut the cord with Thunderbird. So, they're either focusing on their core strengths or giving up on a lot of fronts, depending on your perspective.
Lots of headlines at HN from Mozilla these days.
They're having a developer conference so big announcements are concentrated.
They're having a developer conference so big announcements are concentrated.
It's more accurately described as an employee all-hands, with some volunteers invited too. 1200 employees, ~200 volunteers, not really people developing things on Mozilla platforms.
Twelve hundred employees???
And they couldn't find one or two of them to port Thunderbird to Qt.
And they couldn't find one or two of them to port Thunderbird to Qt.
I think you seriously underestimate the amount of work that would take.
Wow, you think it would take more than a few developer-years?
What would be the point of doing that? They just ported it to GTK3, which is what the major distros actually ship.
To get rid of XUL of course, which is a big reason the memo says it's being canceled. (Might be the biggest reason, since it's mentioned first, but the memo wanders around and is pretty vague on exactly what the problems are)
Anyone know the status of the smart feature phone os they were talking about a few months back? I can't find anything on it but am interested in the project.
Good riddance. Firefox OS was a technical disaster. It was vulnerable by design as it had no capabilities for updating Gecko. I had hopes for it, and I will happily continue to use my first generation ZTE (70 bucks) FxOS phone, but I am happy they are no longer sold.
Distribution of the OS was a reckless debacle and, from the perspective of a non-technical customer, fraud, if you ask me.
Distribution of the OS was a reckless debacle and, from the perspective of a non-technical customer, fraud, if you ask me.
Well that sucks.
I desperately want to drop Android and was hoping Firefox OS would continue to mature and improve.
I desperately want to drop Android and was hoping Firefox OS would continue to mature and improve.
It was doomed from the beginning, already such a crowded space. Firefox OS had no chance at all.
FFxOS kernel is a fork of android kernal, but optimized to run on small memory footprint (128 MB RAM). Its speed on 128 MB RAM devices is commendable. Javascript is the only and primary development language for FFxOS & we get to access all hardware devices (Bluetooth, wifi, camera, etc ) via Javascript.
I never knew Firefox OS existed. Maybe they should've marketed it better?
Funny, I just advised for that in a HN thread.
I guess the writing was on the wall of course -- but in case they just heard me and decided to stop it: please guys prioritize a native-UI on all platforms, servo based release for 2016.
I guess the writing was on the wall of course -- but in case they just heard me and decided to stop it: please guys prioritize a native-UI on all platforms, servo based release for 2016.
It's high time Mozilla gets its shit together.
Got to ask: what is the point of Mozilla?
I'm not sure if you're serious or not. If you are, here's a good place to start: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/
That's not very useful. I think you mean to link to this:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/
I'm going to get voted down by those who don't like dissent or opinions that they fear are "offensive" (and certainly they probably won't participate in the discussion or even attempt to answer the issues I raise!), but here is why I asked the question:
Basically, I just don't see that Mozilla is actually doing anything terribly innovative any more. Certainly anything that seems to support their manifesto is dumped when it seems to get a bit hard. I'm specifically looking at the following:
1. Persona: Persona specifically fits into "build and enable open-source technologies and communities that support the Manifesto’s principles" and also "promote models for creating economic value for the public benefit".
They just didn't support it very well, or for long enough to make an impact. An identity service needs Facebook-like periods to make it work - Facebook took a LONG time to get to where it was an complete persistence of vision against pretty much overwhelming odds.
Ultimately, that Personna failed was because Mozilla didn't have courage and weren't willing to run with something they truly believe in. IMO, the heads of Mozilla have no real grit and only go for short to medium term goals.
2. Allowing EME to be implemented in Firefox. EME should only ever have been an extension, and not baked into the core Firefox platform. EME does not fit into point 2 of their manifesto:
* Rust - this is important and long-term. But it handles the underlying development of their browser, and as important as it is, it only goes so far in really making a big impact on promoting an open web
* Personna - abandoned, but this would have been a key way of opening the web. A secure, cross-browser website authentication mechanism which allows a user to use a single username and password (or other authentication method) to log in to multiple sites - I just can't think of a more important initiative.
That this was abandoned shows the sort of short term mentality of those leading Mozilla.
* Mozilla Location Service - interesting idea, but there are privacy concerns - they sell the underlying data to Combain AB, and Combain allow you to search on all sorts of things. I don't see how this helps Mozilla's underlying foundational principles!
* The MDN - now this is truly great, and does satisfy all the points of the manifesto. I hope that Mozilla keep this up!
* Firefox OS - now abandoned, but this was truly something that was needed in a market that is more and more proprietary. Evidently Mozilla have no stomach for keeping a project going for more than 2-3 years; there is no medium or long-term commitment.
So, given that Mozilla largely don't seem to want to do anything that they will commit to in the medium to long term (with a few exceptions, though these are already established) I have to ask: what is the point of Mozilla?
All the things Mozilla now promote (like the ad-blocker in iOS, which their own browser can't even use) seem like things that aren't very ambitious; certainly they won't change the world!
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/
I'm going to get voted down by those who don't like dissent or opinions that they fear are "offensive" (and certainly they probably won't participate in the discussion or even attempt to answer the issues I raise!), but here is why I asked the question:
Basically, I just don't see that Mozilla is actually doing anything terribly innovative any more. Certainly anything that seems to support their manifesto is dumped when it seems to get a bit hard. I'm specifically looking at the following:
1. Persona: Persona specifically fits into "build and enable open-source technologies and communities that support the Manifesto’s principles" and also "promote models for creating economic value for the public benefit".
They just didn't support it very well, or for long enough to make an impact. An identity service needs Facebook-like periods to make it work - Facebook took a LONG time to get to where it was an complete persistence of vision against pretty much overwhelming odds.
Ultimately, that Personna failed was because Mozilla didn't have courage and weren't willing to run with something they truly believe in. IMO, the heads of Mozilla have no real grit and only go for short to medium term goals.
2. Allowing EME to be implemented in Firefox. EME should only ever have been an extension, and not baked into the core Firefox platform. EME does not fit into point 2 of their manifesto:
2. The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.
* Rust - this is important and long-term. But it handles the underlying development of their browser, and as important as it is, it only goes so far in really making a big impact on promoting an open web
* Personna - abandoned, but this would have been a key way of opening the web. A secure, cross-browser website authentication mechanism which allows a user to use a single username and password (or other authentication method) to log in to multiple sites - I just can't think of a more important initiative.
That this was abandoned shows the sort of short term mentality of those leading Mozilla.
* Mozilla Location Service - interesting idea, but there are privacy concerns - they sell the underlying data to Combain AB, and Combain allow you to search on all sorts of things. I don't see how this helps Mozilla's underlying foundational principles!
* The MDN - now this is truly great, and does satisfy all the points of the manifesto. I hope that Mozilla keep this up!
* Firefox OS - now abandoned, but this was truly something that was needed in a market that is more and more proprietary. Evidently Mozilla have no stomach for keeping a project going for more than 2-3 years; there is no medium or long-term commitment.
So, given that Mozilla largely don't seem to want to do anything that they will commit to in the medium to long term (with a few exceptions, though these are already established) I have to ask: what is the point of Mozilla?
All the things Mozilla now promote (like the ad-blocker in iOS, which their own browser can't even use) seem like things that aren't very ambitious; certainly they won't change the world!
> But it handles the underlying development of their browser, and as important as it is, it only goes so far in really making a big impact on promoting an open web
Rust's safety features are designed to enhance security of Web browsers, and its parallelism/concurrency features are designed to enhance Web performance. I can't think of many things that are more important to the health of the Web platform than security and performance.
Rust's safety features are designed to enhance security of Web browsers, and its parallelism/concurrency features are designed to enhance Web performance. I can't think of many things that are more important to the health of the Web platform than security and performance.
Not sure why you would say FireFox OS itself is needed, when Android is open source, and scales down almost as far as FireFox OS did in terms of hardware. If Mozilla really wanted to push an OS out, they could have taken Android and customised it with a web app support on top rather than reinventing the entire giant wheel.
I agree that my link isn't useful in light this clarification. I do appreciate you taking the time to expand on your opinion.
When Chrome stopped working for me a few weeks ago, I was very glad to have Firefox to fall back on.
Anyone remember the Facebook phone?
Sad, but properly to be expected.
When did they start?
Money well wasted.
Could have seen that being a flop from outer space.
Finally.
[deleted](1)
Well, this comes as a huge surprise to no one.
FirefoxOS appeared at a time when there was huge potential being actively being pushed forward and innovated on by the two largest tech companies in the space, and people already had two great options to choose from. It filled no real need, and nobody wanted it.
For Mozilla to stay alive, they need to pick a space that is currently desperately needed but being ignored by large corporations and the government: privacy and identity. Mozilla could be the champion of the Snowden era, yet instead they're distracting themselves with IoT, VR and other shiny new toys.
(And yes, I realize that users don't care about privacy. But nobody cared about web standards, either: it's all about packaging. That's Mozilla's strength.)
Mozilla is a non-profit with a mission (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/). It's time they start acting like one again.