6 ms·

Schrödinger's Firefox OS

63 points by bpierre 11y ago

mavdi 11y ago
Mozilla hires Vladislav Surkov? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcy8uLjRHPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcy8uLjRHPM
hardwaresofton 11y ago
There's no Schrödinger about it, FFOS is alive. (that's kind of a tl;dr for the article itself, but good article so I recommend the read) I actually think FFOS is an amazing choice for connected devices, and I really want to use it on an IoT project (of course, that project is stuck behind at least 3 others, one of which is an app for FFOS). To expand on why I think it's an amazing choice: - As FOSS as you can get, with mobile OSes - Easy to reason about architecture - Will evolve with the web (as well as the web's capabilities) - Galaxy-level ecosystem for HTML/CSS/JS
- empressplay 11y ago
  I'm still struggling to understand how an interpreter is any good for IoT uses? Isn't using a language that can compile to bare-metal much more efficient? And if we're talking about the UI on say the front of your fridge, isn't there a squillion other toolkits out there already for that? I just can't see this working.
  - sunfish 11y ago
    JS isn't just about interpreters these days, but at the same time, IoT isn't just about efficiency. It's also about integrating with ecosystems, so that each IoT device isn't an island of itself, but can join a bigger picture.
    - hardwaresofton 11y ago
      I agree, many of the IoT devices are certainly large enough to have at least a raspberry pi form-factor device in them (if not bigger) -- I would expect a bunch of the "smart-home" related IoT devices to have decent specs, at least ODROID or raspberry pi level. Also, the web as a platform is obviously very very well-known and popular. Mozilla just has to craft and expose the right APIs, and support the right devices (and handle the fragmentation), and they could have a great easy-to-use, robust platform almost overnight.
    - epoch1970 11y ago
      > It's also about integrating with ecosystems, so that each IoT device isn't an island of itself, but can join a bigger picture. So why is JavaScript critical for this? C, C++, Go, and pretty much every other language out there seeing use today is capable of working with JSON, making HTTP requests, and so on, in addition to supporting communication far beyond those technologies. How are they any less capable than JavaScript in this case?
      - hardwaresofton 11y ago
        Javascript isn't strictly critical for IoT, but it does benefit for being the language of the web. FFOS is in a great position to take advantage of this, because FFOS's "apps" are what we generally call web apps. Mozila doesn't have to reinvent wheels (though they will of course have to extend what we think of as the web) to handle mechanisms that have already been discussed/implemented/proven on the web. I think if you wanted to do stuff with those other languages, you'd have to build up a little bit of tooling, libraries, and other odds and ends, and you can skip at least a little of that by using JS+HTML+CSS
        Sanddancer 11y ago
        MS's IoT platform lets you use JS where it's appropriate, but at the same time, doesn't pin you down to it. You can also write things in C#, C++, etc, even mix as needed. The problem with Firefox OS is that it's just javascript, no escape hatch, no way to talk to the rest of the non-web enabled world.
        soapdog 11y ago
        JS on Firefox OS can talk to non-web enabled world. You have APIs to do TCP, Bluetooth and USB. Also APIs to do GPIO and I2C from JS are being developed. You can talk to more things than just http servers.
  - hardwaresofton 11y ago
    Valid concern! JS is not your traditional choice for embedded systems, but in many ways, it's becoming (is, I think) "good enough". - JS can achieve some serious speed with the enormous amount of work and JIT smarts that have gone into the various JS engines. - Size/memory constaints on embedded devices are only going to get looser, and I think the kind of IoT devices that the FFOS is targeting are the type to have more than a simple microcontroller - I'm not sure what you meant by toolkits out there for fridges... Do you mean the OSes that run on the smart-fridges? If so, in my other comment I noted how FFOS's web-apps-are-apps approach is fantastic -- exposing a simple, unified, easy to use javascript API is an extremely easy way for people to write webapps that target things like fridges, without having to learn some random new platform.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      There are already numerous choices in the embedded marketplace for an OS. The issues on embedded devices appear to me to be considerably lower level than the browser. I think your average embedded systems engineer might be very surprised to hear that Javascript is "good enough" for their microcontroller...
      - hardwaresofton 11y ago
        I did not say to put javascript on a microcontroller -- this is precisely why I mentioned form factors that have MORE than a simple microcontroller, which would make JS more viable. Also, the numerous choices in the embedded marketplace also imply numerous specialized choices for display, sandboxing model, API conventions, etc. I think FFOS has an edge in this area because it just reuses the work people have already done pushing the web forward.
  - ndesaulniers 11y ago
    > Isn't using a language that can compile to bare-metal much more efficient? Let me introduce you to my friend, WebAssembly.
- Cyberdog 11y ago
  > There's no Schrödinger about it, FFOS is alive. Is it, though? It's pivoting from being an OS for mobile phones, which is something that billions of people use and understand, to being an OS for "internet of things" devices, which are… uh… internet-connected thermostats and refrigerators and stuff? I guess? But even if smart fridges are really going to become a thing, are we not not anticipating Firefox OS not facing the same challenges it did in the phone market? That is, if I'm gonna make a smart fridge, why would I choose FFOS over Android, especially since devs for the latter are far more common?
  - hardwaresofton 11y ago
    Obviously, I'm incredibly biased, but I think it's reasonable to see the shift as applying FFOS to a different thing. The OS they've created is flexible enough to go on a completely different device, where as I don't think android belongs many places outside of phones and tablets. I think that flexibility is what lets them avoid calling this a failed project, and more of a pivot. By the way, FFOS hasn't become any LESS of a phone OS just because they're focusing on applying it to IoT stuff -- It still runs great, and you can flash it to a lot of flagship phones without any problems. The best thing about FFOS is that it doesn't require buy in to some closed platform. Your connected fridge apps and your connected microwave apps are just going to be webapps, which take advantage of an in-browser (knowing the devs at mozilla, most likely well documented, open an reasonable) API. While I definitely don't know what manufacturers actually go through (I'm not one), I might choose FFOS over android because of ease of app creation, lack of having to deal with Google, and more thoroughly open OS. If I want to spin my own version of gaia (the frontend for FFOS), it's incredibly easy (and of course, styling HTML/CSS, and adding some JS is in my opinion, easier than dealing with the Android ecosystem)
    - epoch1970 11y ago
      > The OS they've created is flexible enough to go on a completely different device, where as I don't think android belongs many places outside of phones and tablets. I'm confused by this claim. Doesn't Firefox OS use the Linux kernel, like Android does? Doesn't Firefox OS incorporate part of the Android HAL into Gonk? And how does Gecko really differ that much from Blink in this scenario? I find it strange to think that Android isn't suitable for this use, but somehow Firefox OS is, although they're so similar.
- Matthias247 11y ago
  Can't agree on the amazing choice part: Most IoT devices will be headless. The will act as sensors, actors or gateways, but information will be displayed on other devices (your PC, Tablet, Smartphone, and probably a very limited number of control center things which actually embed a display). For headless devices I can't yet see the benefit of Firefox OS over the Linux distribution of your choice (or even a custom one, e.g. with Yocto) plus Node.js (if you wan't to program in JS) or any other programming language of your choice. I would for sure prefer to use Node APIs (where the ecosystem is in the meantime really big and development and prototyping can be done on most platforms) against some other FFOS APIs (which I don't know - so it might be not a problem if porting node libraries is easy - but it could also be a big problem if FFOS specific BSPs are needed). For devices with displays: Well, here comes the question again where the benefit of FFOS is against existing platforms for that solution. Of course, iOS is out there, but you still have the choice between Linux + Browser or a classical GUI toolkit (GTK, QT), an Android based device and now also Windows 10 for IoT. If portability is a concern then I would create the fronted simply as a web app which can run on any of those OSes with a decent browser. And the actual system runs in $programming_language_of_choice and exposes HTTP/WS APIs.
  - hardwaresofton 11y ago
    Ah I definitely should have qualified my statements -- I was thinking more fridges/microwaves/things with screens. Most of the benefit is that they don't have to try and build some frankenstein of a view layer if you go with FFOS. FFOS is definitely just about useless for IoT applications if it doesn't have a screen -- I completely agree with your point, it's just a fork of AOSP at that point.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      If you think that Firefox will win by powering fridges, microwaves and toasters, then I'm not entirely sure how to respond.
      - elioqoshi 11y ago
        That's one way to frame it! :D
smithkl42 11y ago
Mozilla is a company which can fire their CEO for believing what all of humanity believed until last Tuesday, and then call it a victory for "diversity". I can't say I'm surprised to discover that they have trouble communicating clearly.
transfire 11y ago
I bought my sister a $50 Firefox phone for Christmas. She's never heard of it, of course. But she loves it! Why did Mozilla give up so quickly? Did they really expect to take the market by storm overnight? I don't get it.
- 746F7475 11y ago
  Just guessing, but maybe they saw what has happened to Windows Phone market shares. Sure there are people who absolutely love their Windows Phones to bits, but it's not really gaining momentum to be a serious threat to Android or iOS, which means less and less developers are willing to put in the effort to create apps for their platform. Now think of Firefox OS, it's even younger and even less mature than Windows Phone with no real benefit for your average users. I doubt I could sell a Firefox OS to a normal user on the street
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    I think the one thing holding Windows Phone back is that Google has not gone arm twisting about updates etc. If they did i suspect quite a number of OEMs have contingency plans in place for releasing Windows devices.
    - 746F7475 11y ago
      Do you feel like Google should take stronger stance for phone manufacturers to update their own software? I don't think it can be blamed on Google if phone manufacturers don't update their devices fast enough and if Google would take stronger stance in OS updates and manufacturers would jump ship wouldn't Microsoft face same issues? Or did I miss completely what you meant?
      - pjmlp 11y ago
        There is a big difference between being slow to update and not updating at all. In Android world, just like in the old days of Symbian, Series OS and other OSes, updating means getting a new phone. You aren't even safe with Nexus if the manufacturer jumps out (TI).
oliao 11y ago
Here you can clearly see how the 'we'-culture is misused by the 'top' of Mozilla to shuffle off responsibility: there's nobody to rebel against.

63 points by bpierre 11y ago

mavdi 11y ago

Mozilla hires Vladislav Surkov? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcy8uLjRHPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcy8uLjRHPM

There's no Schrödinger about it, FFOS is alive. (that's kind of a tl;dr for the article itself, but good article so I recommend the read) I actually think FFOS is an amazing choice for connected devices, and I really want to use it on an IoT project (of course, that project is stuck behind at least 3 others, one of which is an app for FFOS). To expand on why I think it's an amazing choice: - As FOSS as you can get, with mobile OSes - Easy to reason about architecture - Will evolve with the web (as well as the web's capabilities) - Galaxy-level ecosystem for HTML/CSS/JS

empressplay 11y ago
I'm still struggling to understand how an interpreter is any good for IoT uses? Isn't using a language that can compile to bare-metal much more efficient? And if we're talking about the UI on say the front of your fridge, isn't there a squillion other toolkits out there already for that? I just can't see this working.
- sunfish 11y ago
  JS isn't just about interpreters these days, but at the same time, IoT isn't just about efficiency. It's also about integrating with ecosystems, so that each IoT device isn't an island of itself, but can join a bigger picture.
  - hardwaresofton 11y ago
    I agree, many of the IoT devices are certainly large enough to have at least a raspberry pi form-factor device in them (if not bigger) -- I would expect a bunch of the "smart-home" related IoT devices to have decent specs, at least ODROID or raspberry pi level. Also, the web as a platform is obviously very very well-known and popular. Mozilla just has to craft and expose the right APIs, and support the right devices (and handle the fragmentation), and they could have a great easy-to-use, robust platform almost overnight.
  - epoch1970 11y ago
    > It's also about integrating with ecosystems, so that each IoT device isn't an island of itself, but can join a bigger picture. So why is JavaScript critical for this? C, C++, Go, and pretty much every other language out there seeing use today is capable of working with JSON, making HTTP requests, and so on, in addition to supporting communication far beyond those technologies. How are they any less capable than JavaScript in this case?
    - hardwaresofton 11y ago
      Javascript isn't strictly critical for IoT, but it does benefit for being the language of the web. FFOS is in a great position to take advantage of this, because FFOS's "apps" are what we generally call web apps. Mozila doesn't have to reinvent wheels (though they will of course have to extend what we think of as the web) to handle mechanisms that have already been discussed/implemented/proven on the web. I think if you wanted to do stuff with those other languages, you'd have to build up a little bit of tooling, libraries, and other odds and ends, and you can skip at least a little of that by using JS+HTML+CSS
      - Sanddancer 11y ago
        MS's IoT platform lets you use JS where it's appropriate, but at the same time, doesn't pin you down to it. You can also write things in C#, C++, etc, even mix as needed. The problem with Firefox OS is that it's just javascript, no escape hatch, no way to talk to the rest of the non-web enabled world.
        soapdog 11y ago
        JS on Firefox OS can talk to non-web enabled world. You have APIs to do TCP, Bluetooth and USB. Also APIs to do GPIO and I2C from JS are being developed. You can talk to more things than just http servers.
- hardwaresofton 11y ago
  Valid concern! JS is not your traditional choice for embedded systems, but in many ways, it's becoming (is, I think) "good enough". - JS can achieve some serious speed with the enormous amount of work and JIT smarts that have gone into the various JS engines. - Size/memory constaints on embedded devices are only going to get looser, and I think the kind of IoT devices that the FFOS is targeting are the type to have more than a simple microcontroller - I'm not sure what you meant by toolkits out there for fridges... Do you mean the OSes that run on the smart-fridges? If so, in my other comment I noted how FFOS's web-apps-are-apps approach is fantastic -- exposing a simple, unified, easy to use javascript API is an extremely easy way for people to write webapps that target things like fridges, without having to learn some random new platform.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    There are already numerous choices in the embedded marketplace for an OS. The issues on embedded devices appear to me to be considerably lower level than the browser. I think your average embedded systems engineer might be very surprised to hear that Javascript is "good enough" for their microcontroller...
    - hardwaresofton 11y ago
      I did not say to put javascript on a microcontroller -- this is precisely why I mentioned form factors that have MORE than a simple microcontroller, which would make JS more viable. Also, the numerous choices in the embedded marketplace also imply numerous specialized choices for display, sandboxing model, API conventions, etc. I think FFOS has an edge in this area because it just reuses the work people have already done pushing the web forward.
- ndesaulniers 11y ago
  > Isn't using a language that can compile to bare-metal much more efficient? Let me introduce you to my friend, WebAssembly.
Cyberdog 11y ago
> There's no Schrödinger about it, FFOS is alive. Is it, though? It's pivoting from being an OS for mobile phones, which is something that billions of people use and understand, to being an OS for "internet of things" devices, which are… uh… internet-connected thermostats and refrigerators and stuff? I guess? But even if smart fridges are really going to become a thing, are we not not anticipating Firefox OS not facing the same challenges it did in the phone market? That is, if I'm gonna make a smart fridge, why would I choose FFOS over Android, especially since devs for the latter are far more common?
- hardwaresofton 11y ago
  Obviously, I'm incredibly biased, but I think it's reasonable to see the shift as applying FFOS to a different thing. The OS they've created is flexible enough to go on a completely different device, where as I don't think android belongs many places outside of phones and tablets. I think that flexibility is what lets them avoid calling this a failed project, and more of a pivot. By the way, FFOS hasn't become any LESS of a phone OS just because they're focusing on applying it to IoT stuff -- It still runs great, and you can flash it to a lot of flagship phones without any problems. The best thing about FFOS is that it doesn't require buy in to some closed platform. Your connected fridge apps and your connected microwave apps are just going to be webapps, which take advantage of an in-browser (knowing the devs at mozilla, most likely well documented, open an reasonable) API. While I definitely don't know what manufacturers actually go through (I'm not one), I might choose FFOS over android because of ease of app creation, lack of having to deal with Google, and more thoroughly open OS. If I want to spin my own version of gaia (the frontend for FFOS), it's incredibly easy (and of course, styling HTML/CSS, and adding some JS is in my opinion, easier than dealing with the Android ecosystem)
  - epoch1970 11y ago
    > The OS they've created is flexible enough to go on a completely different device, where as I don't think android belongs many places outside of phones and tablets. I'm confused by this claim. Doesn't Firefox OS use the Linux kernel, like Android does? Doesn't Firefox OS incorporate part of the Android HAL into Gonk? And how does Gecko really differ that much from Blink in this scenario? I find it strange to think that Android isn't suitable for this use, but somehow Firefox OS is, although they're so similar.
Matthias247 11y ago
Can't agree on the amazing choice part: Most IoT devices will be headless. The will act as sensors, actors or gateways, but information will be displayed on other devices (your PC, Tablet, Smartphone, and probably a very limited number of control center things which actually embed a display). For headless devices I can't yet see the benefit of Firefox OS over the Linux distribution of your choice (or even a custom one, e.g. with Yocto) plus Node.js (if you wan't to program in JS) or any other programming language of your choice. I would for sure prefer to use Node APIs (where the ecosystem is in the meantime really big and development and prototyping can be done on most platforms) against some other FFOS APIs (which I don't know - so it might be not a problem if porting node libraries is easy - but it could also be a big problem if FFOS specific BSPs are needed). For devices with displays: Well, here comes the question again where the benefit of FFOS is against existing platforms for that solution. Of course, iOS is out there, but you still have the choice between Linux + Browser or a classical GUI toolkit (GTK, QT), an Android based device and now also Windows 10 for IoT. If portability is a concern then I would create the fronted simply as a web app which can run on any of those OSes with a decent browser. And the actual system runs in $programming_language_of_choice and exposes HTTP/WS APIs.
- hardwaresofton 11y ago
  Ah I definitely should have qualified my statements -- I was thinking more fridges/microwaves/things with screens. Most of the benefit is that they don't have to try and build some frankenstein of a view layer if you go with FFOS. FFOS is definitely just about useless for IoT applications if it doesn't have a screen -- I completely agree with your point, it's just a fork of AOSP at that point.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    If you think that Firefox will win by powering fridges, microwaves and toasters, then I'm not entirely sure how to respond.
    - elioqoshi 11y ago
      That's one way to frame it! :D

smithkl42 11y ago

Mozilla is a company which can fire their CEO for believing what all of humanity believed until last Tuesday, and then call it a victory for "diversity". I can't say I'm surprised to discover that they have trouble communicating clearly.

transfire 11y ago

I bought my sister a $50 Firefox phone for Christmas. She's never heard of it, of course. But she loves it! Why did Mozilla give up so quickly? Did they really expect to take the market by storm overnight? I don't get it.

746F7475 11y ago
Just guessing, but maybe they saw what has happened to Windows Phone market shares. Sure there are people who absolutely love their Windows Phones to bits, but it's not really gaining momentum to be a serious threat to Android or iOS, which means less and less developers are willing to put in the effort to create apps for their platform. Now think of Firefox OS, it's even younger and even less mature than Windows Phone with no real benefit for your average users. I doubt I could sell a Firefox OS to a normal user on the street
- digi_owl 11y ago
  I think the one thing holding Windows Phone back is that Google has not gone arm twisting about updates etc. If they did i suspect quite a number of OEMs have contingency plans in place for releasing Windows devices.
  - 746F7475 11y ago
    Do you feel like Google should take stronger stance for phone manufacturers to update their own software? I don't think it can be blamed on Google if phone manufacturers don't update their devices fast enough and if Google would take stronger stance in OS updates and manufacturers would jump ship wouldn't Microsoft face same issues? Or did I miss completely what you meant?
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      There is a big difference between being slow to update and not updating at all. In Android world, just like in the old days of Symbian, Series OS and other OSes, updating means getting a new phone. You aren't even safe with Nexus if the manufacturer jumps out (TI).

oliao 11y ago

Here you can clearly see how the 'we'-culture is misused by the 'top' of Mozilla to shuffle off responsibility: there's nobody to rebel against.