4 ms·

Sad news for me

by GTP 10y ago

Sad news for me

josteink 10y ago
While yes, it's kinda sad, I also think this was obvious the second the first Firefox OS phones were shipped. The idea was good, but the execution and result was completely underwhelming. And after the dud launch, whatever momentum had been there, simply dried out. Nothing major has happened since launch for Firefox OS, while Android and iOS have had several major releases. That it took Mozilla this many years after the fact to admit this failure, is (as other comments) a sign of bad leadership. The effort spent here could have been much better spent elsewhere. And these days Mozilla needs to spend its resources efficiently more than ever. IMO the whole "connected devices" initiative which Mozilla also mentions here (I had completely forgotten about it) will suffer the same fate. It's not connected to anything they currently do, or anything they have a natural ability to reach out to. Whatever drives this initiative, it seems completely disconnected from engineering. Unless they kill it now, we'll see a similar announcement in a few years. And that too will be resources that could have been spent more wisely.
- mintplant 10y ago
  > it took Mozilla this many years after the fact to admit this failure The first Firefox OS phones shipped in early 2013. After spending around two years trying to make the project work, Mozilla stopped releasing new versions in May 2015 and officially started winding down the project by the end of 2015, as mentioned in the linked newsgroup post. So it wasn't really many years at all; also, it's hard to place the blame on "bad leadership" when the current CEO didn't come on board until the middle of 2014.
  - creshal 10y ago
    By middle 2014, many FirefoxOS phones were already months behind on updates and neither Mozilla nor the hardware vendors were putting any effort into supporting their own flagship devices. By that point, the app store was useless, because you couldn't install any apps on most devices due to ABI breakage between versions and a fragmentation worse than Android. Neither CEO did anything to mitigate this issue. I don't know how that's not bad leadership. (Not that updates would have helped much: 1.3.0, the last and only FxOS version my phone received – which is still sold by Alcatel – was much worse than Android 2.0 in terms of UX and stability. I have no idea how anyone thought this was in any way ready to ship.)
    - dismantlethesun 10y ago
      > Neither CEO did anything to mitigate this issue. I don't know how that's not bad leadership. Arguably that's great leadership because the CEO knew instantly to cut his or her losses, and not give into the sunk cost fallacy by pursuing this failing venture "because we're so invested in it already; we just have to try harder you see!"
      - creshal 10y ago
        It's great leadership to lie to their customers? Okay.
      - jahewson 10y ago
        And yet an entire year would pass after that before they announced that the project would be wound down.
- toyg 10y ago
  > The idea was good Maybe part of the idea, because the bit about targeting low-end phones was completely stupid from the beginning. It was launched at the same time that Nokia was crashing and burning while similarly targeting "emerging markets" with obsolete phones. This was pointed out right away, and they just shrugged. There was (and is) a feeling that a lot of Mozilla employees are just looking for excuses to hack on something fashionable; that's a natural geek instinct, but an effective leadership should be in place to crack the whip when people go astray.
  - josteink 10y ago
    > Maybe part of the idea, because the bit about targeting low-end phones was completely stupid from the beginning This really stood out for me as well. My impression was that they used it as a scape-goat for not having to immediately deliver a completely polished experience. I mean... Who's going to be paying for a phone with top-tier hardware when the software limits it to do less than most Androids out there... since ever? No-one would buy that phone. So it would be impossible to get a hardware vendor to fund such a venture. If they (at first) targeted lower ends phones, chances of getting something out would improve. And they did get something out! So that part worked. Obviously from there on they should have made improvements, and when the software platform had become good enough to sell itself, you should expect it on higher tier phones too. That's at least how I envisioned that they planned to execute, which IMO wouldn't have been a terrible plan if they had followed up. But ofcourse, we saw what happened, and it was obvious at launch that this wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Touché really. I would have a liked a third platform, based on open standards.

Sad news for me

by GTP 10y ago

Sad news for me

While yes, it's kinda sad, I also think this was obvious the second the first Firefox OS phones were shipped. The idea was good, but the execution and result was completely underwhelming. And after the dud launch, whatever momentum had been there, simply dried out. Nothing major has happened since launch for Firefox OS, while Android and iOS have had several major releases. That it took Mozilla this many years after the fact to admit this failure, is (as other comments) a sign of bad leadership. The effort spent here could have been much better spent elsewhere. And these days Mozilla needs to spend its resources efficiently more than ever. IMO the whole "connected devices" initiative which Mozilla also mentions here (I had completely forgotten about it) will suffer the same fate. It's not connected to anything they currently do, or anything they have a natural ability to reach out to. Whatever drives this initiative, it seems completely disconnected from engineering. Unless they kill it now, we'll see a similar announcement in a few years. And that too will be resources that could have been spent more wisely.

mintplant 10y ago
> it took Mozilla this many years after the fact to admit this failure The first Firefox OS phones shipped in early 2013. After spending around two years trying to make the project work, Mozilla stopped releasing new versions in May 2015 and officially started winding down the project by the end of 2015, as mentioned in the linked newsgroup post. So it wasn't really many years at all; also, it's hard to place the blame on "bad leadership" when the current CEO didn't come on board until the middle of 2014.
- creshal 10y ago
  By middle 2014, many FirefoxOS phones were already months behind on updates and neither Mozilla nor the hardware vendors were putting any effort into supporting their own flagship devices. By that point, the app store was useless, because you couldn't install any apps on most devices due to ABI breakage between versions and a fragmentation worse than Android. Neither CEO did anything to mitigate this issue. I don't know how that's not bad leadership. (Not that updates would have helped much: 1.3.0, the last and only FxOS version my phone received – which is still sold by Alcatel – was much worse than Android 2.0 in terms of UX and stability. I have no idea how anyone thought this was in any way ready to ship.)
  - dismantlethesun 10y ago
    > Neither CEO did anything to mitigate this issue. I don't know how that's not bad leadership. Arguably that's great leadership because the CEO knew instantly to cut his or her losses, and not give into the sunk cost fallacy by pursuing this failing venture "because we're so invested in it already; we just have to try harder you see!"
    - creshal 10y ago
      It's great leadership to lie to their customers? Okay.
    - jahewson 10y ago
      And yet an entire year would pass after that before they announced that the project would be wound down.
toyg 10y ago
> The idea was good Maybe part of the idea, because the bit about targeting low-end phones was completely stupid from the beginning. It was launched at the same time that Nokia was crashing and burning while similarly targeting "emerging markets" with obsolete phones. This was pointed out right away, and they just shrugged. There was (and is) a feeling that a lot of Mozilla employees are just looking for excuses to hack on something fashionable; that's a natural geek instinct, but an effective leadership should be in place to crack the whip when people go astray.
- josteink 10y ago
  > Maybe part of the idea, because the bit about targeting low-end phones was completely stupid from the beginning This really stood out for me as well. My impression was that they used it as a scape-goat for not having to immediately deliver a completely polished experience. I mean... Who's going to be paying for a phone with top-tier hardware when the software limits it to do less than most Androids out there... since ever? No-one would buy that phone. So it would be impossible to get a hardware vendor to fund such a venture. If they (at first) targeted lower ends phones, chances of getting something out would improve. And they did get something out! So that part worked. Obviously from there on they should have made improvements, and when the software platform had become good enough to sell itself, you should expect it on higher tier phones too. That's at least how I envisioned that they planned to execute, which IMO wouldn't have been a terrible plan if they had followed up. But ofcourse, we saw what happened, and it was obvious at launch that this wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Touché really. I would have a liked a third platform, based on open standards.