5 ms·

curious why not just go with Tizen as their baseline .... what else besides Android or iOS is polished enough w/an app ecosystem to have a fighting chance of su

by martin1975 9y ago

curious why not just go with Tizen as their baseline .... what else besides Android or iOS is polished enough w/an app ecosystem to have a fighting chance of survival? I so want this project to succeed.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
Tizen isn't fully open source, makes you beholden to Samsung, which has little reason to fully commit since their entire business operates on Android phones, etc.
- martin1975 9y ago
  Thanks - I was under the impression it is entirely open source - except maybe for proprietary blobs/drivers (in my mind, that's open source enough I suppose). Better Samsung than Google if you ask me... Canonical/Ubuntu tried something like this and failed miserably. I'm not sure how this is going to be different ... without some major backing down the line. Starting things and prototyping things is fine and dandy... but making this a viable competitor to the established players... that's a whole different ball game.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    It depends what you call viable. Who's your market? How many do you need to sell to break even? If you're Microsoft or Amazon, you need your mobile product to take market share from Google and Apple, but if you can make a profit making a couple thousand phones for some people who want to buy them, that may be a perfectly successful business model. In my case, I want my phone to make calls, send texts, and browse the web. It'd be nice if it had some apps, but I probably don't need more than a dozen or two. If you don't need a giant rival ecosystem as your definition of success, it's much easier to succeed on a smaller scale.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      As proven by Windows Phone, WebOS, FirefoxOS, Jolla, Blackberry,....
      - Brakenshire 9y ago
        Most of the failures sold to a general consumer market though, mobile Linux should be able to survive just like desktop Linux, catering to an enthusiastic niche. Also, mobile Linux has the advantage that a lot of apps already use open source stacks, between F-Droid and PWA's there is plenty of an app ecosystem to keep things ticking over, for an audience that doesn't mind tweaking things.
        StudentStuff 9y ago
        F-Droid is a steaming pile though, compared to the high caliber software in most distro's repos. Linphone, Firefox and many other apps are months or years out of date, with known, active vulnerabilities.
      - userpass 9y ago
        I think that's because they needed to sell more than 2500 phones to become profitable.
  - fabrice_d 9y ago
    Their goal is not to compete with Android and iOS but to cater to those who value an alternative, and understand the compromises they will have to make. If the hardware is good enough and open, a lot can happen. They will need very good integration with PWA because this will likely be the best source of apps.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      They just rebooted the SDK once more by going .NET Core with Xamarin.Forms.
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    > Canonical/Ubuntu tried something like this and failed miserably I would argue the use of the word "tried". Canonical really just dipped their toe into the waters to test it out and backed out immediately. Look at threads about the Ubuntu phone, and the one complaint everyone had about it was "I still can't order one". They just didn't have any in stock for a large part of it's lifetime. Furthermore, the OS was not production quality, it was still very much beta (note that I say this despite Ubuntu Touch being my favorite phone I've ever had). So a phone that they rarely had in stock, with beta software quality is absolutely going to fail. I think that if they actually "tried", they would have been at least more successful, if not actually successful.
craftyguy 9y ago
I'll just leave this here: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xy9p7n/samsung-tizen-operating-system-bugs-vulnerabilities https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xy9p7n/samsung-ti...
- martin1975 9y ago
  that was painful to read
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    If you are refering to the page: yea, it was, but it was the source. If you are refering to the content: the negligence of samsumg is appalling.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

Tizen isn't fully open source, makes you beholden to Samsung, which has little reason to fully commit since their entire business operates on Android phones, etc.

martin1975 9y ago
Thanks - I was under the impression it is entirely open source - except maybe for proprietary blobs/drivers (in my mind, that's open source enough I suppose). Better Samsung than Google if you ask me... Canonical/Ubuntu tried something like this and failed miserably. I'm not sure how this is going to be different ... without some major backing down the line. Starting things and prototyping things is fine and dandy... but making this a viable competitor to the established players... that's a whole different ball game.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  It depends what you call viable. Who's your market? How many do you need to sell to break even? If you're Microsoft or Amazon, you need your mobile product to take market share from Google and Apple, but if you can make a profit making a couple thousand phones for some people who want to buy them, that may be a perfectly successful business model. In my case, I want my phone to make calls, send texts, and browse the web. It'd be nice if it had some apps, but I probably don't need more than a dozen or two. If you don't need a giant rival ecosystem as your definition of success, it's much easier to succeed on a smaller scale.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    As proven by Windows Phone, WebOS, FirefoxOS, Jolla, Blackberry,....
    - Brakenshire 9y ago
      Most of the failures sold to a general consumer market though, mobile Linux should be able to survive just like desktop Linux, catering to an enthusiastic niche. Also, mobile Linux has the advantage that a lot of apps already use open source stacks, between F-Droid and PWA's there is plenty of an app ecosystem to keep things ticking over, for an audience that doesn't mind tweaking things.
      - StudentStuff 9y ago
        F-Droid is a steaming pile though, compared to the high caliber software in most distro's repos. Linphone, Firefox and many other apps are months or years out of date, with known, active vulnerabilities.
    - userpass 9y ago
      I think that's because they needed to sell more than 2500 phones to become profitable.
- fabrice_d 9y ago
  Their goal is not to compete with Android and iOS but to cater to those who value an alternative, and understand the compromises they will have to make. If the hardware is good enough and open, a lot can happen. They will need very good integration with PWA because this will likely be the best source of apps.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    They just rebooted the SDK once more by going .NET Core with Xamarin.Forms.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  > Canonical/Ubuntu tried something like this and failed miserably I would argue the use of the word "tried". Canonical really just dipped their toe into the waters to test it out and backed out immediately. Look at threads about the Ubuntu phone, and the one complaint everyone had about it was "I still can't order one". They just didn't have any in stock for a large part of it's lifetime. Furthermore, the OS was not production quality, it was still very much beta (note that I say this despite Ubuntu Touch being my favorite phone I've ever had). So a phone that they rarely had in stock, with beta software quality is absolutely going to fail. I think that if they actually "tried", they would have been at least more successful, if not actually successful.

craftyguy 9y ago

I'll just leave this here: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xy9p7n/samsung-tizen-operating-system-bugs-vulnerabilities https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xy9p7n/samsung-ti...

martin1975 9y ago
that was painful to read
- craftyguy 9y ago
  If you are refering to the page: yea, it was, but it was the source. If you are refering to the content: the negligence of samsumg is appalling.