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> Watching Mozilla leadership drive Mozilla into the ground over the last 8-10 years has been like watching a bus accident in slow motion. FirefoxOS anyone? Fi

> Watching Mozilla leadership drive Mozilla into the ground over the last 8-10 years has been like watching a bus accident in slow motion. FirefoxOS anyone? FirefoxOS gets a lot of hate, but I honestly thought it was a pretty good idea. The problem was that it was terribly executed. It’s a bit unclear to me wether that was your point or not.

cmsj 6y ago
It might have had some neat technical designs, but it is not a good idea to try and launch an OS into a maturing market, which the smartphone market clearly was by 2013. It never works.
- detaro 6y ago
  The FirefoxOS fork KaiOS is now installed on 100M+ devices worldwide - mostly as cheap devices below full smartphones.
  - cmsj 6y ago
    1.3 billion Android devices sold last year worldwide.
    - detaro 6y ago
      So, "significant market share in some markets" for KaiOS, given it has 10% the global numbers and is basically not present in EU and US? A thing can be good and successful without being the global leader, unless you want monopolies for everything.
- lenkite 6y ago
  It worked in India - it was a success. And it was a shock when Mozilla just gave it up. Giving up on an install base of hundreds of millions just when it was taking off...the US is not the only market you know ? Sometimes you need to plough your way through the field to get the bountiful harvest - Mozilla did that and then left the harvest to burn.
  - dageshi 6y ago
    Could they make any money off it though?
    - lenkite 6y ago
      They could have - they gave up just as it was gaining traction. Now, Reliance Jio earns all the money from it...
  - cmsj 6y ago
    Firefox made the right call, they were never going to succeed against Android. Looking at statcounter, Kai has not been able to resist it either, dropping from somewhere over 4% to under 1%, while Android sits at over 95%.
thekyle 6y ago
Obviously the idea of Firefox OS is great. It's successor KaiOS (fork of Firefox OS) is the third most popular mobile OS with hundreds of millions of users. I think what OP was saying is that Mozilla is so poorly managed that they took a great idea and made it crash and burn.
snomad 6y ago
Even Microsoft - with countless more resources and motivation - failed to make traction in mobile. Blackberry was swept off the stage in the blink of an eye. Firefox OS was abandoned pretty quick as I remember, 2 years tops? I would not single that out as a failing.
- josteink 6y ago
  > Even Microsoft - with countless more resources and motivation - failed to make traction in mobile. Microsoft made a new OS where they needed developers to target their platform. Too few did, and the platform failed. Mozilla tried to bypass this chicken-and-the-egg problem by being able to leverage PWAs which “everyone” is making anyway these days. It wasn’t a too crazy bet that it might have worked. In a similar vein the Pinephone is trying something similar these days: not asking developers to target it, but instead leverage existing app eco-systems (Linux and web). I don't expect a runaway mainstream success here, but I do wish them luck.
C12h 6y ago
FirefoxOS was a good idea: a portable phone system that could run on cheaper hardware than Android could, built with web technologies instead of Java. Then hardware manufacturers started producing cheap hardware that could run Android with acceptable performance, thus eliminating the price advantage for FirefoxOS, before that OS could take off in third world nations.

cmsj 6y ago

It might have had some neat technical designs, but it is not a good idea to try and launch an OS into a maturing market, which the smartphone market clearly was by 2013. It never works.

detaro 6y ago
The FirefoxOS fork KaiOS is now installed on 100M+ devices worldwide - mostly as cheap devices below full smartphones.
- cmsj 6y ago
  1.3 billion Android devices sold last year worldwide.
  - detaro 6y ago
    So, "significant market share in some markets" for KaiOS, given it has 10% the global numbers and is basically not present in EU and US? A thing can be good and successful without being the global leader, unless you want monopolies for everything.
lenkite 6y ago
It worked in India - it was a success. And it was a shock when Mozilla just gave it up. Giving up on an install base of hundreds of millions just when it was taking off...the US is not the only market you know ? Sometimes you need to plough your way through the field to get the bountiful harvest - Mozilla did that and then left the harvest to burn.
- dageshi 6y ago
  Could they make any money off it though?
  - lenkite 6y ago
    They could have - they gave up just as it was gaining traction. Now, Reliance Jio earns all the money from it...
- cmsj 6y ago
  Firefox made the right call, they were never going to succeed against Android. Looking at statcounter, Kai has not been able to resist it either, dropping from somewhere over 4% to under 1%, while Android sits at over 95%.

thekyle 6y ago

Obviously the idea of Firefox OS is great. It's successor KaiOS (fork of Firefox OS) is the third most popular mobile OS with hundreds of millions of users. I think what OP was saying is that Mozilla is so poorly managed that they took a great idea and made it crash and burn.

snomad 6y ago

Even Microsoft - with countless more resources and motivation - failed to make traction in mobile. Blackberry was swept off the stage in the blink of an eye. Firefox OS was abandoned pretty quick as I remember, 2 years tops? I would not single that out as a failing.

josteink 6y ago
> Even Microsoft - with countless more resources and motivation - failed to make traction in mobile. Microsoft made a new OS where they needed developers to target their platform. Too few did, and the platform failed. Mozilla tried to bypass this chicken-and-the-egg problem by being able to leverage PWAs which “everyone” is making anyway these days. It wasn’t a too crazy bet that it might have worked. In a similar vein the Pinephone is trying something similar these days: not asking developers to target it, but instead leverage existing app eco-systems (Linux and web). I don't expect a runaway mainstream success here, but I do wish them luck.

C12h 6y ago

FirefoxOS was a good idea: a portable phone system that could run on cheaper hardware than Android could, built with web technologies instead of Java. Then hardware manufacturers started producing cheap hardware that could run Android with acceptable performance, thus eliminating the price advantage for FirefoxOS, before that OS could take off in third world nations.