4 ms·

And just to add, I kind of mourn FirefoxOS. We couldn't have guessed it at the time, but as of 2025, Google is pushing developer verification and stepping close

And just to add, I kind of mourn FirefoxOS. We couldn't have guessed it at the time, but as of 2025, Google is pushing developer verification and stepping closer and closer to ecosystem lockdown. It would have been a great time for an alternative mobile OS 10+ years in the making, to welcome all the energy that has gone into beautiful projects like F-Droid. If I could time travel into the past, in addition to preventing all the bad things (e.g. Young Sheldon), I might have told Yahoo they should flex some financial muscle while they still had relevance and worked to mobilize (no pun intended) developer time, energy, etc and perhaps even provide a baseline ecosystem of stock apps to support FirefoxOS.

benoau 10mo ago
I installed FirefoxOS on a phone years ago, it wasn't even bad really.
- MattTheRealOne 10mo ago
  As with most new operating systems, its biggest problem was lack of apps. Mozilla seemed to abandon Firefox OS right as Progressive Web Apps were starting to take off, which would have done a lot to fix that problem.
- flaburgan 10mo ago
  I use it as my primary phone for 2 years, first with the Flame, then with a Z3C. For me Firefox OS was the finale move of Mozilla, either it successes and Mozilla becomes a major actor again or it fails and they slowly die. And thebmy decided to kill it right when it was becoming stable enough.
  - glenstein 10mo ago
    It's another damned if you do, damned if you don't. FirefoxOS is regularly listed by commenters as an example of a wasteful side bet, whereas my feeling is more along the lines of yours, that it was striding greatly, as the saying goes, and attempting to be a major actor. A big part of the market share loss was due to monopoly and distribution lockdown of a controlled platform tightly tied to hardware, so I can certainly see the strategic wisdom of the attempt. I suspect they didn't have the resources to press forward, they had a lot less money then than they do now. Which makes it all the more maddening that Yahoo's role as a partner was so muted; it could have made the difference for both of them.
- szatkus 10mo ago
  The main problem with Firefox OS was that it was really slow. At the same time it was targeting budget phones. But on the other hand progress was quite good. Back in the days I was maintaining unofficial images for Alcatel Fire. Each version was a little bit faster, but you really can't do much when the whole OS is a browser running on a device with with 256MB of RAM and a single core CPU.
  - _heimdall 10mo ago
    Wasn't webOS effectively an OS built on web standards and effectively just a browser engine? The Pre had 256MB and something like a 600mHZ processor. While it was no speed demon, I was always impressed with the animations and multitasking they pulled off with it.
    - mikestorrent 10mo ago
      People forget we used the web on 100mHz 486s with maybe 16MB of RAM and sites like Slashdot were plenty usable.
      - _heimdall 10mo ago
        Granted sites like Slashdot didn't used react server components.
fsflover 10mo ago
> And just to add, I kind of mourn FirefoxOS. Today, we have Mobian, postmarketOS, PureOS and many more GNU/Linux OSes for smartphones.
- Flere-Imsaho 10mo ago
  It's too late. If I want to interact with modern society, I have to use banking apps, the NHS app, WhatsApp, numerous IoT apps... The list is endless. Many of these will refuse to run on rooted phones. Google and Apple won. We can learn from this and hope the next big thing to come along has some competition from the truly open source side of computing.
  - glenstein 10mo ago
    Well that's a fantastic point, and interesting in this context because the whole gambit of FirefoxOS was to use progressive web apps. The browser rather than the Linux ecosystem becomes the trusted execution environment and PWAs actually ask less of your bank or (insert security agency) than even Android or iOS development.
  - aaronax 10mo ago
    A law can fix that!
    - zx8080 10mo ago
      Sure, for those who has money for lobbying.
      - fsflover 10mo ago
        Or for those who support https://eff.org https://eff.org or similar.
    - mikestorrent 10mo ago
      We need more politicians that aren't afraid of banks.
chrismorgan 10mo ago
> We couldn't have guessed it at the time, but as of 2025, Google is pushing developer verification and stepping closer and closer to ecosystem lockdown. We did guess it. Google were already past their “don’t be evil” days in 2013. They were possibly better than other companies of similar scale, but the decline was already clearly beginning. People had long warned that Google could not be trusted to keep Android open in the long term, that eventually their benevolence would fade. A good chunk of the enthusiasm around Firefox OS was in breaking the duopoly and the idea of a platform that would be much harder to lock down.
- glenstein 10mo ago
  Fair point, I think I have to concede that you're right that it was perhaps perceivable at that time. In my defense, I will say that we are seeing some pretty concrete actions out in the wild in 2025 that we were only speculating on in 2013 heightening the urgency of the issue.

benoau 10mo ago

I installed FirefoxOS on a phone years ago, it wasn't even bad really.

MattTheRealOne 10mo ago
As with most new operating systems, its biggest problem was lack of apps. Mozilla seemed to abandon Firefox OS right as Progressive Web Apps were starting to take off, which would have done a lot to fix that problem.
flaburgan 10mo ago
I use it as my primary phone for 2 years, first with the Flame, then with a Z3C. For me Firefox OS was the finale move of Mozilla, either it successes and Mozilla becomes a major actor again or it fails and they slowly die. And thebmy decided to kill it right when it was becoming stable enough.
- glenstein 10mo ago
  It's another damned if you do, damned if you don't. FirefoxOS is regularly listed by commenters as an example of a wasteful side bet, whereas my feeling is more along the lines of yours, that it was striding greatly, as the saying goes, and attempting to be a major actor. A big part of the market share loss was due to monopoly and distribution lockdown of a controlled platform tightly tied to hardware, so I can certainly see the strategic wisdom of the attempt. I suspect they didn't have the resources to press forward, they had a lot less money then than they do now. Which makes it all the more maddening that Yahoo's role as a partner was so muted; it could have made the difference for both of them.
szatkus 10mo ago
The main problem with Firefox OS was that it was really slow. At the same time it was targeting budget phones. But on the other hand progress was quite good. Back in the days I was maintaining unofficial images for Alcatel Fire. Each version was a little bit faster, but you really can't do much when the whole OS is a browser running on a device with with 256MB of RAM and a single core CPU.
- _heimdall 10mo ago
  Wasn't webOS effectively an OS built on web standards and effectively just a browser engine? The Pre had 256MB and something like a 600mHZ processor. While it was no speed demon, I was always impressed with the animations and multitasking they pulled off with it.
  - mikestorrent 10mo ago
    People forget we used the web on 100mHz 486s with maybe 16MB of RAM and sites like Slashdot were plenty usable.
    - _heimdall 10mo ago
      Granted sites like Slashdot didn't used react server components.

fsflover 10mo ago

> And just to add, I kind of mourn FirefoxOS. Today, we have Mobian, postmarketOS, PureOS and many more GNU/Linux OSes for smartphones.

Flere-Imsaho 10mo ago
It's too late. If I want to interact with modern society, I have to use banking apps, the NHS app, WhatsApp, numerous IoT apps... The list is endless. Many of these will refuse to run on rooted phones. Google and Apple won. We can learn from this and hope the next big thing to come along has some competition from the truly open source side of computing.
- glenstein 10mo ago
  Well that's a fantastic point, and interesting in this context because the whole gambit of FirefoxOS was to use progressive web apps. The browser rather than the Linux ecosystem becomes the trusted execution environment and PWAs actually ask less of your bank or (insert security agency) than even Android or iOS development.
- aaronax 10mo ago
  A law can fix that!
  - zx8080 10mo ago
    Sure, for those who has money for lobbying.
    - fsflover 10mo ago
      Or for those who support https://eff.org https://eff.org or similar.
  - mikestorrent 10mo ago
    We need more politicians that aren't afraid of banks.

chrismorgan 10mo ago

> We couldn't have guessed it at the time, but as of 2025, Google is pushing developer verification and stepping closer and closer to ecosystem lockdown. We did guess it. Google were already past their “don’t be evil” days in 2013. They were possibly better than other companies of similar scale, but the decline was already clearly beginning. People had long warned that Google could not be trusted to keep Android open in the long term, that eventually their benevolence would fade. A good chunk of the enthusiasm around Firefox OS was in breaking the duopoly and the idea of a platform that would be much harder to lock down.

glenstein 10mo ago
Fair point, I think I have to concede that you're right that it was perhaps perceivable at that time. In my defense, I will say that we are seeing some pretty concrete actions out in the wild in 2025 that we were only speculating on in 2013 heightening the urgency of the issue.