6 ms·

Firefox OS will need to successfully compete against BlackBerry OS, Windows Mobile, bada and the other quite obscure mobile OSes long before it'll have a chance

Firefox OS will need to successfully compete against BlackBerry OS, Windows Mobile, bada and the other quite obscure mobile OSes long before it'll have a chance to even begin competing against Android or iOS. Many of these alternative systems have actually shipped on numerous devices, and have actual users. And how exactly is it "different"? Firefox OS is really just a limited subset of what we already have available (and have had for years, in some cases) under these various existing systems. We can already quite successfully run HTML5/CSS/JavaScript-based apps on Android, iOS, and BlackBerry OS for instance. And this is ignoring Firefox OS's inflexibility when it comes to using languages other than JavaScript (sorry, Asm.js and Emscripten are hacks, at best), or writing native applications. It's hard to see how it'll compete on vague notions of "openness" that most consumers really could not care any less about, while failing to compete on things that consumers do care about, like functionality and experience. It can't even really compete on price, given the existence of Android.

glogla 13y ago
If I understand it correctly, Firefox OS is different in how it is not bound to one particular corporation. Mozilla's objective here is "build mobile OS" and not "sell more devices" like Apple or "get info on people so we can sell advertising" like Google. This makes me wonder about privacy and Firefox OS. Does it require arbitrary account with credit card paired like iOS or Windows Phone? Does it require account to get most of the functionality like Android? Does it require you to agree that Google will get your location data for network location service to function like Android? Does it not allow you to use it without sending (paid) sms to Nokia with your location, like new Nokia phones? If it doesn't do any of those things, it is different.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  It also needs to sell, being different is not enough. If the only selling point is HTML5 based apps, other OSs also have browsers.
  - glogla 13y ago
    Depends on the target market. For me, not having any of the above mentioned "features" is a selling point for me. Do other people care? Possibly no, but that doesn't concern me. also, Firefox OS devices have potential to be cheaper than android devices, because there's no extortion from Microsoft, and may be consistent, unlike Android with many terrible manufacturer-made OS modifications and version fragmentation. Even now, android 2.3 devices are sold.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      For me a device without native apps is a no go. I already have a browser and for the looks of it, FirefoxOS still needs some performance tuning to reach the level of throw away Android and Windows phones.
- Yoric 13y ago
  It doesn't require any of these things. I have been using mine for ~6 months without a credit card. I have downloaded a number of free applications and the only times I had to log in was when I decided to rate them. I have not tested non-free applications, but the documentation seems to indicate that you have the choice between PayPal or some operator-provided billing mechanism. I don't know the details, though. You do not have a system-wide identity. The Marketplace supports authentication through Mozilla Persona/BrowserID, which is quite different from other single sign-on authentication schemes, insofar as it is anonymous, almost zero-knowledge, open-source and decentralized (admittedly, I don't know of any Persona provider other than Mozilla, but anyone with a http server can become a Persona provider).
- freehunter 13y ago
  Windows Phone does not require an account paired with a credit card.
  - michael_h 13y ago
    Neither does iOS, for that matter.
    - Yoric 13y ago
      It doesn't? All recent MacBooks I have seen insist rather hard to be paired with an account and a credit card number. I have never done the initial setup of an iOS device, but I would have assumed that it was the same or worse.
      - octotoad 13y ago
        No, it definitely doesn't. iPhone 5 + iOS 6: doesn't know a thing about my credit card, and never will.
        Yoric 13y ago
        Interesting. Can you access any form of store without a credit card and without giving away your identity to Apple? And, just as importantly, can joe/jane user do it?
        the_mitsuhiko 13y ago
        > And, just as importantly, can joe/jane user do it? Irrelevant as those users will not care and just punch in their credit card if asked.
        Yoric 13y ago
        That's what I meant by my question: is there any reasonable manner in which joe/jane user could decide to not punch in their credit card and still manage to setup the device?
pjmlp 13y ago
Fully agree. It is great that Mozilla is fighting for openness, but in terms of what street joe and street jane want, I think it will join WebOS in a few months. Given my experience in telecommunications I don't see how sales are going to push these devices out of the shop when users come asking for other OSs.
- Yoric 13y ago
  What would you suggest?
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    The devices need to have a story. When normal people buy a mobile, many choose a specific model, because: - how it looks - certain persons they know the same model - there is a specific set of apps they want to have - how the battery holds - for whatever reason they want to have a contract and have a limited set to choose from, which fall anyway under the previous points The question is how to bring these persons to buy a FirefoxOS mobile. Sure a few geeks will buy them, but will it be enough quantity to keep the operators selling them?
- aaronharder 13y ago
  One big difference from WebOS is that the company behind FirefoxOS will not likely abandon it within 12 months of kicking it off. 4th or 5th place in the market might represent enough scale to be considered a "success" as far as Mozilla is concerned.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    Those devices still need to be built. So a 4th or 5th place might not generate enough revenue to pay them.
    - Yoric 13y ago
      I'm not a manufacturer, but at a guess, I'd say that 4th/5th place is still plenty of billions of dollars.
garysweaver 13y ago
> And how exactly is it "different"? Robert Nyman of Mozilla pointed me at this: https://blog.mozilla.org/ligong/2013/06/03/foxconn-joins-the-firefox-os-eco-system/ https://blog.mozilla.org/ligong/2013/06/03/foxconn-joins-the... "Foxconn stated that they intend to have FFOS running on all categories of the “8 screen” devices, from smartphone to tablets to laptops to TVs and outdoor signage." Name me another mobile OS that will be running on laptops or outdoor signage. :) This, I think, is the bigger vision of FF OS that is the reason people should get interested and involved.
- freehunter 13y ago
  Android.
  - rimantas 13y ago
    Does not Windows already do that too?
    - freehunter 13y ago
      Yeah I've seen Windows and Windows Mobile on various embedded devices. My car runs Windows Embedded (for better or worse).
- Shorel 13y ago
  Ubuntu
scribu 13y ago
> We can already quite successfully run HTML5/CSS/JavaScript-based apps on Android, iOS, and BlackBerry OS for instance. Right, but in Firefox you also have "native" HTML5 apps, which give access to more hardware functionality than a regular web app. > And this is ignoring Firefox OS's inflexibility when it comes to using languages other than JavaScript I don't see how Firefox OS is less flexible than other systems. In Android, you're forced to use Java; in iOS you're forced to use Objective C (everything else, like RubyMotion are hacks, at best).
- anon1385 13y ago
  >Right, but in Firefox you also have "native" HTML5 apps, which give access to more hardware functionality than a regular web app. Which negates the sole benefit of a web app in the first place since those APIs are not standard and not available on other platforms, so those apps are not portable. Maybe the APIs will become standard and implemented on Android and iOS etc, but at that point you can write those kinds of apps for Android or iOS too, so again Firefox OS offers no benefit.
  - Yoric 13y ago
    Actually, almost all of them are available on Android and on Desktop. Interestingly, while you seem to consider that this is a weak point of Firefox, we (Mozilla) did this on purpose and we consider this one of the strongest points of the platform: _no vendor lock-in_. If you write an application for FirefoxOS, we do not place any obstacle that can prevent the developer from distributing the application on other devices/OSes or that can prevent the user from using it on their other devices/OSes. As you may recall, we (not just Mozilla) did this to the web a few years ago, and look where this brought us all. We are now attempting to bring the same degree of freedom to mobile. And yes, this is going to be quite a fight, but if you want to help us, that will be great :)
    - anon1385 13y ago
      >Interestingly, while you seem to consider that this is a weak point of Firefox, we (Mozilla) did this on purpose and we consider this one of the strongest points of the platform: _no vendor lock-in_. There is already no vendor lock-in with html based apps on Android or iOS. The complaint people have about iOS is that it is locked down with regards to native apps. Mozilla themselves have made this exact complaint about iOS -- that they wanted to write a browser for iOS but could not because a) HTML/Javascript are not suitable for writing a browser so they have to go through the app store and b) native apps in the app store on iOS face restrictions that would limit performance of a Javascript VM, so Firefox would not have competitive performance compared to Safari. FirefoxOS solves neither of those problems. More generally, the idea of all user facing software being targeted to a single sandboxed standard API is very restrictive and worrying. It means developers giving up complete control to a small cabal of 4 or 5 large organisations that decide what gets standardised. Organisations that have conflicting interests and financial motivations that certainly don't align with my own. That's assuming that various competing web based platforms would even be sustainable; I don't see it lasting more than 5 mins before platform specific extensions are added to provide additional value over the competitors. I want to be able to write software for my device and have full access to the hardware without some third party being able to decide what I can and can't do with my phone. FirefoxOS doesn't get me any closer to that goal, in fact it's a step backwards. Web platforms are great for SV startups where raw user numbers are the most important thing, but to be honest I don't give a shit about the ability of the latest photo sharing startup to 'exit'. I do care about people doing much more interesting things and all I can see is web based OSs being a restriction on that. Think about how you would feel living in a world of Gopher based operating systems. >As you may recall, we (not just Mozilla) did this to the web a few years ago, and look where this brought us all Yes, a world where I don't control my own data anymore, it lives on some server I can't access, subject to the whims of foreign governments. Being processed by code I can't even reverse engineer never mind read the source or modify. This is great freedom for developers and governments, but utterly disastrous for the freedom of users.
Yoric 13y ago
Oh, hello PommeDeTerre. Haven't we had roughly the same conversation last week on another thread? > Firefox OS will need to successfully compete against BlackBerry OS, Windows Mobile, [...] Yes, a new product needs to compete with existing products. That goes without saying. > And how exactly is it "different"? Frankly? Try it, you'll see. For me, it's different insofar as I can write a small game and self-publish it in a few hours. I don't have to pay anyone, I don't have to wait for anybody's permission (compare with iOS), I don't have to download a SDK, and my users will be able to run/install the self-published app immediately (compare with Android). Oh, and of course, my students can do the same, which is a big deal to me. It's different insofar as an application written for FirefoxOS will also work on Android (and hopefully on iOS) and, in many cases, on your Desktop/Laptop. By opposition to what you seem to believe, this is not a design flaw. This is called not locking in your users. It's the kind of thing that Mozilla does. It's different insofar as much of the development is done by the community of users. Not a privately-held company that decides what is best for us in terms of features or performance or privacy. Oh, I almost forgot: it's different insofar as said company does not own all my private data by default. > It's hard to see how it'll compete on vague notions of "openness" that most consumers really could not care any less about [...] In the US, maybe. In India or Africa (or parts of China or Russia or Turkey ...), for instance? Not so. People care a lot about having a phone that they can use, which means first and foremost a phone that works in their language, even if that language is not a big commercial target. That's what openness is about, not about people like us squabbling on some high tech news aggregator. > It can't even really compete on price, given the existence of Android. Of course it can. On low-powered phones, FirefoxOS tends to outperform Android by a large margin. This means that you can have the same experience with cheaper phones. Caveat: I'm a Mozillian.
- rimantas 13y ago
  > Caveat: I'm a Mozillian. Oh. If your view resembles that of the most of mozillians then I think Firfox OS is already doomed. What you wrote might appeal to some developers, but it means little to users. And I am not sure how many developers are interested in platform in which users are not interested. Looks like when Blake Ross left Mozilla so did understanding the user.
soapdog 13y ago
Hey PommeDeTerre, Allow me to give a different perspective here. While in many other mobile operating systems you can build apps with HTML (saying HTML from now on but meaning HTML/CSS/JS, ok?), the API the vendors make available don't cover the same features as what is native on that platform. We can say that Firefox OS is important because of the following things: MAKING THE WEB A FIRST CLASS CITIZEN Makes the web a first class citizen. Its not like "you can build apps with web technology", its more like you don't need native because all you need is available thru the web apis. While in other platforms, there is a barrier on what can be accomplished with HTML alone, on Firefox OS HTML is the way. Let me give you a silly but practical example: Suppose you have an intranet on your small company built by IT in PHP or something. This intranet has an address book for everyone in the company. Using the Web API, you can detect the contacts API and offer the user the ability to import contacts from the web directly to the phones contact book. This is done in a secure way, with permissions granted by the user, its not like "hey, open this page and flood the contact database". The security model is good. This is a silly example but it is useful for many people. Its the tiny APIs that make your life easier and your experience better. GIVING YOU THE FREEDOM OF THE WEB In platforms such as iOS, your only venue to distribute your apps is the iTunes App Store. All money passes thru Apple. On Android, you can have third party stores but the default setting is to allow apps from Google Play only (unless you're a kindle or nook). Most of the other platforms are about controlling the ecosystem to make money for the vendor. On Firefox OS you have the Firefox Marketplace that is a mixture of Chrome Webstore and Google Play. It allows distribution of apps for desktop, android and firefox os (all using gecko runtime). You are not tied to Firefox Marketplace though. You have an install API that you can use on your app or your site to install apps on the users phone (Again, it asks permissions, security is good). You can even fork the Firefox Marketplace code and build your own. Talking about payment, you have the usual credit card charging on the marketplace but you also have carrier billing (if the carrier implement it) allowing users to buy apps and have it charged to their prepaid cards or monthly bill. Remember that in many markets, people don't have credit cards. If you're not happy with both solutions you can roll your own payment solution using the payments API and receipt protocol. You are free to distribute and monetize your app as you see fit, just like on the web. ITS NOT A REPLACEMENT FOR YOUR IPHONE OR GALAXY S3 If you have an Android device, you can just install Firefox Mobile and be happy since we'll eventually have feature parity between Firefox Mobile and Firefox OS. These Firefox OS phones are being created for emergent markets. People from U.S. and richer parts of Europe don't really realize how things are in south america and asia. An Samsung Galaxy S3 will cost USD 1000 in Rio right now while the minimum wage is about USD 350. Buying such expensive phones require a plan and saving for a long time. 78% of the Brazilian market is on feature phones. By offering an inexpensive handset that has a full smartphone experience with a price that is affordable is key in these markets. It is about bringing the next million people online on the mobile web for the first time. Firefox OS is here to be the first smartphone for people that are still on Symbian or S40. In some markets you can buy a cheap android with decent performance, in others you can't. Firefox OS offers the best cost-benefit ratio once you think about how much performance you have against your hardware specs. If you pick the same low-end hardware with Android or Firefox OS, Android will have a worse experience, not because Android is broken in any way, Android is great but because there are more things going on on Android than on Firefox OS. Firefox OS is just a tiny hal, gecko and gaia, while Android has a VM and lots of other things going on. As I said before, this is not about fighting Android, its about offering a new choice for those that can't afford a good Android or iPhone. Here in Brazil, we have some very cheap Android devices since we have Samsung, LG and others building them locally. Most of these devices are pretty crap to use. The same hardware with Firefox OS would be a much better experience. ITS ABOUT THE WEB API The objective here is not to sell phones or be dominant. Firefox OS is about preventing vendor lock-in. Right now, each platform is an island. iOS has Objective-C/Cocoa Touch, Android has Java, Windows Phone has something that I can't recall. If you want to build cross platform apps, you're in for a world of hurt. You can use phonegap but this is not something offered by the platform vendor, this something that was built to bridge the web and native. The Web API is the next step in this direction. Each of the APIs in the collection known as Web API is being standardized with the W3C and other interested parties. The idea is that other vendors adopt these APIs and that open web apps work anywhere equally. Firefox OS is not about an exclusive experience, it is about openness and freedom. Even if Firefox OS fail but the Web API succeeds, it will be a huge victory for the open web. ITS ALSO ABOUT BEING CREATIVE Right now there is a steep learning curve regarding developing native apps for most platforms. Objective-C and Java are easy languages for CS people but for the layman they are pretty hard. It requires a lot of effort to be good with them. Why is the web a success? If the web required such effort, we'd still be using gopher and news. One of the reasons the web was a success was that it required less effort to produce something useful. I am not saying good, I am saying useful. Anyone could host a server, anyone with a text editor could build pages. Firefox OS is about bringing this to mobile. It requires less effort and your open web apps can be deployed on other platforms such as iOS and Android (with phonegap or other runtimes). Yes, these days it requires a lot of effort to build good web apps but not much to build useful ones. Firefox OS has the potential and openness to bring all web developers to mobile with ease. Open Web Apps are king of local content. Niche apps that are only useful for those in a neighborhood or profession are a web editor away from being born and available. The web is king for local content and Firefox OS is nothing but an mobile extension of the web. WHY I THINK FIREFOX OS WILL SUCCEED? As I said above, Firefox OS is nothing but the web and the web can't fail because it already succeeded. Right now the only technology that bridges smart tvs, video games, smartphones, desktop and laptop computers together is HTML/CSS/JS. Remember how much progress we had in JS runtimes the last year, try to imagine where we're going to be next year. Javascript is already reaching 1.5x native speed in some cases, two years from now, this won't matter because it will as fast as it needs to be. One could argue that for most mobile app needs, it is already fast enough. Apps built for Firefox OS can be deployed as web pages and made available on a server. They can be sold on Chrome webstore and Firefox Marketplace. They can be wrapped with phonegap and deployed to iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BB10, Bada, Tizen and webOS. They can be wrapped in other runtimes and be used on Smart TVs and video games. The web is the king of cross platform, of vendor neutrality and without lock-ins. I think that the future belong to HTML based solutions and all platforms that embrace it. PS: I am a Mozilla Rep and a Firefox OS Launch Team member in Brazil.

glogla 13y ago

If I understand it correctly, Firefox OS is different in how it is not bound to one particular corporation. Mozilla's objective here is "build mobile OS" and not "sell more devices" like Apple or "get info on people so we can sell advertising" like Google. This makes me wonder about privacy and Firefox OS. Does it require arbitrary account with credit card paired like iOS or Windows Phone? Does it require account to get most of the functionality like Android? Does it require you to agree that Google will get your location data for network location service to function like Android? Does it not allow you to use it without sending (paid) sms to Nokia with your location, like new Nokia phones? If it doesn't do any of those things, it is different.

pjmlp 13y ago
It also needs to sell, being different is not enough. If the only selling point is HTML5 based apps, other OSs also have browsers.
- glogla 13y ago
  Depends on the target market. For me, not having any of the above mentioned "features" is a selling point for me. Do other people care? Possibly no, but that doesn't concern me. also, Firefox OS devices have potential to be cheaper than android devices, because there's no extortion from Microsoft, and may be consistent, unlike Android with many terrible manufacturer-made OS modifications and version fragmentation. Even now, android 2.3 devices are sold.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    For me a device without native apps is a no go. I already have a browser and for the looks of it, FirefoxOS still needs some performance tuning to reach the level of throw away Android and Windows phones.
Yoric 13y ago
It doesn't require any of these things. I have been using mine for ~6 months without a credit card. I have downloaded a number of free applications and the only times I had to log in was when I decided to rate them. I have not tested non-free applications, but the documentation seems to indicate that you have the choice between PayPal or some operator-provided billing mechanism. I don't know the details, though. You do not have a system-wide identity. The Marketplace supports authentication through Mozilla Persona/BrowserID, which is quite different from other single sign-on authentication schemes, insofar as it is anonymous, almost zero-knowledge, open-source and decentralized (admittedly, I don't know of any Persona provider other than Mozilla, but anyone with a http server can become a Persona provider).
freehunter 13y ago
Windows Phone does not require an account paired with a credit card.
- michael_h 13y ago
  Neither does iOS, for that matter.
  - Yoric 13y ago
    It doesn't? All recent MacBooks I have seen insist rather hard to be paired with an account and a credit card number. I have never done the initial setup of an iOS device, but I would have assumed that it was the same or worse.
    - octotoad 13y ago
      No, it definitely doesn't. iPhone 5 + iOS 6: doesn't know a thing about my credit card, and never will.
      - Yoric 13y ago
        Interesting. Can you access any form of store without a credit card and without giving away your identity to Apple? And, just as importantly, can joe/jane user do it?
        the_mitsuhiko 13y ago
        > And, just as importantly, can joe/jane user do it? Irrelevant as those users will not care and just punch in their credit card if asked.
        Yoric 13y ago
        That's what I meant by my question: is there any reasonable manner in which joe/jane user could decide to not punch in their credit card and still manage to setup the device?

pjmlp 13y ago

Fully agree. It is great that Mozilla is fighting for openness, but in terms of what street joe and street jane want, I think it will join WebOS in a few months. Given my experience in telecommunications I don't see how sales are going to push these devices out of the shop when users come asking for other OSs.

Yoric 13y ago
What would you suggest?
- pjmlp 13y ago
  The devices need to have a story. When normal people buy a mobile, many choose a specific model, because: - how it looks - certain persons they know the same model - there is a specific set of apps they want to have - how the battery holds - for whatever reason they want to have a contract and have a limited set to choose from, which fall anyway under the previous points The question is how to bring these persons to buy a FirefoxOS mobile. Sure a few geeks will buy them, but will it be enough quantity to keep the operators selling them?
aaronharder 13y ago
One big difference from WebOS is that the company behind FirefoxOS will not likely abandon it within 12 months of kicking it off. 4th or 5th place in the market might represent enough scale to be considered a "success" as far as Mozilla is concerned.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Those devices still need to be built. So a 4th or 5th place might not generate enough revenue to pay them.
  - Yoric 13y ago
    I'm not a manufacturer, but at a guess, I'd say that 4th/5th place is still plenty of billions of dollars.

garysweaver 13y ago

> And how exactly is it "different"? Robert Nyman of Mozilla pointed me at this: https://blog.mozilla.org/ligong/2013/06/03/foxconn-joins-the-firefox-os-eco-system/ https://blog.mozilla.org/ligong/2013/06/03/foxconn-joins-the... "Foxconn stated that they intend to have FFOS running on all categories of the “8 screen” devices, from smartphone to tablets to laptops to TVs and outdoor signage." Name me another mobile OS that will be running on laptops or outdoor signage. :) This, I think, is the bigger vision of FF OS that is the reason people should get interested and involved.

freehunter 13y ago
Android.
- rimantas 13y ago
  Does not Windows already do that too?
  - freehunter 13y ago
    Yeah I've seen Windows and Windows Mobile on various embedded devices. My car runs Windows Embedded (for better or worse).
Shorel 13y ago
Ubuntu

scribu 13y ago

> We can already quite successfully run HTML5/CSS/JavaScript-based apps on Android, iOS, and BlackBerry OS for instance. Right, but in Firefox you also have "native" HTML5 apps, which give access to more hardware functionality than a regular web app. > And this is ignoring Firefox OS's inflexibility when it comes to using languages other than JavaScript I don't see how Firefox OS is less flexible than other systems. In Android, you're forced to use Java; in iOS you're forced to use Objective C (everything else, like RubyMotion are hacks, at best).

anon1385 13y ago
>Right, but in Firefox you also have "native" HTML5 apps, which give access to more hardware functionality than a regular web app. Which negates the sole benefit of a web app in the first place since those APIs are not standard and not available on other platforms, so those apps are not portable. Maybe the APIs will become standard and implemented on Android and iOS etc, but at that point you can write those kinds of apps for Android or iOS too, so again Firefox OS offers no benefit.
- Yoric 13y ago
  Actually, almost all of them are available on Android and on Desktop. Interestingly, while you seem to consider that this is a weak point of Firefox, we (Mozilla) did this on purpose and we consider this one of the strongest points of the platform: _no vendor lock-in_. If you write an application for FirefoxOS, we do not place any obstacle that can prevent the developer from distributing the application on other devices/OSes or that can prevent the user from using it on their other devices/OSes. As you may recall, we (not just Mozilla) did this to the web a few years ago, and look where this brought us all. We are now attempting to bring the same degree of freedom to mobile. And yes, this is going to be quite a fight, but if you want to help us, that will be great :)
  - anon1385 13y ago
    >Interestingly, while you seem to consider that this is a weak point of Firefox, we (Mozilla) did this on purpose and we consider this one of the strongest points of the platform: _no vendor lock-in_. There is already no vendor lock-in with html based apps on Android or iOS. The complaint people have about iOS is that it is locked down with regards to native apps. Mozilla themselves have made this exact complaint about iOS -- that they wanted to write a browser for iOS but could not because a) HTML/Javascript are not suitable for writing a browser so they have to go through the app store and b) native apps in the app store on iOS face restrictions that would limit performance of a Javascript VM, so Firefox would not have competitive performance compared to Safari. FirefoxOS solves neither of those problems. More generally, the idea of all user facing software being targeted to a single sandboxed standard API is very restrictive and worrying. It means developers giving up complete control to a small cabal of 4 or 5 large organisations that decide what gets standardised. Organisations that have conflicting interests and financial motivations that certainly don't align with my own. That's assuming that various competing web based platforms would even be sustainable; I don't see it lasting more than 5 mins before platform specific extensions are added to provide additional value over the competitors. I want to be able to write software for my device and have full access to the hardware without some third party being able to decide what I can and can't do with my phone. FirefoxOS doesn't get me any closer to that goal, in fact it's a step backwards. Web platforms are great for SV startups where raw user numbers are the most important thing, but to be honest I don't give a shit about the ability of the latest photo sharing startup to 'exit'. I do care about people doing much more interesting things and all I can see is web based OSs being a restriction on that. Think about how you would feel living in a world of Gopher based operating systems. >As you may recall, we (not just Mozilla) did this to the web a few years ago, and look where this brought us all Yes, a world where I don't control my own data anymore, it lives on some server I can't access, subject to the whims of foreign governments. Being processed by code I can't even reverse engineer never mind read the source or modify. This is great freedom for developers and governments, but utterly disastrous for the freedom of users.

Yoric 13y ago

Oh, hello PommeDeTerre. Haven't we had roughly the same conversation last week on another thread? > Firefox OS will need to successfully compete against BlackBerry OS, Windows Mobile, [...] Yes, a new product needs to compete with existing products. That goes without saying. > And how exactly is it "different"? Frankly? Try it, you'll see. For me, it's different insofar as I can write a small game and self-publish it in a few hours. I don't have to pay anyone, I don't have to wait for anybody's permission (compare with iOS), I don't have to download a SDK, and my users will be able to run/install the self-published app immediately (compare with Android). Oh, and of course, my students can do the same, which is a big deal to me. It's different insofar as an application written for FirefoxOS will also work on Android (and hopefully on iOS) and, in many cases, on your Desktop/Laptop. By opposition to what you seem to believe, this is not a design flaw. This is called not locking in your users. It's the kind of thing that Mozilla does. It's different insofar as much of the development is done by the community of users. Not a privately-held company that decides what is best for us in terms of features or performance or privacy. Oh, I almost forgot: it's different insofar as said company does not own all my private data by default. > It's hard to see how it'll compete on vague notions of "openness" that most consumers really could not care any less about [...] In the US, maybe. In India or Africa (or parts of China or Russia or Turkey ...), for instance? Not so. People care a lot about having a phone that they can use, which means first and foremost a phone that works in their language, even if that language is not a big commercial target. That's what openness is about, not about people like us squabbling on some high tech news aggregator. > It can't even really compete on price, given the existence of Android. Of course it can. On low-powered phones, FirefoxOS tends to outperform Android by a large margin. This means that you can have the same experience with cheaper phones. Caveat: I'm a Mozillian.

rimantas 13y ago
> Caveat: I'm a Mozillian. Oh. If your view resembles that of the most of mozillians then I think Firfox OS is already doomed. What you wrote might appeal to some developers, but it means little to users. And I am not sure how many developers are interested in platform in which users are not interested. Looks like when Blake Ross left Mozilla so did understanding the user.

soapdog 13y ago

Hey PommeDeTerre, Allow me to give a different perspective here. While in many other mobile operating systems you can build apps with HTML (saying HTML from now on but meaning HTML/CSS/JS, ok?), the API the vendors make available don't cover the same features as what is native on that platform. We can say that Firefox OS is important because of the following things: MAKING THE WEB A FIRST CLASS CITIZEN Makes the web a first class citizen. Its not like "you can build apps with web technology", its more like you don't need native because all you need is available thru the web apis. While in other platforms, there is a barrier on what can be accomplished with HTML alone, on Firefox OS HTML is the way. Let me give you a silly but practical example: Suppose you have an intranet on your small company built by IT in PHP or something. This intranet has an address book for everyone in the company. Using the Web API, you can detect the contacts API and offer the user the ability to import contacts from the web directly to the phones contact book. This is done in a secure way, with permissions granted by the user, its not like "hey, open this page and flood the contact database". The security model is good. This is a silly example but it is useful for many people. Its the tiny APIs that make your life easier and your experience better. GIVING YOU THE FREEDOM OF THE WEB In platforms such as iOS, your only venue to distribute your apps is the iTunes App Store. All money passes thru Apple. On Android, you can have third party stores but the default setting is to allow apps from Google Play only (unless you're a kindle or nook). Most of the other platforms are about controlling the ecosystem to make money for the vendor. On Firefox OS you have the Firefox Marketplace that is a mixture of Chrome Webstore and Google Play. It allows distribution of apps for desktop, android and firefox os (all using gecko runtime). You are not tied to Firefox Marketplace though. You have an install API that you can use on your app or your site to install apps on the users phone (Again, it asks permissions, security is good). You can even fork the Firefox Marketplace code and build your own. Talking about payment, you have the usual credit card charging on the marketplace but you also have carrier billing (if the carrier implement it) allowing users to buy apps and have it charged to their prepaid cards or monthly bill. Remember that in many markets, people don't have credit cards. If you're not happy with both solutions you can roll your own payment solution using the payments API and receipt protocol. You are free to distribute and monetize your app as you see fit, just like on the web. ITS NOT A REPLACEMENT FOR YOUR IPHONE OR GALAXY S3 If you have an Android device, you can just install Firefox Mobile and be happy since we'll eventually have feature parity between Firefox Mobile and Firefox OS. These Firefox OS phones are being created for emergent markets. People from U.S. and richer parts of Europe don't really realize how things are in south america and asia. An Samsung Galaxy S3 will cost USD 1000 in Rio right now while the minimum wage is about USD 350. Buying such expensive phones require a plan and saving for a long time. 78% of the Brazilian market is on feature phones. By offering an inexpensive handset that has a full smartphone experience with a price that is affordable is key in these markets. It is about bringing the next million people online on the mobile web for the first time. Firefox OS is here to be the first smartphone for people that are still on Symbian or S40. In some markets you can buy a cheap android with decent performance, in others you can't. Firefox OS offers the best cost-benefit ratio once you think about how much performance you have against your hardware specs. If you pick the same low-end hardware with Android or Firefox OS, Android will have a worse experience, not because Android is broken in any way, Android is great but because there are more things going on on Android than on Firefox OS. Firefox OS is just a tiny hal, gecko and gaia, while Android has a VM and lots of other things going on. As I said before, this is not about fighting Android, its about offering a new choice for those that can't afford a good Android or iPhone. Here in Brazil, we have some very cheap Android devices since we have Samsung, LG and others building them locally. Most of these devices are pretty crap to use. The same hardware with Firefox OS would be a much better experience. ITS ABOUT THE WEB API The objective here is not to sell phones or be dominant. Firefox OS is about preventing vendor lock-in. Right now, each platform is an island. iOS has Objective-C/Cocoa Touch, Android has Java, Windows Phone has something that I can't recall. If you want to build cross platform apps, you're in for a world of hurt. You can use phonegap but this is not something offered by the platform vendor, this something that was built to bridge the web and native. The Web API is the next step in this direction. Each of the APIs in the collection known as Web API is being standardized with the W3C and other interested parties. The idea is that other vendors adopt these APIs and that open web apps work anywhere equally. Firefox OS is not about an exclusive experience, it is about openness and freedom. Even if Firefox OS fail but the Web API succeeds, it will be a huge victory for the open web. ITS ALSO ABOUT BEING CREATIVE Right now there is a steep learning curve regarding developing native apps for most platforms. Objective-C and Java are easy languages for CS people but for the layman they are pretty hard. It requires a lot of effort to be good with them. Why is the web a success? If the web required such effort, we'd still be using gopher and news. One of the reasons the web was a success was that it required less effort to produce something useful. I am not saying good, I am saying useful. Anyone could host a server, anyone with a text editor could build pages. Firefox OS is about bringing this to mobile. It requires less effort and your open web apps can be deployed on other platforms such as iOS and Android (with phonegap or other runtimes). Yes, these days it requires a lot of effort to build good web apps but not much to build useful ones. Firefox OS has the potential and openness to bring all web developers to mobile with ease. Open Web Apps are king of local content. Niche apps that are only useful for those in a neighborhood or profession are a web editor away from being born and available. The web is king for local content and Firefox OS is nothing but an mobile extension of the web. WHY I THINK FIREFOX OS WILL SUCCEED? As I said above, Firefox OS is nothing but the web and the web can't fail because it already succeeded. Right now the only technology that bridges smart tvs, video games, smartphones, desktop and laptop computers together is HTML/CSS/JS. Remember how much progress we had in JS runtimes the last year, try to imagine where we're going to be next year. Javascript is already reaching 1.5x native speed in some cases, two years from now, this won't matter because it will as fast as it needs to be. One could argue that for most mobile app needs, it is already fast enough. Apps built for Firefox OS can be deployed as web pages and made available on a server. They can be sold on Chrome webstore and Firefox Marketplace. They can be wrapped with phonegap and deployed to iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BB10, Bada, Tizen and webOS. They can be wrapped in other runtimes and be used on Smart TVs and video games. The web is the king of cross platform, of vendor neutrality and without lock-ins. I think that the future belong to HTML based solutions and all platforms that embrace it. PS: I am a Mozilla Rep and a Firefox OS Launch Team member in Brazil.