4 ms·

It is worth remembering that Mozilla is a relatively small organization, all things considered. > starting an entirely new OS. Gonk, the core of FxOS, is base

by mburns 11y ago

It is worth remembering that Mozilla is a relatively small organization, all things considered. > starting an entirely new OS. Gonk, the core of FxOS, is based on Android. It is 'only' Gaia (the UI) that was written anew in HTML, along with performance work on the Gecko rendering engine. Keeping the UI all in HTML5 (and rendered entirely by Gecko) meant they had to develop APIs and improve OpenWebApps as a spec to fill on the common use cases. > Shipping a Mozilla Android with their own app store and Firefox ... would require Mozilla supporting a lot more Java code and use cases that don't further the Firefox mission. What does Mozilla gain from running a third-party Android app store, and the support costs that entails? FxOS, success or failure, pushes the Firefox product as a whole further and faster than a Mozilla-branded Android fork ever would have.

jfoster 11y ago
Are we agreed that Mozilla needs a mobile platform of some kind (or a partnership) in order to ensure Firefox is the browser on it? (be it FxOS, MozDroid, or something else entirely) Re: "FxOS, success or failure, pushes the Firefox product as a whole further," I don't see how FxOS is anything other than a waste of resources if it fails. If Mozilla went the route of rebranding Android, they needn't fork it entirely. They could just apply their branding & app store on top of Google's releases. The app store is a necessary component because Google won't allow the use of theirs (at least without a price), and it's a user expectation of any mobile OS. (even FxOS has an app store; marketplace.firefox.com) It's unrealistic to expect Mozilla would become a dominant mobile platform in the foreseeable future, no matter what they do. Like Microsoft, they just need to have some territory, for now. (perhaps they should also consider partnerships with "the new Microsoft", Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, etc.)

by mburns 11y ago

jfoster 11y ago

Are we agreed that Mozilla needs a mobile platform of some kind (or a partnership) in order to ensure Firefox is the browser on it? (be it FxOS, MozDroid, or something else entirely) Re: "FxOS, success or failure, pushes the Firefox product as a whole further," I don't see how FxOS is anything other than a waste of resources if it fails. If Mozilla went the route of rebranding Android, they needn't fork it entirely. They could just apply their branding & app store on top of Google's releases. The app store is a necessary component because Google won't allow the use of theirs (at least without a price), and it's a user expectation of any mobile OS. (even FxOS has an app store; marketplace.firefox.com) It's unrealistic to expect Mozilla would become a dominant mobile platform in the foreseeable future, no matter what they do. Like Microsoft, they just need to have some territory, for now. (perhaps they should also consider partnerships with "the new Microsoft", Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, etc.)