from Hacker News

Why I care about Firefox OS fading away

by SunboX on 1/26/16, 10:04 PM with 79 comments

• by benlower on 1/26/16, 11:53 PM

  IMO the bigger reason to lament the loss of competition here is the app model: Firefox OS was pushing for "apps" to be web apps. That seemed a lot more open to me than pushing for apps to be proprietary (Android, iOS, Windows, etc.). As great as mobile devices are, their walled gardens stifle creativity, privacy, and choice.

• by Analemma_ on 1/27/16, 12:14 AM

  I don't want to sound like the know-it-all smartass here, but from the moment Firefox OS was announced I gave it a negligible probably of amounting to anything and was really baffled that Mozilla decided to focus their efforts in that direction.

  I don't think they appreciated just how brutal and unforgiving the smartphone market is. Apple makes money on it, but they spend billions on R&D and billions more on marketing. Samsung makes money, but a lot less than they used to and only because they own their entire component pipeline and also spend billions on marketing. Google makes money, because they own the operating system that 80% of the phones use and use it to push people to their wide array of services. Everyone else is breaking even at best, and hemorrhaging cash at worst. Think how many billions Sony and Microsoft and Nokia and Palm and Blackberry spent on their smartphone efforts only to get shoved to the sidelines. This is a market where you've gotta pay big in order to play; to be honest it was downright silly of Mozilla to expect that they could get a foot in the door.

• by Sanddancer on 1/27/16, 12:16 AM

  The death of FirefoxOS was inevitable, because of two words that the supporters dread. Native Apps. If your problem did not match the things that Javascript was good at, you were completely out of luck. Every other platform has a way of writing your app in different languages. The iphone has native swift and cocoa, plus javascript, plus lua, plus a whole host of other choices. Android has java, javascript, and anything else that can be run via jni. Windows has WinRT, which doesn't offer native code, but does offer anything that can be run under the CLR -- C++, C#, Javascript, etc. Firefox OS's sticking with just javascript meant that it was hamstrung from the start, with much less ability to create apps that really stood out, leaving it to wallow in mediocrity.

• by boondaburrah on 1/27/16, 1:08 AM

  My main problem with all these "well, it failed" alternative operating systems for phones are: I couldn't even buy them in the first place. I tried, but there was no hardware available in my region that ran on my network etc. The closest thing we've got is the nexus, but what we need is a 'standard' (de-facto or otherwise) phone like x86 PCs had to be in order for linux to take off.

• by seba_dos1 on 1/27/16, 4:50 PM

  I don't really care. And that makes me sad.

  I was really excited about Firefox OS when Mozilla was announcing it. I've been playing for years with free smartphones like Neo Freerunner, GTA04 and (surprisingly free) Nokia N900, and the situation on Android market was far from being good for me. I still cannot really change my phone without downgrading my user experience. Firefox OS offered me some hope.

  Unfortunately, it turned out that Firefox OS was just Android-me-too, without much of added benefits when it comes to user freedom. Sure, the development model was more like baazar than cathedral, but how did it matter if most of the Firefox OS devices out there were as blocked and closed as Android ones?

  Mozilla even had a certification program you needed to pass in order to use Firefox OS brand with your device - and guess what? Closed crap like ZTE Open was passing the certifications. Mozilla was basically endorsing devices you had to break into in order to be free to use them as you wish. How is that different from Android?

  I had high hopes, but Firefox OS disappointed me.

• by Neener54 on 1/27/16, 5:35 AM

  I managed to get a developer phone with Firefox OS at a dev conference. I can say that hands down it's the worst phone I've ever tried using. I used it as my primary phone for a week and the operating system made me avoid doing anything. Making a phone call was the most pleasant, but if I had to send a text or try and use one of the apps I just found myself locking the phone. The webapp as a phone app idea was just really unpleasant especially if you had limited connectivity.

  I admire Mozilla for trying, but that OS would have taken a miracle to get it working in a good fashion.

• by smegel on 1/27/16, 12:46 AM

  > „Tier 3“

  What's the down-up bunny ears? Does this mean anything or just a typo?

• by ksec on 1/27/16, 2:42 PM

  The bigger question is What will happen to those who has Firefox OS shipped like Panasonic TV. ( Actually that is likely to be the only popular Devices using it )

  At first they say Firefox OS isn't going away and it will support IoT, so development will continue. Panasonic even made a PR just so people don't freak out and stop buying their TV set.

  Now it is moved to Tier 3 support...

  I really don't know whether i should blame Mozilla or Panasonic on this one.

• by simula67 on 1/27/16, 11:31 AM

  > Let's say Android does not implement the new cool feature

  If there is enough demand for it, someone can do a Kickstarter, raise enough money, build it and push it into Android. Or some other company can fork Android, add the cool new feature and steal Android's market share.