I very strongly want this to work. I am very excited about the prospect of a phone/tablet OS that I hack up apps for in Javascript. But even more than that I pray for a true competitor to iOSX/Android.
They just need to get this thing moving. I am planning to buy a tablet this Christmas and I want FFOS to be a very good choice by then. Come on Mozilla.
This might be a black sheep type of question in a thread like this but here goes.
Microsoft pursued a strategy that enabled people to make web apps in HTML5/Javascript as first class apps in Windows 8. Why is it not being adopted/praised as much as Firefox OS is? Is it because it's Microsoft? Is it because the Win8 HTML5/JS apps are more closed-system-esque than Firefox OS apps will be?
A lot of people denounce Windows because of its lack of app ecosystem. Does everyone think that Firefox OS will have a better chance at solving this problem and thus deserves praise for creating an ecosystem exclusively for web-based apps?
I think it is a very fair question. The first reason I want Mozilla to win here is that they don't want my data. They are pushing for stronger privacy in firefox, and although I love Chrome I don't think Google can ever support real browser privacy.
I am a fan of JS on windows 8 and winphone 8. However, I own a win7 phone and got burned by their non-backwards compatible upgrade to 8. So I have no love for MS, although I am a big fan of the tiled UI.
I think that FFOS will provide a better place where I can put together an app in Linux with vim. I don't want to install eclipse to write for Android, buy a macbook to write an iOSx app or install visual studio.
I hope that FFOS can be an easy to fiddle playground for me. We'll see.
You should be able to make a Firefox OS app with Gedit or any text editor, or any set of browser tools (Firefox desktop browsers have a good set, and even a FFos emulator). I'm quite excited for Firefox OS myself, if I could find a decent turn-by-turn navigation web-app I'd ditch Android...
That is true, but what is the command line tooling like for java? I build java all day inside god-awful IDEs. The last time I tried compiling Java on the command line it was really a lot of work.
I suppose there is some maven support for building Android. An even better reason to hope for the best for FFOS.
Android also has decent command line tool support and a build system based on Ant. I'm not a huge fan of ant, but the default setup works all right and is extensible. I've mostly managed to stay inside Emacs for Android development.
The API collection known as WebAPI (https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI) is what allows open web apps to access the hardware and some phone features such as contacts. Mozilla is working alongside with W3C and other standards bodies to make these APIs standards for all vendors. This is a different agenda than the one MS is pushing with its HTML based offerings. Mozilla is striving to make the mobile web an open ecosystem for all vendors to benefit and most important for all users. Remember "Values over Profit"
> Is it because the Win8 HTML5/JS apps are more closed-system-esque than Firefox OS apps will be?
Yes, basically. At least for me.
It comes down to trust. I trust Mozilla that they want to do good for the community. I trust Microsoft first and foremost wants to make money for their shareholders and only after that for the community. This is fine, they're a for-profit company. It's just that doing good for your shareholders doesn't always lead to doing good to the community.
Not to mention Microsoft doesn't exactly have the greatest of reputations when it comes to vendor lock-in issues.
They are complete Bds. I am still very unhappy about what they did with the win7 phone. I feel like such a sucker. I was so enthusiastic about the interface, I showed to all my workmates and tried to convince them it was better than their phones (with little success). And then they went and left me with a ghost town of a phone. I felt quite foolish after that.
The problem is Joe Billy who buys a random phone (who is also 90% of the marketplace) does not care at all if the applications he is using are made with HTML5/CSS/JS, Lua, C#, C++, C Triangle, Delphi, Dolphin, Chicken Horse, what ever. All they care about is...
1. Does it work.
2. Does it work well (ie fast, do what it is suppose to do).
3. Does it not cost anything (or if it does cost anything, an amount which is appropriate).
4. Do his friends have it.
That's really all they care about. At the end of the day, nobody cares if it's Firefox OS, Android, iPhone. So long as they can do what they want to do at a cost they can afford. Their friends have a similar device or allow transplatform communication. And they can get all them fancy stuff their friends show them (ie amazing apps, themes, custom phone skins, etc).
The people who care about the other stuff don't make up most of the market.
And that is something Microsoft as well as Google, and Apple get. The goal is to have a cool phone, with stuff that is cool, at a cool price. That's why people like Microsoft pay app developers to port their "cool apps" to MS App Store. As well as give "celebrities" free phones. All in the name of coolness!
Mozilla's openness wins it alot of praise. Not to mention, their technology truly has changed the web (Javascript anyone?), while MS has held back web development (they still don't support WebGL). With Firefox OS any web app is a FFOS app, with MS you need to go through their closed store, or their half-baked browser...
Firefox OS doesn't need an app ecosystem, they just need developers to make good web apps. Hence their tools like Javascript, Emscripten, and Asm.js... I've been testing the Aurora browser on Android, and it's already impressive how well interactive web apps work on their browser, I could definitely see Firefox OS taking off...
On the other hand you can also argue, that Microsoft were web apps pioneers. There should be people who still remember DHTML demos of the IE4 era—it was the time when Netscape has fallen behind. One can also argue, that the real break-through for web apps was Gmail, so let's not forget what was at the core of it: the thing later named AJAX, which was non-standart invention by Microsoft only later standardised.
It is not all black and white.
But I still do think that (mobile) web apps are an attempt to turn three-legged table into a tricycle.
Sure, you can try and eat your soup with a knife, but why, just because you carry your pocket knife wherever you go?
Af for Firefox OS I doubt it will get much traction. It may appeal for the devs who think web tech is superior to everything (which makes me doubt they even know the tech well enough), but for general users… meh.
Most important I think Mozilla lost its focus, or at least shifted it somewhere else. When Firefox (Phoenix) started they did the right thing. I attribute this to Blake Ross, and seems like FF lost the direction and shifted to politics instead of making the best browser when Blake moved on.
It's most likely because Mozilla makes things open source, and Microsoft doesn't usually.
I agree that this pretty much seems like another Windows Phone, that won't really make huge competition for iOS or Android devices. I hope I'm wrong though because I hate Java.
> Microsoft pursued a strategy that enabled people to make web apps in HTML5/Javascript as first class apps in Windows 8.
That by itself is a concept absolutely no one has any problem with.[1]
The problems people have are either with Windows 8 itself and/or Metro sucking, and in some cases seeing parts of it as the first step in turning a previously-open ecosystem into an iOS-style walled garden.
[1] Well, OK, I think JavaScript is a scourge on par with PHP, bubonic plague, and small children, so I guess I do have a problem, but it's not one anyone else cares about.
First and foremost, it's Microsoft, so yes, I'm afraid that's reason enough to shun Windows 8. Fool me twice and all that. That aside, the fact is that we need source code, with an FLOSS license, for the full stack. Yes, it matters, otherwise we'd be happy enough with Android.
Judging from past sabotages by Microsoft, I really, really doubt their "HTML5/JS" apps will be portable/cross-platform (eg, just wait until they start "deprecating" standard functions in favor of their "safe" Windows specific library calls).
Thus far most of the windows 8 hardware either sucks, or it costs too much. I really wanted a windows tablet until Samsung's ativ turned out to be defective,windows rt turned out to be useless, and the surface was released with a keyboard that requires a table to use.
This is because their JS implementation is a wrapper around WinRT rather than anything close to what anyone else is doing. It also isn't very JavaScripty. WinRT is a particularly odd creation.
This Christmas is awfully close to R&D, Q&A and clean up the rough edges for a finished product. It's vital they get this right the first time or that would be a serious blow to it and any future competitor to the two.
I too want to see this work, but I'm worried about Google's response. What if this takes off? Seeing as how right now, how much of Mozilla's revenue comes from Google, if Firefox OS takes off I would think it needs to take off hard in the case that Google decides to maneuver against them by toying with their main artery that is Firefox's default search engine. I don't know.
If Google doesn't pay Mozilla, Yahoo or Microsoft will. Furthermore, the reason Google pays so much money to Mozilla is not out of goodwill, but for all the revenue that Google makes off of the traffic the search bar generates. Google not paying Mozilla to be the default search provider would be cutting off its nose to spite its face.
Christmas is probably too soon, unfortunately. Everything I've read has been focused on launching FxOS in emerging markets starting this Summer, then moving on to developed markets next year, once it's had time to mature and get some more polish.
> But even more than that I pray for a true competitor to iOSX/Android.
I hope so, too, and I write books about Android programming. Without competition, especially competition from systems that will try to differentiate by being more open than Android, there is a substantial risk that Google will become increasingly closed and conservative about developing Android.
Windows lacked competition for more than a decade. That created mind-set that couldn't disrupt it's own business, and consequently missed both handsets and tablets.
So I hope there are five or six viable mobile technology platforms and ecosystems.
This is a great move for Mozilla, and not completely surprising that a manufacturer would take an open source OS and dump it on the hardware they are building for everyone else.
Foxconn is providing enough value building devices that they could produce their own and if they can figure out the marketing/branding, would have a good shot at it. At the very least they could partner with retailers to co-brand a store brand like Best Buy does with insignia. Make a special store brand at each big chain - Radio Shack, Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart. It's a little surprising this hasn't happened yet now that I think about it.
Shouldn't there be outrage about Foxconn and its production practices? Seems not long ago it was a hellhole representing everything wrong about the modern tech industry - now it's perfectly fine?
If so, good job by Tim Cook to pressure them into greatness in worker treatment. Right?
Well ... because Apple is like the hot girl always complaining to be fat in front of her fat friends.
With the massive sales and the high margins that are in every analyst's wet dream Apple could double what it pays for assembly with ease and without huge hit on the bottom line. But they don't care enough.
This will be low margin/low volume devices initially with which mozilla - a non profit organization that wants to open the door to the internet on the poor people of the third world while preaching platform openness and standards. So maybe people are ready to cut them some slack for some time.
Also maybe they are produced in (slightly) better conditions than iphone just based on the fact that the volumes and pressure are quite lower than on the iDevices assembly line.
One could consider Foxconn evil (I don't) and still recognize that it plays a very important role in the tech industry (most tech hardware gets assembled there after all) and therefor the fact that a huge player like Foxconn joins FirefoxOS could be seen as an important endorsement for Firefox and be celebrated by Firefox users/fans (which I am not).
The fact that you could turn a story like that into an occasion to attack Apple critics makes you look like some Apple fanboy with delusions of persecution.
I don't see FirefoxOS as the mobile OS for "Firefox users." It transcends the choice of browser in my opinion, it becomes something grander (as in Web standards native apps, and standing for freedom in the mobile market, much as Mozilla has stood for it in the browser market, but phones are surely in much more dire need of openness these days.) I'm not a desktop Firefox user as well, but neither am I a desktop Android browser user nor a desktop Safari user. And I'm really interested in FirefoxOS, and it doesn't involve giving up my preference for Luakit and Chrome on the desktop.
> I don't see FirefoxOS as the mobile OS for "Firefox users."
Oh sure, anyone could be a fan of FirefoxOS, that wasn't the point of my comment. I was just pointing that one would have to be twisted to turn this story into an Apple fanboy fight.
Business relationships make for strange bedfellows, and I'm sure Mozilla has some serious preconceptions about working with Foxconn, however it should be comforting that we're moving beyond the world of Microsoft/Apple/Google dominating consumer electronics.
What does that have to do with Foxconn? Is it because Foxconn is in China and Mozilla is FOSS, like Ubuntu?
I don't think the parent was making a comment about either China, or FOSS, but about Foxconn, Apple (their most well-known and largest customer), Mozilla, and people's perceptions of partnership with Foxconn seeming situational.
Without getting involved in the whole Foxconn debate: would you take the same stance on anyone partnering with Nazis, the KKK, terrorist organisations, the apartheid, etc. based on "they are not a human rights organisation, so it's not relevant"?
Doctors are generally held to, and hold themselves to, a different standard to others when it comes to dealing with bad people. (And obviously "bad" is subjective here.)
On a personal level, many people chose their friends/acquaintances based on these sorts of things. On a consumer level, there are many examples of popular boycotts (for example see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Apartheid_Movement ). On a company level, many companies consider things such as environmental or social duties when deciding who to do business with.
In all cases, it could be because you hope that such a decision will cause change (e.g. organised/promoted boycotts) or it could be simply that you don't want to support something bad, even if knowing that refusing to spend $1 on some Nestlé chocolate (for example) probably won't change a thing.
Yes, and Mozilla choose to fight for the freedom of the web not for human rights.
Amnesty international for people rigths and not for dophin right.
Greenpeace for the environment and not for the freedom of the software.
Nobody fight for everything, choose a niche and fight for that.
I'm not arguing that they shouldn't be working with Foxconn, I'm trying to take the discussion out of this specific context.
My point is that just because human rights is not their goal, it doesn't mean it can't be a consideration. And if Foxconn, rather than being a company with a somewhat poor track record regarding its staff, was a company known for funding terrorism, arms sales, etc. then I don't think anyone would be arguing that people shouldn't do business with them.
Why can't they be both? I can't celebrate this, even though I like Firefox and encourage their push for open web. But any company that has to install countermeasures to prevent worker suicides on premise isn't exactly aces in my book...
Maybe this will help Foxconn become a more responsible corporate citizen? Who knows... From what I've read, alot of their issues were directly related to Apple bullying them. Maybe branching out and selling their own products will enable them to make a better profit margin, and provide better for their workers? Right now Foxconn's margins are razor-thin...
Yeah, I've got to say: the fact that this is being done with Foxconn leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I know the Mozilla folks never actually signed on with the whole "don't be evil" thing, but this is still something of a stain on the way they do things.
Because competing as the fifth(? - I'm counting iOS, Android, WM and BlackBerry) player in the market, having neither the brand name or market share advantage of the other players, isn't hard enough, they should also revolutionise the way electronics are produced.
It's pretty generous to put Firefox OS fifth in line, given the existence of mobile OSes like Bada, Symbian, MeeGo and webOS.
Then there are the newer competitors, like Tizen and Ubuntu Touch, that it'll still have to face off against. There's very little, if anything, to put it above even these.
Very impressive! I remember seeing a list of Firefox OS supporting companies some time ago. A BIG list...
Ubuntu Phone has this nice webpage for "Operator and OEM partners" [1], but do they actually have any? I doubted Firefox OS a lot more than Ubuntu Phone, but it seems I was wrong.
Unfortunately Canonical seems to do everything half-baked... I have more faith in Jolla/Sailfish... Mozilla has a history of actually changing the tech landscape, their language (Javascript) changed the web forever, Canonical has done nothing but split the Linux camp, and fail at making money. They also made one of the least stable distros available (I've had better luck with SUSE, Fedora, and Arch). Ubuntu phone will likely share the same fate as Ubuntu TV, Ubuntu on Android, and all their other half-baked ideas...
You have had better stability with Arch? They're known as a bleeding edge distro for a reason, and frequently release updates that break previous installs. Not that this is bad - it's just how they roll.
Also, Javascript is not Mozilla's language. It was originally invented at Netscape, and is a standardized language. Yes, Mozilla does great things with Javascript, but is no more Mozilla's language than it is Microsoft's.
Well the guy who created Javascript (Brendan Eich) currently works at Mozilla as the chief technology officer so they have a bigger claim on it than anyone else.
I am really interested in this, and it's great news what mozilla is doing especially for the open web. Hopefully, their entire OS will be open source, so I can get a smartphone/tablet that's entirely open source. I'm also interested in the javascript element. With asm.js, node.js, webgl, and this javascript is becoming more and more of a serious language every day.
However, I am curious, has mozilla published any docs or emulator for developers to write applications and test before launch?
I'm batting for FFOS - if for no other reason than the industry needs more competition.
I've got a Keon I'm playing with and it is pretty cool. It needs a lot of polishing to be sure - but it works - on a cheap phone, which in many ways is remarkable when you consider it is running that too slow, not so good, aint my favorite language, Javascript! LOL.
I'm betting on technologies that are open web standards, have the fewest barriers to entry/exit and offer less cost/risk.
I remember back in the dark ages (2000) having the discussion about biz apps in Delphi/VB/etc vs the web. The web won - at least for business apps, imo.
Shame on everyone yelling "Firefox needs to get into the market with cheap margins so WE can have better tablets/internet! Nevermind those foreigners who are committing suicide because of bad work conditions".
I would doubt it for some time. Mozilla are aiming at the ultra budget market. We have expensive iPhones and Androids, mid-tier androids, but ~$100 androids are few and almost guaranteed a bad experience. Firefox os is targeted for low end cheap devices to steal the "feature phones" market.
They just need to get this thing moving. I am planning to buy a tablet this Christmas and I want FFOS to be a very good choice by then. Come on Mozilla.