“We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/firefox-os-connected-devices-announcement/6864

by elnino10 • 10 years ago

336 152 10 years ago

creshal3• 10 years ago

We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the version 2.6 release.

Meanwhile, most FxOS phones (all three of them, I guess) are still stuck on 1.3 because Mozilla's update policy for it has always been even more broken than Google's.

I won't miss it. My Fire E has been a paperweight for the past year because it was just useless – the base OS was never on par with even Android 2, and the fragmentation killed the app market before it even existed.

If Mozilla handles FxOS for IoT like it did on smartphones (or like it handles Thunderbird), it won't survive another year.

i80and• 10 years ago

FWIW, Firefox OS 2.0 is actually pretty dang good. Update policy is still busted of course.

creshal3• 10 years ago

I wouldn't know, my phone was supposed to get it 15 months ago and still hasn't.

dorfsmay2• 10 years ago

What do you mean about Thunderbird (beside getting rid of it)?

paride5745• 10 years ago

This is a good news.

Firefox OS was never a real product, but a PoC.

IMHO, Mozilla should absorb the Tor project and focus on Free Web technologies, e.g. a really Free email service and a Free cloud storage service.

Yes, I intentionally use capitol F for Free.

How to raise money? Freemium model.

A good email+cloud storage service, with the optional pay model for using a custom domain.

And stop attacking the Linux distros for the Firefox trademark (forcing them to create the Iceweasel fork) or including proprietary services (e.g. Pocket) forcing the creation of the Icecat fork.

Just be a Free and Open browser, with some good cloud services, and make money within a Freemium model (allowed by Free Software Foundation policies).

dal• 10 years ago

Yes and they should allow us who want to actually use the capital F.. Free part of the licence to use your own servers for everything. It is really hard to do now with Sync in Firefox for example.

CaptSpify2• 10 years ago

What is hard about it? I've never used it, but have been meaning to for a while. Are there licensing issues? or is it just hard to actually get working?

vacri• 10 years ago

And stop attacking the Linux distros for the Firefox trademark (forcing them to create the Iceweasel fork)

Debian's rules don't allow things that aren't free-free, and blocked the copyright-encumbered logo. Mozilla was protecting it's trademark and branding. Debian calling it iceweasel basically replaced the branding so that it could be used under Debian's rules. It turned out to be a fairly amicable result - debian still gets the software with full utility, and mozilla keeps their branding coherent (branding is important to making money with any model, but especially freemium).

Also, this licensing stoush was ten years ago; it's not like it's fresh wounds.

matzipan2• 10 years ago

So which part of replacing the Firefox brand with Iceweasel is coherent branding?

Loic• 10 years ago

I am sorry you are down voted because fundamentally you are right. If you have a trademark, you are obliged to handle the use of your trademark very carefully, these are the rules and this is not because you are an organisation supporting free software that you can escape these rules.

neerdowell• 10 years ago

or including proprietary services (e.g. Pocket) forcing the creation of the Icecat fork.

Your timeline is off by about a decade. IceCat was first released in 2008 and the GNUzilla project has existed since 2005. Firefox added Pocket support in 2015.

bobajeff2• 10 years ago

I would love to use a email/webmail service from Mozilla. It would have to be ads supported but there might not be as much of a stigma against it as with suggested tiles.

50CNT• 10 years ago

I mean there is Mozilla Thunderbird, but it hasn't been the focus of much development since 2012, with intention to decouple it from Firefox development in 2015.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird] [https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/]

xentronium• 10 years ago

I agree, email from mozilla would be a killer. I'd pay for it.

drdaeman• 10 years ago

a really Free email service

What do you mean, exactly?

Service that's Free as in "Free Software"? We have enough of free MTA, MDA and MRA software, and while they can be always improved further there's need to start a new project. There are also a lot of packaging efforts, where anyone can find what they'll be pleased with (from source tarballs to build to one-click "rent a server and provision everything there, pre-configured" web-based buttons). And Mozilla have finally ditched their MUA (Thunderbird) recently, so I somewhat doubt they'll venture in that field again, even if they'd decide to make a web-based MUA (instead of desktop software) this time.

Service with some nice-to-hear policies? There are enough services that do all sort of pinky promises (and, I must admit, some try to bring some technological measures, but core email protocols don't allow much here, so it's mostly still relies on trust) of privacy, security and all sorts of stuff. Not sure if we need another one.

Something else?

freehunter3• 10 years ago

A Gmail that doesn't sniff your emails to serve ads to you or hand them over to the government, that's based on a FOSS project and can be hosted on your own server if you'd like to. Throw in an encryption option and you have a winner.

JohnTHaller2• 10 years ago

IMHO, Mozilla should absorb the Tor project

Tor has too many legal and ethical issues around it for Mozilla to take that kind of risk.

And stop attacking the Linux distros for the Firefox trademark (forcing them to create the Iceweasel fork) or including proprietary services (e.g. Pocket) forcing the creation of the Icecat fork.

Debian made a bunch of changes to Firefox and was still calling it Firefox. Debian also objected to Firefox's trademark policy despite Debian's trademark policy for their own trademark being virtually identical. This happened years ago and years before Pocket even existed.

Pocket code in Firefox is open source, you can examine it yourself. And, due to lazy loading, it's never even called if you don't interact with it. You can right-click and remove the button and never worry about it again. Using Pocket was to add a much-requested feature to Firefox without Mozilla having to invest to development hours into building something that already existed.

lmm• 10 years ago

I don't think Debian "objected". Mozilla's trademark rules are not compatible with the DFSG, therefore Debian can't distribute an officially branded Firefox. I do think the ideal thing would be for Mozilla to distribute Firefox packaged in such a fashion that the branding can easily be swapped out (in the same way that e.g. Redhat isolates its trademarked material to a couple of packages and documents exactly what you need to replace if you want to distribute your own modified version of Redhat) so that there would be no need for a full fork.

nacs2• 10 years ago

Pocket code in Firefox is open source, you can examine it yourself

You can see the client side code but what Pocket is doing with all the data on the server side is completely opaque and source is unavailable.

pcwalton4• 10 years ago

including proprietary services (e.g. Pocket) forcing the creation of the Icecat fork.

What? GNU IceCat has nothing to do with Pocket. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat#Origins_of_the_name

jldugger• 10 years ago

including proprietary services (e.g. Pocket) forcing the creation of the Icecat fork.

The search bar is an equally proprietary backend service, and pretty much universally funds Mozilla, but I don't hear many complaints about it.

toyg2• 10 years ago

At the time it was implemented, it was controversial; but the overall sentiment was that it was a necessary evil to get Mozilla some stable funding. Also, OpenSearch is a standard and anyone could easily replace the default.

Pocket was simply an extension that got bundled outright. After decades of Mozilla declining to include even uber-popular extensions in order to "keep up appearances" of being a neutral community project, they basically endorsed a random startup without any sort of consultation or public competition. That's what people objected to. If they had implemented a standard and just blessed Pocket as a reference implementation without bundling it, nobody would have complained.

fulafel• 10 years ago

The title is beyond editorializing into the factually incorrect territory, as they are not saying they're killing Firefox OS?

The pivot from phones to "connected devices" was already announced before[1] and this is just fleshing out that.

The language sounds a lot more like corporate-speak than what Mozilla's external communications usually are, I wonder if this is standard fare or if this team is coming from different cultures.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10716167

hardwaresofton6• 10 years ago

Completely agree, please someone change the title.

Something like "Mozilla stops FirefoxOS development to focus on IoT"

dang2• 10 years ago

Yes. We changed the title. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11037408.

jchendy• 10 years ago

The article always qualifies it as Firefox OS for smartphones. Is there a non-smartphone version that they're keeping?

rpwverheij• 10 years ago

it's running on TV's too, which seems to be at least slightly more successfull

detaro• 10 years ago

Yes, that's what the "connected devices"/IoT story is about. AFAIK there is right now a push in direction of Smart TVs (at least they asked people that made apps for phones if they don't want to make TV apps)

dorfsmay2• 10 years ago

Interesting how they make a distinction, I find that used android phones loaded with Cyanogenmod are great IoT devices, dirt cheap, equipped with GPS, camera, screens, etc...

callahad• 10 years ago

The headline omits the important "for smartphones" clause:

We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones

Other uses of the Firefox OS platform (at least the Gecko and Gonk layers) are still being developed, including for television:

We will continue to assess the stack to determine fit with new projects coming through the innovation process [...] As of today, we have 3 projects that have passed the first gate including SmartTV, and about a dozen more projects are prepping for review.

BuckRogers3• 10 years ago

I've always loved Mozilla products, having been a non-stop Firefox user since beta (if anyone reads this at Mozilla, never ever kill the toolbar RSS feed support!). Netscape prior, of course. I was hopeful for FirefoxOS and kept waiting for it to land in the US.

I've always felt that Mozilla should rebrand Firefox as simply 'Mozilla'. The Mozilla browser. Using their dinosaur logo as the mascot. It just sounds hipper, more catchy, marketing matters. Normals seem to consistently mangle Firefox as 'Foxfire' among other oddities. I think this would help progress the Mozilla foundation/corporation's efforts.

For interesting mobile initiatives, we still have Ubuntu Touch to keep an eye on. Their phone->PC docking idea is pretty good and makes a lot of sense.

ForHackernews• 10 years ago

I've always felt that Mozilla should rebrand Firefox as simply 'Mozilla'.

You're about ten years too late: http://www-archive.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/

BuckRogers3• 10 years ago

That was Mozilla Navigator, as opposed to Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla Suite was the package.

xiaq• 10 years ago

GTK 1! I never thought it existed :)

currysausage• 10 years ago

I've always felt that Mozilla should rebrand Firefox as simply 'Mozilla'.

And throw away the last bit of brand recognition they have? Actually, they plan to do the opposite: call unrelated products Firefox Xyz because that's the brand that people know.

Firefox (then Firebird) should have been Mozilla Browser, and Thunderbird should have been Mozilla Mail [1]. The codenames proved to be quite catchy though.

Normals seem to consistently mangle Firefox as 'Foxfire' among other oddities.

Meanwhile in a parallel universe, normals consistently call Mozilla Browser the Godzilla Browser.

[1] http://www.actsofvolition.com/files/mozillabranding/

BuckRogers3• 10 years ago

That's the default response right? I've thought about that, I just wonder if the current branding is an uphill battle, or was it the right choice? The regular users know what they're using and the day it updates to Mozilla with the new logo would generate some news and probably many people who left for Chrome to try it again. I don't think it's even been considered for the reason you state.

But if it were attempted, the Electrolysis launch would be the time.

kmfrk4• 10 years ago

Some people seem gleeful about this, but Firefox OS is actually an excellent Smart TV OS, especially at a time where a lot of manufacturers feel comfortable inserting ads into people's TVs without their consent.

It's obviously ridiculous that this is something we need to deal with in the first place, but I'm definitely happy that I got one of the few TVs without a scummy OS.

The smartphone OS was always a vague idea that never materialized into anything. Part of that was probably a result of the frustration that we never really got that Nokia OS for lower-end devices. Instead we're left with Android.

I plan on making the TV OS a big parameter for the TVs I buy in the future. (Which feels about just as dumb as doing the same with future microwave ovens, but this is the world we live in.)

Fortunately I won't be buying a new TV within the next three years. I've genuinely been wondering whether I need to set up an intermediary Raspberry Pi ad-blocker to safeguard my Internet of nonsense at home.

striking• 10 years ago

It wasn't going to function well as a TV OS though.

The UI descriptions and mockups were overly complex and seemed like something designed for a computer rather than a smart TV.

I like how open Mozilla was about it. I just disliked the actual OS, and how it was made.

kmfrk4• 10 years ago

I don't know whether we'll ever have the privilege of a great TV OS, though. The iTV was supposed to deliver us (from) that, but looks like we're stuck with just the Apple TV for now.

I'm not impressed with any interfaces, but at least my Panasonic's FxOS is better than my old Panasonic's.

pjmlp5• 10 years ago

I just buy plain old dumb TVs, no need to worry about anything.

As for FirefoxOS I never understood the point of it.

OpenMoko tried to be an open smartphone platform and failed.

Nokia did it for Symbian OS with web widgets and it failed.

Palm did it with WebOS, with the plus side of allowing C++ bindings for games, and it failed.

Android and iOS allow for web widgets and cordova like apps and there usually have bad feedback from users vs native apps.

Windows Phone allows for first class development with web based tech and few bother to use it, rather CoreCLR and WinRT.

OEM and network providers always have the final word, they learned not to let others follow Apple's footsteps.

That was a very far hard attempt from the begging.

I rather see Mozilla spending their efforts in Firefox, Thunderbird and Rust.

blux• 10 years ago

I just buy plain old dumb TVs, no need to worry about anything.

This is a bit short sighted. In the near future, we will only have 'smart' TVs to chose from.

tdkl• 10 years ago

The next one in line : Ubuntu Mobile.

Such a shame they didn't focus on desktop, the timing was great with Windows 8 being a shit show.

Kurtz79• 10 years ago

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/the-fight-for-a-third...

janvdberg• 10 years ago

It's kind of striking that last Saturday Mozilla held this talk @FOSDEM: https://fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/osd_firefox_os_why_we...

briandh2• 10 years ago

Not quite, looking at the slides.

It finishes up with two slides of "tough lessons" basically explaining why it failed as a phone OS, and then "what's next?" containing connected device plans. So it's pretty well in line with the announcement.

rms_returns• 10 years ago

I really hope they put some of the relieved workforce in the Thunderbird project. At the very least, this issue I've raised on their bugzilla since more than ten days ago can find some resolution!

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1242257

vocatus_gate• 10 years ago

Everyone could see that coming from the day it launched I think. I had zero confidence it would survive long-term. A misguided and frankly confusing product, launched in direct competition with strong, strong competitors in the form of iOS and Android. Didn't stand a chance.

pette• 10 years ago

Firefox OS was dead the moment Mozilla decided that the first-generation developer phones will never get 2.x (or in most cases even 1.3).

Alienating the first wave of developers... Way to go, Mozilla.

timsayshey• 10 years ago

Is anyone keeping track? In the last 7 days Parse was shut down, then a couple days ago Dropbox alternative Copy was shut down and now Firefox OS. Anyone else curious about what's next?

yorik• 10 years ago

Wow, who could have ever imagined that a fake operating system that in reality was a mobile browser supporting "applications" written in html, css and javascript was going to miserably fail?

keshab• 10 years ago

This is a good news and kudos to them for trying to increase our options. FF OS might have taken off had it been a little bit earlier. It took a lot of time for Android to get to where it is right now. Even for Google, it took them a lot to get it right. It was a good project but lets face it, there was no way it would have been more than just an experiment. Firefox OS never had a chance to begin with. I hope they've learned their lesson. Now they can focus on their real projects.

hirokiky• 10 years ago

I have a FxOS device, flame. But actually it was not so useful. and utilities on OS (meaning Gaia) were little bit cheap.

FirefoxOS is interesting I think. Browser is enough feature for OS in these days. but... it was not so enough in real life.

jslakro• 10 years ago

It's sad

listic2• 10 years ago

What are 'Sony Z3C foxfooding devices'? Sony Z3 Compact smartphones? [1] They are my favorite smartphones of relatively current crop (powerful, compact, great battery life - as compact and great as it gets nowadays, anyway) but I haven't heard of them being used for Firefox OS.

[1] http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z3_compact-6538.php

jvehent• 10 years ago

They were distributed to several hundreds mozillians last year. I used one for a while. Excellent device, very responsive with FxOS on it. If it had enough apps, it could have been competitive...

hardwaresofton6• 10 years ago

tl/dr: ffos is not dead, it's open source, and it's already a product, not a PoC.

I probably read like a broken record at this point:

Despite Mozilla dropping development on it, FirefoxOS is still not "dead". Open source things only die when no one has interest in them any more. AFAIK FirefoxOS is still the most open mobile operating system. If some other company decides to take up where mozilla left off, fork FirefoxOS, and do stuff with it, they can make a run at it (this is extremely unlikely).

The platform itself is pretty amazing already - It does all the actual "phone" stuff just great -- making calls, texting (minus a snafu with SMS group messaging on the version I'm on). The apps are web apps. The phone is almost literally one huge browser. There isn't that much more to add! Yeah it'd be nice if it had more "native" app support, but honestly, any site with a mobile website (or responsive design) has "native" app support. If you've used version 2.x, you're probably pretty satisfied with what your phone does now anyway. I know I am.

FirefoxOS will still be useful as long as people keep making apps for it (and again, apps are basically webpages, so even if it's not distributed on the marketplace, people can still webpages to homescreen), and it will be useful as long as people want to use it. It is already viable open source mobile OS. I am grateful to mozilla for taking the time to make it.

I'm excited to see what they do in connected devices, because despite the moves mozilla has made recently (hello, pocket, addon signing requirement), I still would much rather have them build software that was running on my toaster than anyone else.

[EDIT] - Also, check out the comments on the site. They're great.

yeukhon2• 10 years ago

Sure thing. You can say about BSD as not all major players today deploy BSD servers, but the community is strill thriving. But I bet to you FFOS is going to be a much smaller community over time and eventually so small only those people are dogfooding themselves. Code will live on but nothing else and that's why people called it dead.

There is a difference between dead in popular perception and dead eternally. Eventually you will left with maybe one person looking at the code and then nobody ever looking at the code even on a monthly basis.

Who knows.

snom3802• 10 years ago

Sure. But do you think FFOS will be closer to FreeBSD or closer to WebOS?

wwweston• 10 years ago

Wish I could give this more upvotes.

snom3802• 10 years ago

So, are there anyone that are working on developing FFOS further? If not, it's dead for all practical purposes. Just like WebOS is dead even though that was open sourced as well.

I'm not excited at all to see what they do with connected devices, because I expect them (and their partners) to have a go at it for a couple of years and then shut it down when the next shiny new market opportunity appears.

I have no idea why Firefox would have an advantage in this space over Google/Android. I'd also trust them more, but I just don't see it.

hardwaresofton6• 10 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but WebOS was open sourced after it started failing, and it was only parts of webos that were first "open sourced". I think the contexts are different, from day one b2g has been open source, and has had a contingent of supporters.

Plus, WebOS never actually got as far as FirefoxOS did on physical devices -- FFOS is powering phones for people all across the world right now. From what I remember WebOS got mostly relegated ot tablets.

I understand and share some of your frustration with their seemingly indecisiveness and willingess to drop certain projects to chase other ones. But can you blame them? They're trying to stay profitable.

So I think they'd have a little bit of an advantage becuase they've essentially ported the web model to run on embedded devices, and I think that could make it easier for manufacturers to integrate. Instead of learning to make some special kind of android app (+ ide support of course), manufacturers only have to worry about making webpages, and using some `window.mozFridge.changeTemperature` API, rather than something heavier.

My statement was more about trust than some implicit advantage in IoT (though I think the case could be made that they do have some advantages).

Brakenshire• 10 years ago

I wonder whether they'll consider bringing it back to smartphones, if/when Servo starts to make inroads into the Firefox for Android codebase. FirefoxOS seemed way too late for any early mover advantage, and too early to present web apps as a credible replacement for native apps (they can replace relatively simple apps but not much further at the moment).

In some ways, it would have been better if Mozilla had just kept it chugging along as a proof of concept, which you could install voluntarily on rooted phones, and use it as a basis for developing the API's, and the parallel layout engine, which along with a few years of development in client-side javascript should improve the reach of web apps. It was in some ways too late, and in some ways too early for the grand launch.

Flimm2• 10 years ago

Can the mods edit the title? Mozilla officially stopped their development efforts of Firefox OS on smartphones, not the brand in general.

toggle• 10 years ago

The title is accurate. People think of Firefox OS as a smartphone operating system; Mozilla is killing that off. They may be reusing the name on something else, but Firefox OS, (as we know it right now,) is being discontinued.

Flimm2• 10 years ago

I honestly thought when I saw the title that Mozilla were now killing Firefox OS for Internet of Things, in addition for Firefox OS for phones. Turns out, the title was misleading. Plus, it's not the title of the article.

briandh2• 10 years ago

The title is not accurate. Regardless of whether "people" (excluding me, it seems) think of Firefox OS as a phone OS, Mozilla has been using the name in TV usage for two years [1].

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/01/06/mozilla-and-partner...

dang2• 10 years ago

Yes. Sorry that took so long.

The submitted title was "Mozilla officially killed Firefox OS". Submitters: it's against HN's rules to editorialize titles like that. The site guidelines ask you to use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait. Making a title more misleading and more linkbait is the opposite of that.

In this case we changed it to what seems to be the most relevant subtitle. That's ok for submitters to do as well. What's not ok is to make up your own sensational language.

shmerl• 10 years ago

Instead of FirefoxOS, I'd rather see Mozilla pushing Web applications on Sailfish and Plasma Mobile.

droopybuns• 10 years ago

The timing of this is terrible.

I feel that there is real evidence of Google influencing the regulatory landscape and we really need a viable alternative to google for people that can't afford an iPhone.

Google's data collection on android devices is so far past the creepy line (all under the dual use rationale of protecting users from bad things- cert abuse in chrome or malware prevention in verify apps).

asadotzler• 10 years ago

Boot to Gecko is an open source technology stack. Firefox OS is a product built on that stack. B2G can live on if there's interest from enough hackers and testers.

A decade ago, Mozilla abandoned the Mozilla Application Suite in favor of Firefox, both built on the Gecko technology stack. Because a product ends doesn't mean the open source technology ends too.

(BTW, volunteers picked up the Mozilla Application Suite, renamed it to Seamonkey, and it still runs today.)

hackuser• 10 years ago

This worries me, and not because I'm a user of FirefoxOS.

Much of Mozilla's value is its influence; its ability to push for open standards that prioritize end user's needs. Before mobile, when ~20% of the world uses Firefox to access your service, you couldn't ignore them. But without a meaningful presence on any mobile platform, how much influence does Mozilla have?

IoT is another huge space and I hope they have success building influence there.

3ris3d• 10 years ago

i had the opportunity to work on the FF OS and it was very similar to building a chrome extension or phone-gap solution. This was back in 2013 and the interface, support was very sub par. I worked directly with FF on the deployment of our app! The devices / OS version mix played a big role in tuning, retuning nad detuning the app. I wondered how long would it take for FFto kill off the initiative! 2.5 years!!

cpprototypes• 10 years ago

Mozilla/Firefox has a serious issue marketshare issue and it's not clear if they're aware. I'm beginning to see pages that break on Firefox or have warnings that Safari, Chrome, IE must be used. If Firefox doesn't find a way to gain or at least maintain marketshare, they risk becoming irrelevant. Since Firefox is their main revenue, this should be considered a company survival situation. But they're not acting like it.

hamxiaoz• 10 years ago

1. Pure web tech on phone OS is simply not a choice, Facebook did it and failed too. 2. It's better to use new tech (pure web) in new market such as IoT. If using in existing market (iOS and Android), customers will ask: is the user experience better than the existing ones? And that's why they decide to end the development: "However, we weren't able to offer the best user experience possible and so we will stop offering Firefox OS smartphones..."

“We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

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