
KaiOS Technologies and Mozilla partner to enhance Gecko engine for KaiOS - nachtigall
https://www.kaiostech.com/press/kaios-technologies-and-mozilla-partner-to-enable-a-healthy-mobile-internet-for-everyone/
======
betamaxthetape
Youtuber 'TechAltar' made a video[1] on March 11 giving his perspective on
this.

While I wouldn't normally link to a YouTube video in this context, KaiOS
Technologies specifically reached out to TechAltar to provide him with details
so he could cover the story.

It's likely that one of the reasons KaiOS decided to reach out was because of
his July 2018 video[2] covering KaiOS, which has over a million views.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UPk3mpcDP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UPk3mpcDP4)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA_g2bQgOXY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA_g2bQgOXY)

~~~
richardboegli
Linked it yesterday (2020-03-11) with very little interest

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22545721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22545721)

------
ForHackernews
For those who don't know, KaiOS is a closed-source proprietary fork of
Mozilla's abandoned FirefoxOS for mobile devices. It's become extremely
popular for low-end feature phones in the developing world.

[https://www.androidauthority.com/kaios-phone-
review-979286/](https://www.androidauthority.com/kaios-phone-review-979286/)

~~~
butz
Not sure about closed source part:
[https://github.com/kaiostech](https://github.com/kaiostech)

~~~
ryukafalz
Unless I’m missing something, none of KaiOS’s UI is there. I see Gecko, the
kernel, some hardware enablement bits, and sample apps.

~~~
SirLotsaLocks
it's partially open source, so you don't get the stuff you mentioned.

------
butz
Even most recent version of KaiOS still runs on ancient Linux kernel 3.10.49
(2014) with Firefox 48.0a (2016). Not only lacking in features, but in
security updates too. With updated Gecko engine and proper PWA support KaiOS
might have a chance to compete with other mobile operating systems. And if
somehow this new engine will be released as open source, other projects, like
postmarketOS, might be able to use it too.

~~~
tmikaeld
That explains why I was unable to find any secure way to store keys or
sensitive data in their API[0] docs.

Which means user authentication apps will not come any time soon, like Authy
(Authenticators), Bitwarden (Password Managers) or BankID (Swedish) (Identity
Verifiers).

[0] [https://developer.kaiostech.com/api](https://developer.kaiostech.com/api)

~~~
SirLotsaLocks
Yeah, until they can get their act together on the security side this has no
chance to become as widely used like androidOS/iOS. For some places this is
less important than others. But as countries seem to be looking into digital-
only currency this will become more and more of a problem.

------
hardwaresofton
Please, KaiOS -- make a high end phone and hit the market that Mozilla never
did with FFOS -- wealthy developers who want a platform completely unburdened
with apple or google.

I'm not sure what's actually interesting about this partnership, it seems
obvious, but one thing I think is a huge problem is that they're mentioning
Gecko so much -- they should be trying to move to Servo as fast as possible.

There is already a project called servonk[0] that shows this might be very
possible.

[0]:
[https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk](https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk)

~~~
badsectoracula
Why does it have to be a web-browser-based platform?

I've bought a ZTE Open[0] back when FFOS was made since i am in general a fan
of Mozilla (despite their missteps now and then) since before Firefox was a
thing. The phone was a disaster - applications were very slow, everything was
sluggish and in some cases i lost calls because the UI had frozen due to
swapping or whatever it was doing.

Now, you might say that it was a low end device, but here is the thing. Years
before that i had a Nokia 6600 [1] which has literally less than 10% of the
resources ZTE Open has, yet it was able to run multiple applications without a
breeze (it was the first time i ran an IRC client on a phone) and even had
several 3D games (which, imagine that, used software rendering despite the
phone's limited CPU power).

(and of course there were PalmOS devices that were running on even weaker
hardware yet they provided UIs so responsive that put even the fastest Android
to shame -- but i have very limited exposure to those to judge properly)

Nokia 6600 puts in perspective how awful _Android_ is nowadays, let alone FFOS
that couldn't even manage to remain literally usable with more than ten times
the resources.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZTE_Open](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZTE_Open)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_6600](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_6600)

~~~
hajile
Web-based seems to make a lot of sense. Something like 90% of all apps in both
the Apple and Google store are already web apps. WASM makes this idea even
more appealing.

webOS in 2009 isn't even a comparison for a few important reasons.

* They were primarily RAM restricted at only 256mb.

* The then new v8 engine was about 4x slower than the current iteration (not to mention using much more RAM). Webkit is also much, much faster today

* They used QtWebkit -- a slow and grossly outdated version of webkit that offered bad performance even back then.

* There team seemed to have zero experience in actually using and optimizing a Linux OS.

A single-core 1GHz A5 chip was a crazy idea. The ZTE Open C came out 6 months
later *at the same price8 and had a better screen (480x800 instead of
320x480), twice the RAM (512mb instead of 256mb), and probably close to 4x the
CPU power (2x A7@1.2GHz instead of 1x A5@1GHz -- for reference, AMD runs an A5
as their security coprocessor on their x86 chips).

The ZTE Open was simply a mistake. It would have been a mistake no matter the
OS or native vs web apps.

~~~
badsectoracula
ZTE Open ran Firefox OS, not webOS. Though my point was that a much older an
_MUCH_ weaker ARM-based phone that didn't try to pretend the web is a platform
but instead used native code managed to both outperform and be a much more
usable device.

------
dang
Is there more to this story than a partnership press release? or should we
wait until something substantive appears?

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22no%20harm%20in%20waiting%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

------
rahimnathwani
It seems that if you want your app to be available on the KaiOS app store,
your app must have ads, and must use KaiOS' platform for those ads:

"Currently, we are prioritizing apps for QA that use KaiAds for monetization.
Visit the KaiAds website to learn more.

After you have integrated KaiAds, go through this checklist."

~~~
hajile
They can't really sell the OS, so that makes sense for everyone as devs can
offer the app for free too.

I wonder if there's a way to pay to opt out of their ads though...

