
Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war - je_bailey
http://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-to-open-first-world-front-in-firefox-os-war/
======
SwellJoe
I'm unreasonably excited about Firefox OS. Android really isn't open enough
for my taste, and my trust of Google has diminished over the years, as they've
encroached on more and more of the web and my data on that web. Apple has
always been awful for the open web. And I'd rather write JavaScript and HTML
than Java.

~~~
MichaelGG
Android's open enough for me, but what I find unhappy is that Google seems
intent on tricking people into revealing more and more information. It often
reminds me to turn on history tracking, despite having said no many times.

Every time I use the Play store, it tries to get me to enter a phone number.
The way it does this is by popping up a dialog, with no buttons _except
continue_. It makes it look like you MUST do this (there's no indication you
can back out), even though it's optional. That's deceptive.

And of course, the idiotic permissions system. Want to check to see if a
user's on the phone? Gotta also get access to who they call and their IMEI and
other permanent identifiers.

Basically, all the time I'm on my Android device, I feel like I've gotta be
extra cautious, that Google's out to screw me over. Unfortunately, MS is just
flubbing their system by pumping it full of crap. (They were paying devs in
3rd world countries $2000 to push out junk apps. They refuse to take down
garbage/scams. They even published fake Windows Updates on the store, and
other stuff that falsely claims to be by MS.) MS could fix it all immediately
by offering Android app compatibility. I'd switch in a minute.

I use Firefox as my browser, mainly because of this. I wish I could switch to
another smartphone platform.

~~~
krisgenre
I am a guy who gives everything to Google, have every god damn thing turned on
on my Nexus. It's not that I trust Google, I have come to terms with the fact
that privacy is dead.

The overall experience when you do give Goggle everything is quite good (
Google Now ) but I too second your opinion about Android permissions, its
really idiotic.

~~~
huuu
BS. Privacy is not dead. You just gave up your privacy because you wanted a
smartphone and wanted to use Google Now.

Privacy while connected to the internet is almost dead but even then it's weak
to just surrender. And I think more people are fighting than you might think.
Using an app like TextSecure for example is giving back a little privacy.

------
Brakenshire
I help a lot of middle aged and elderly people who are not all that tech
literate, and get asked a lot for recommendations, and I definitely think
there is a niche for something between feature phones and smart phones. A lot
of people are not interested in putting in the investment of time and money to
get up to pace using Android or an iPhone. There's quite a big step to using
those devices, for instance in managing data use, or in the way that phone
functions recede amongst new smartphone features. With Android as a new user
you can even for all intents and purposes lose your dialler, by pressing and
holding the icon incorrectly.

iOS isn't interested in meeting that market, because of low cost, and if they
did attempt it both Android and iOS might well suffer in trying to alter and
dilute their brands and the unity of their interfaces.

It also works quite well as an target market, because a lot of the apps that
would be expected are quite simple, and shouldn't be too difficult to create
using web technologies - maybe news or magazine apps, cinema or TV listings,
weather and so on.

Combine the right interface with a price of £50-£100, a good battery life, and
a credible promise over security and privacy, and it definitely seems like an
option which could get into the retail stores, and a place in the market of
perhaps 2-3%, which is a good place to start.

~~~
mmahemoff
I agree there's a good opportunity for simpler phones that still get some of
the benefits of smartphones rather than a 10 year old Nokia.

That said, I don't see much in the article to suggest this is what Mozilla is
going after. Yes, some of the devices will be cheap, but there are plenty of
cheap Android and Windows phones too.

Even if an OS did target just this market, the problem would still be a lack
of apps. They might not be the kind of users who install 10 home screens full
of apps, but many of them will be interested in a handful of apps in different
categories, so the long-tail marketplace still matters. That's where there's
an advantage to an Android phone customised for simple usage, but still with
the ability for a user (or their tech-savvy friends/family) to install a wide
range of apps if/when they want to.

~~~
Brakenshire
They do talk about that market to a certain extent in the article, which I was
glad to see.

I think on limited apps, it's worth saying that beyond a relatively small
number of apps like Facebook or WhatsApp, someone moving from a feature phone
won't necessarily have any interest in existing apps on other systems. In
general they won't want Google Maps or Waze or Telenav Scout (and won't ask
for those while buying the phone), they want to type 'directions' or 'weather'
and have something useful come up.

That lowers the barrier to entry, although of course there is still the basic
requirement that enough useful apps are there, which imo doesn't yet currently
apply on FxOS.

------
tvararu
Got to try a Firefox OS phone (or three) last week at a short hackathon in
Telefonica Digital's offices in London.

The first device I tried (and apparently the one with the beefiest hardware)
was an Alcatel One Touch Fire. My enthusiasm took a sharp turn downward from
the moment I unlocked the device; accomplished by sliding the screen left to
right, the animation was jerky, did not track my finger accurately, and
skipped to the end when I let go of the screen halfway through the width of
the screen.

One of the hosts was quick to point out that the lock screen interaction was
actually custom programmed by Alcatel, and so is the rest of the user
interface, at which point he pointed to try a different device running
something closer to "stock Firefox OS."

I'm enthralled by the promise of helping the web win by creating a device
category where the web is a first-class citizen, but I'm doubtful it will
happen if manufacturers outsource their tasteless UI customizations to web dev
interns.

Sunspider came out at roughly 1600ms, which places the mid-2013 Alcatel
somewhere in the performance bracket of an iPhone 4 (mid-2010, flagship
device). Despite the rough benchmarks, I ran some Famo.us demos and they were
surprisingly usable, and I could easily get a physics-backed drag interaction
to run smoothly inside the browser.

I'm waiting to try out a Firefox OS phone with cutting edge hardware.

------
austinhallock
It has definitely been an up-hill battle for Firefox OS trying to gain market
share, but I think everyone (including Mozilla) expected that. Having played
with one of their earlier test units and the newer Firefox Flame with FFOS
2.0, it has come a long way. Even our Android-obsessed designer loves the
Flame.

It's a tough situation to be in where they need to improve the quality of the
ecosystem, but need users to convince the big-wig devs to developer for the
OS. The total user numbers we've seen from them is certainly better than we
expected, but still too small to convince a major developer to build for
Firefox OS on numbers alone.

If their platform wasn't the web, I'm not sure they'd have much of a chance at
success, but being able to convince a developer the values of building for the
web is much easier than building for a fairly new mobile OS.

------
listic
What is the _official_ way to learn about Firefox OS releases? I can't figure
out which version of FxOS has which status, despite being subscribed to
mailing lists.

Flame update page [1] has images for 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and 3.0. LG/KDDI Fx0 has
apparently shipped in Japan with version 2.0 [2] on December 25, 2014. All
this suggests that at least version 2.0 _has_ been released. Yet Wikipedia
page [3] doesn't have release date for version 2.0 onwards, and I don't know
where else to look.

[1] MDN: Updating your Flame [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox_OS/Phone_guide/F...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox_OS/Phone_guide/Flame/Updating_your_Flame)

[2] Mozilla Press Center: Mozilla and KDDI Launch First Firefox OS Smartphone
in Japan [https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/12/mozilla-and-kddi-
laun...](https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/12/mozilla-and-kddi-launch-first-
firefox-os-smartphone-in-japan-4/)

[3] Wikipedia: Firefox OS | Release history
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS#Release_history](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS#Release_history)

~~~
asutherland
The release management page is
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/B2G_Landing](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/B2G_Landing).
You can probably think of the code complete date as the lower bound on a
production device shipping with that version of the software.

------
xiaq
Firefox OS, being based on HTML/CSS/JavaScript, sounds a lot more hackable
than Android to me. Well, you can hack Android pretty heavily - forking
CyanogenMod, writing Xposed plugins, etc., but Java is just obscure and the
compile/deploy/debug cycle is too cumbersome for casual hacking.

Hence I look forward to Firefox OS as platform I can easily hack, but I am not
sure whether it really is. Could someone with experience tell me:

* How easy is it to deploy a FxOS app? How is the remote debugging experience?

* How easy is it to hack the core apps (e.g. phone, SMS)?

* How easy is it to hack the "framework" (e.g. window manager, status bar)? Is it even written in JavaScript?

~~~
fabrice_d
* deploying apps is super easy - either host them on a web server or push them from firefox's webIDE, and remote debugging using the firefox devtools just works.

* hacking core apps is totally doable. You need a rooted device to update them though. Currently the best ones would be nexus 5 or sony z3(c).

* everything that is displayed is html/js/css. What you call "framework" here is part of the system app ([https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/tree/master/apps/system](https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/tree/master/apps/system)). It's a fairly large app, but it's where a lot of the fun stuff is!

~~~
darklajid
Hijacking this:

Is is possible to replace system parts with 3rd party stuff? I'm mostly
talking "change the keyboard" here?

If it is, is this possible by modifying/replacing the current keyboard only or
can this be something out of tree?

~~~
fabrice_d
We support 3rd party keyboards now, so you can provide one out of tree.

------
on_and_off
I really wish to see a great third mobile OS with a marketshare in the two
digits. I appreciate the spirit behind FFOS, so I would like to see it take
that place. I am not sure of how they want to achieve that though. However,
AFAIK, FFOS does not really bring anything new to the table, so I have trouble
seeing how it could make an impact in the first-world.

~~~
fabrice_d
Not being tied to an app silo is pretty unique. Unfortunately most people are
either ok with that or haven't yet realized. Uphill battle for sure.

~~~
icebraining
Not really. Android lets you sideload apps pretty easily, and it even has
third-party repositories like F-Droid.

~~~
fabrice_d
That does not make the transition from iOS to Android or vice versa easier.
Once you have invested in one ecosystem, you lose your investment if you
switch. That does not happen on the web, where you can switch from a browser
to another with a very marginal cost.

~~~
icebraining
Actually, it does. For example, you can run them on the Samsung Z1 which runs
Tizen (not Android), thanks to OpenMobile's compatibility layer:
[http://www.androidcentral.com/samsungs-tizen-
powered-z1-riva...](http://www.androidcentral.com/samsungs-tizen-
powered-z1-rival-android-one-if-not-all-android)

------
Aissen
Here's what Mozilla needs to "fix" in Firefox OS IMO:

\- have real browser. Seriously. Firefox on Android is a _much_ better
browser.

\- handle the software, and the updates, Microsoft-style. Maybe have OEMs pay
for this service, maybe involve the community. Seriously, all Firefox OS
devices sold have an ancient version of the OS. It means I'm safer when I'm
using Firefox on Android than when I'm using a Firefox OS phone. I understand
the tradeoffs that led them to this decision (their dependency on the Android
stack for example), but they seriously need to rethink it.

\- allow for native code to run. I know it's hard. Even Google with it's uber-
optimized (or so they thought at the time) Dalvik (for small phones)
understood the need for the NDK. I'm not sure asm.js can cut it, as I've yet
to see console-class games on Firefox OS like there are on Android and iOS.

\- Of course, they need to continue their groundwork on APIs. There shouldn't
be a thing you can do on say, iOS or WP and not in Firefox OS (and I'm not
saying Android because it gives a _lot_ of power to developers).

\- They need a flagship phone, for everyone. Not a "developer phone" (although
it can act as one), but a real flagship.

------
spiralpolitik
Firefox OS is a great idea, and if it was 2010 it would probably stand a good
chance at succeeding with the correct launch strategy. But its not 2010.

This weekend I had a chance to play with a Jolla smartphone. Hardware wise it
pretty good, and had some really good ideas, but the software was half baked.
While in time both Jolla and Firefox OS could become great products, but time
ran out a while back.

You now have to come to market with all the pieces (and then some). You can't
adopt the "build it and they will come mantra" because unless you can give
users a compelling reason to switch without losing functionality they won't
come. The hardware wars are long gone. The app wars ended a few years back. We
are now in the ecosystem wars and Mozilla (and Jolla) appear to have no
answers for this (or have answers "coming soon").

The sad fact is that from here on out it's iOS and Android in a tussle neither
can win, and unless the phone market resets itself like it did in 2007 there
is very little anybody else can do.

~~~
onion2k
There are a lot more people who can write a web app than a mobile app, by a
factor of 10 at least. Give them a platform where it's _trivial_ to make an
app (easier than, say, Cordova/PhoneGap), and make it free, and you could
easily disrupt the mobile market to a small degree.

If FirefoxOS is a success the next challenge will come from the fact that iOS
and Android could easily have HTML5 apps too with a native WebviewUI 'player'
app, and if FirefoxOS gets any traction their respective developers will add
that functionality quickly. Hopefully, for consumers and developers alike,
they'd all have compatible APIs so mobile apps would be truly cross-platform,
but that's not very likely.

~~~
pjmlp
I would believe that if Web OS, Windows Phone HTML apps, Tizen, Blackberry,
ChromeOS didn't already prove users and developers alike don't care.

------
aubergene
I was given a Firefox OS phone at Mozfest last year. I lost my other phone
earlier this year and so used it exclusively for four weeks. I'm sorry to say
it's pretty terrible at this stage. I was using v2 of Firefox OS.

The problems are broadly that it was slow, unreliable and poorly designed. It
would just become completely unresponsive a couple of times a week, requiring
the battery to be removed to restart. There are very few well known apps.
Twitter seems to be the only one, and it was so slow for scrolling that I gave
up using it. The included apps were just placeholders to install apps, almost
all of them only worked online. I wouldn't recommend getting one to anybody.
I'm sure you could buy a cheap secondhand Android and have a better
experience. It was worse than Android 1.6.

There's such a huge mountain of work for the Mozilla developers to get this to
be in anyway competitive to Android. I think Mozilla would be better to
concentrate their resources elsewhere.

~~~
jbigelow76
Maybe Mozilla just needs to launch their own Android AOSP implementation and
provide developers with a way to build fully native Android apps with
JavaScript.

Or is AOSP not going to run on the kind of hardware FFOS is targeting?

~~~
dblohm7
Mozilla has already developed technology to make web apps appear as native on
Android. Go and check out the Firefox Marketplace.

------
GigabyteCoin
>programmers could write an app just once with Web technologies that span not
just iOS, Android, and Firefox OS, but also Windows Phone, BlackBerry OS,
Tizen, Ubuntu and any other mobile operating system that arrives tomorrow.

This, to me, is the most powerful prospect of Firefox OS.

I have been "writing apps" in HTML, Javascript and PHP ever since I can
remember.

They are just as responsive and useful as any app I have ever used on my
Android. Which works fine, but had recently been creeping the heck out of me
because it's distributed by Google.

Every app is virtually a simple website imho. Look at google docs, for
example. Angry birds could easily be written in javascript. As could flappy
bird, and virtually every game I can think of.

I see no reason to bother writing a piece of software that can only be used on
Androir or iOS, except for sheer greed, so I haven't. It's worked out well for
me so far.

Here's to hoping Firefox OS comes to the first world sooner rather than later.

~~~
randomchars
> I have been "writing apps" in HTML, Javascript and PHP ever since I can
> remember. > They are just as responsive and useful as any app I have ever
> used on my Android.

I've yet to see any mobile web app that's as responsive and useful as a native
one. They're slow, can't make use of platform features (e.g intents on
android, native google login flow) and they always look out of place.

------
codewithcheese
I hope Mozilla make a phone aimed at tech first movers (hacker news crowd
etc), we seem to be the most likely to support attempts at openness. It would
have to be high end though. A bit like Ubuntu tried to do with the Edge.

~~~
fabrice_d
If you have a Sony z3 or z3c, you can build and flash firefox OS on it. These
are really nice devices imho.

~~~
eropple
Doing this blows up your camera's low-light performance. Don't do this unless
you don't like your phone (and I like mine, so I sure won't).

------
bla2
I'd rather they'd push Firefox on Android more. Firefox OS seems stillborn,
but Firefox/Android is a good product and mobile could need more browser
competition.

~~~
lambda
I feel like one thing they could do to promote Firefox OS would be to make it
possible to run Firefox OS applications on Android; create an installer/app
store that would allow you to install them as if they were native apps, but
they would be using a shared runtime.

That would really help to make it worthwhile to develop FxOS apps; actually
having a large installed base of phones that they could be used on, in order
to help bootstrap the ecosystem up.

~~~
Brakenshire
> I feel like one thing they could do to promote Firefox OS would be to make
> it possible to run Firefox OS applications on Android; create an
> installer/app store that would allow you to install them as if they were
> native apps, but they would be using a shared runtime.

Good news! That already exists in Firefox for Android, it's called Firefox
Marketplace, it works by packaging up the apps as apks, which means they can
operate as native android apps with access to native device APIs.

------
shmerl
I really respect Firefox OS for being fully open, but I dislike the lack of
native applications. I wish normal glibc Linux mobile distros (not Android)
would gain more traction. Sailfish OS is great, but they don't seem to be
interested in opening up the UI and most of the core applications.

~~~
iso8859-1
What do you think about Tizen?

~~~
shmerl
Tizen is interesting, but it has the downside of the old Meego - too much
control from Samsung. When Nokia and Intel pulled the plug, Meego
disintegrated and only community fork (Mer) survived, on which Sailfish is
actually built. Tizen has a similar risk. And it's not a major priority for
Samsung it seems.

------
realusername
If you want to improve the quality of Firefox, there is a simple way to do it,
just download Firefox Beta for Android and Firefox Beta for your computer,
it's helping them to improve the quality of the stable releases.

It's a really easy step to help Mozilla without changing anything to your
habits.

------
jrochkind1
I would love to try a firefox OS phone.

Verizon seems like an odd choice in the U.S., to me they seem like a 'premium'
brand somewhat more expensive than their competitors, while Firefox OS, at
least prior to know, seems to have been positioning itself as a budget option.

~~~
abrowne
Verizon has the best coverage in rural areas, at least where people I know
live: southeast Minnesota, western Wisconsin, and Iowa. Many of my (and my
friends') relatives in these areas still use flip phones or have reluctantly
upgraded to iPhones or Android. Verizon is wise to have an option that's not a
smartphone and not total junk.

I just upgraded my ZTE Open C to FxOS 3.0. This phone is similar, but worse,
in specs to the original Moto E. It runs well, as long as you are using it for
basic purposes.

~~~
sutro
Any tips or links you can share for getting your Open C to FxOS 3.0? Did you
have to first upgrade the base image from JellyBean to KitKat? Were you able
to shallow flash a nightly image or did you have to build everything yourself?
I have an Open C and am on 2.1, but haven't yet tried to move past that.
Thanks!

~~~
abrowne
I had played with using the Flame images a while back, but I had never gotten
around to building anything myself. Just a couple days ago I read that the EU
Ebay version (but not the FR version!) is the same as (or similar enough to)
the US version, so the MozFR builds here work:
[http://builds.firefoxos.mozfr.org/doc/en/devices/zte-
open-c-...](http://builds.firefoxos.mozfr.org/doc/en/devices/zte-open-c-eu)

I haven't tried SIM/phone-related function yet, but everything else is working
for me.

------
DigitalSea
Firefox is going to have to fight to get any kind of market share. As
Microsoft has shown, you can have great hardware, great interface and tonnes
of money behind you, but it does not buy you market share. As long as Mozilla
is prepared for the uphill battle they are about to fight, I think they might
have a chance.

They really need to carve out a niche like they've done in non first-world
countries. Merely being the same as Android or iOS is not going to be enough.
They need to get developers on board, but even so, will they have the games
that most consumers like to play?

It's a tricky situation, but one nonetheless I am excited to see what happens
from.

------
contingencies
A strong opportunity for FirefoxOS growth is supporting ad-hoc and mesh link
layers and providing an intelligent APIs that support that access without
compromising security.

It's the anti-Google, anti-carrier, anti-corporate, anti-surveillance, anti-
government, pro-efficiency, pro-security, pro-developing world feature
everyone wants but nobody can have because none of the mobile OSs support it.

Read bug+PDF @
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=945047](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=945047)

------
higherpurpose
I hope Mozilla puts Servo into Firefox OS sooner rather than later. Same for
rebuilding the whole thing in Rust, although that will probably last 3+ years.

~~~
dbaupp
The Servo team have actually been experimenting with "boot to servo" recently.
Their blog has some photos and a description:
[http://blog.servo.org/2015/02/10/twis-23/](http://blog.servo.org/2015/02/10/twis-23/)

------
ralmidani
I really want to support Firefox OS and abandon Android. But Mozilla keeps
missing the mark as far as I'm concerned. I don't want a flip phone, or a low-
spec phone, or one that's only available in Japan. I just want something with
a decent quad-core and more than 1gb of ram that I can purchase in the US and
that will come with a warranty.

------
Lio
OT: Hmm, something seems very wrong with that CNET page. It loads ok but it's
unreadable on iOS.

As soon as I try to scroll it goes haywire. Anyone else seeing that or have a
link to a static version?

------
blueskin_
I can't see how this would go well. Chrome OS has been a big flop, and pushing
that onto phones is just going to pile more disadvantages on top of that.

The everything-as-a-website concept is fatally flawed anyway, as while it is
often possible to find a single-purpose site to do a specific thing such as
converting file formats, you're completely at the mercy of an unknown third
party and their privacy policy (as well as promise not to tamper with your
file) if you do. It's a privacy disaster waiting to happen. That, and
javascript is a horrible and inefficient language not fit for purpose even
years ago, so certainly not on devices with weak CPUs and limited battery.

------
emeidi
"front" ... "war"?! Mozilla is taking a knife to a gunfight with the 800 pound
gorillas out there. This is going to be a really long and bloody war ... NOT.

------
fit2rule
Anyone know if I can easily port an OpenGL ES-1.1 based application, written
in C++, to FirefoxOS? Or will I have to re-write it in HTML5/js?

~~~
frik
You can compile your C++ with emscripten to asm.js target. HTML5 has WebGL
which is based OpenGL ES 2.0.

More than 95% of all FirefoxOS devices support WebGL and the number of
FirefoxOS users is increasing rapidly:
[http://webglstats.com](http://webglstats.com)

I suggest you this blog series, this guy ported his OpenGL game demos to WebGL
and wrote long articles about it (Part 77 - 82): [http://www.sea-of-
memes.com/LetsCode77/LetsCode77.html](http://www.sea-of-
memes.com/LetsCode77/LetsCode77.html)

------
SixSigma
Slide out keyboard, woo, sign me up. The pop up keyboard is the thing I hate
most about my slab.

------
mythrowaway2
They need to move quickly before everyone who knows anything about it has quit
working at Mozilla.

