Guest post by So I’d like to tell you my version of the story of Firefox OS, from the birth of the Boot to Gecko open source software project as a mailing list post and an empty GitHub repository in 2011, through its commercial launch as the Firefox OS mobile operating system, right up until the “transition” of millions of lines of code to the community in 2016.
During this five year journey hundreds of members of the wider Mozilla community came together with a shared vision to disrupt the app ecosystem with the power of the open web. I’d like to reflect on our successes, our failures and the lessons we can learn from the experience of taking an open source browser based mobile operating system to market.
Maybe a long boring comment but I need to get this off my chest: the current state of affairs in mobile OSes is worse than Microsoft at the end of the 90’s.
It doesn’t matter which phone OS you choose, it isn’t cleaar what they do with you on your phone.
What does Apple or Google or any 3rd party monitor about you? Every bloody app wants the sun and the moon in privileges and I have NO idea what is phoned home to whatever party.
Most people have accepted this, but I certainly haven’t.
I don’t use Windows anymore for a long time and really I don’t miss anything. Linux is more powerful, safer, easier and more privacy friendly than any other desktop OS. It’s a no brainer for the desktop. It took 20 years but it’s there now.
The phone OS seems MUCH more troublesome from a Open Software perspective. I was about to buy a WebOS device (ok not totally open but at least in full motion) when HP bought it and f–ked it. Then Firefox and Ubuntu phone had a chance. Firefox really never got as far as Ubuntu I think.
I think Ubuntu phone had more chance but it seems the don’t persevere. So now we are stuck with 2 eco systems that we don’t have control of and we don’t have any clue what data they collect on our phone.
Please let’s hope that Ubuntu phone doesn’t fold either.
I didn’t buy your Meizu MX5 because it was too expensive and you Aquaris too cheap, but please keep going. Please.
The biggest issue I think for Open OSes is the closed firmware by Qualcomm. They are they biggest reason why nobody else can build some thing new. I don’t see any quick solution. Unlike PC hardware, phone hardware isn’t really open.
Unless that will change, no easy solutions
Edited 2017-03-04 02:29 UTC
I completely agree with everything you just said. I am also desperate for an open alternative.
This was an interesting article. I certainly hoped for good results from Firefox OS because of the need for an alternative, but the concept of using the web to store my data never appealed to me. I want more control of my data, not less.
One interesting point the author makes is the same as something I thought of in the context of the recent Palm OS articles on this site – maybe a tablet is a better starting platform than a phone. The licensing issues are mostly with the phone-related parts, and the phone functions are actually the least interesting part of the OS.
Apple or Google, yes. 3rd party? They cannot monitor what you don’t give them access to (unless they have some secret deal with Apple/Google or are exploiting a security hole). I’m guessing every app wanting all privileges is an Android thing. It isn’t something I’m familiar with on iOS. Just deny access to things they don’t need.
The problem here is as you say, people don’t seem to care, but that isn’t so much an mobile OS thing, they also don’t care about Facebook or Gmail, or Snapchat, or Instagram etc. etc. gathering every detail about the users they can.
“Apple or Google, yes. 3rd party? They cannot monitor what you don’t give them access to (unless they have some secret deal with Apple/Google or are exploiting a security hole).”
Not really true. On mobile, as a general rule, the cell company can monitor every thing you do, use, and communicate with unless you’re using strong end to end encryption they can’t MitM. Not only can they, they regularly do so, at least in the US and probably most of the rest of the world as well.
Cell company can only monitor anything that goes over their network. A cell company is also not a third party with regards to software, at least not on an iPhone where Apple do not allow them to install crapware. They cannot MitM anything on an iPhone, so yet again, just like the poster I replied to with regards to apps requesting all permissions, you are talking about an Android problem.
How do you know? You cannot know which connections anything possibly makes on an iphone, nor wether or not those connections are secured using a certificate and a key-pair.
Edited 2017-03-08 12:14 UTC
This is the problem. I truly don’t know who knows what.
All the legalese is incredibly vague.
So does Google know all the apps I have and which ones I use? (YES i think). Do they know I comment on FB and I upload pics? YES.
Most individual apps use some advertising provider. there are only about 3 or 4 so if you use several apps, they are likely to know.
Do they know I am not a Trump supporter because don’t watch Breitbart or Fox? YES. Google can single handedly change society by not showing certain search results and we wouldn’t even know it!! The fact that about 5 different companies know what you do, where you are and what you are worth is RIDICULOUS AND DANGEROUS.
But this is already a station too far for me anyway. PLEASE let me pay the full sum for the software and NO bloody stats/spying please. Especially not from companies who’s whole business is you…
“Product — Not try to create the cheapest smartphone. Create a mid-range tablet (and later possibly a smart TV stick) with a focus on web content, gaming and entertainment. Carve out a niche in developed markets first, rather than try to tackle emerging markets at scale.”
I never understood that target market to begin with. They were never going to compete on scale with what Nokia/Microsoft, later replaced with Google, was doing at the low end. Meanwhile, those of us looking for a viable alternative to duopoly were left to choose from $50 phones with 3 Megapixel flash-less screens and no software updates ever ever from the manufacturer — in 2013!
Why there wasn’t a readily available high-end flagship (yes, we use that word too often these days) is beyond me. Let me buy something very very nice so I can show it off in my circle of non-techie friends and generate consumer interest.
“There’s also a real desire from OEMs to loosen their dependence on Google and differentiate themselves. It’s possible that rather than being five years too late, Firefox OS was actually five years too early!”
I highly doubt this is anything more than marketing telling the author what he wanted to hear. As one comment suggested above, we are more entrenched these days in the duopoly than the late 90’s computing era. At least then they let us know that it was safe to shut down those computers and we left them at home. We carry our Androids and iPhones everywhere with us, and all that matters is whether or not we can pay for stuff with our thumbprint and have the correct set of apps to talk to our friends across the table. Nobody wants to differentiate in the mobile space. You get crucified for putting a keyboard on a device meant for communicating. Nobody cares. Innovation is dead, and it’s disgusting.
I never quite got their obsession with mobile telephones. The mobile market with its duopoly is a hard one to crack, but they were starting to do well in the TV market and they could have made a lasting impact there. Unfortunately Firefox OS for TV was collateral damage when their phone effort was scrapped. Now the television market is loaded with “smart” TVs that spy on their owners, with none of the current vendors’ OS offerings being anywhere near as trustworthy as Mozilla’s. While I’ve not personally gone shopping for a TV in a long time, it’s pretty clear just from walking through a store that carries them that consumers don’t have much of a choice anymore about whether or not they get spied on by their sets, it’s only a choice of which company they want to do the spying.
When reading the article i couldn’t help but spot so many similarities to EPOC -> Symbian rise on the mobile phone market, from the book Smart Phones and Beyond
https://smartphonesandbeyond.com/
Great book and fascinating read, obviously the FireFox OS burnt out a lot quicker and never really succeeded in the market anywhere like the Symbian OS.
however i can’t help but feel that a lot of the mistakes might have been missed if a lot of the engineers and managers had read the book and learnt from the mistakes of others.