A Hong Kong-based startup run by former Mozilla President Li Gong aims to take on Android with its new Web-based operating system, H5OS. Similar to the Firefox operating system from Mozilla, H50S is based on HTML5, a website development language that tries to give Web apps the same capabilities as so-called native applications that are downloaded to a device like the iPhone. More on H5OS here.
The mobile ecosystem is too important to leave to non-open monopolies.
Android is more open that iOS but we can do better.
So I’m pleased we keep seeing plucky attempts at alternatives. They need to be encouraged. Even if most will fail.
Imagine a Safari and IE only web …. shudder! We need open alternatives to keep the ecosystem behaving well.
No this is terrible. Its not firefox os, its a fork of firefox os. He also explicitly talked about “Owning the Operating system”. That does not sound good. If you are writing to open standards, then apps written for your platform will work any where those open standards are implemented and you have no lock-in.
I hope Sailfish will be opened as promised. It’s way better than webby options.
but feel free to keep trying.
If Microsoft is having trouble breaking with a well-performing os, these guys and their web-based crap have zero chance.
If it is backed by the Chinese government it has a very strong chance of success. eg It can be made mandatory for school tablets or government issued phones.
Just like red flag linux or kylin, right?
They were just slightly modified Linux distros designed for desktop use.
It is relatively easy to mandate a phone for government use.
Today is a different world: American backdoors and mass surveillance are a matter of public knowledge, as is the fact that American intelligence listen to world leaders phones. If you were a Chinese political or military leader, how soon would you want a non-American phone? Yesterday would be not soon enough.
So Firefox is non-american, but android is not? Not sure how you determine weather a system is American or not.
I’d recommend doing everything from scratch. Non Western compatible phone network, non western cell towers, non western chip design.
I mean if you go full paranoid and you have the means, you go full F-ing paranoid. None of this half ass BS like using firefox OS.
But of course, I’m American… so you logically can’t take my advise.
I wonder if HTML5 + WebAssembly can fix the sluggishness associated to modern web content, apps included, or, at least, push it down a bit. I mean, really, with the amount of crap I have seen, just improvements on processor power and data transmission rate are not going to save us.
Edited 2015-07-15 21:15 UTC
I really, really blame jquery and its ilk. Web Devs use so many crappy layers of toolkits on toolkits to do the simplest of things.
I really doubt that most are going to suddenly embrace a technology that is more difficult. I suspect that idiots will write toolkits to make coding webassembler easier, which will rob all of the performance out.
Well, I hope you miss on this but I strongly suspect you will not. o.O
I wish they use the opportunity to bring also a little bit of more standardization to the chaos presented to us by so many levels of abstractions / meta-factories / indirections / virtualizations on the code side.
I’m Jim philips
May you please enlighten what this is supposed to mean ?