| ▲ | glenstein 6 days ago |
| And just to add, I kind of mourn FirefoxOS. We couldn't have guessed it at the time, but as of 2025, Google is pushing developer verification and stepping closer and closer to ecosystem lockdown. It would have been a great time for an alternative mobile OS 10+ years in the making, to welcome all the energy that has gone into beautiful projects like F-Droid. If I could time travel into the past, in addition to preventing all the bad things (e.g. Young Sheldon), I might have told Yahoo they should flex some financial muscle while they still had relevance and worked to mobilize (no pun intended) developer time, energy, etc and perhaps even provide a baseline ecosystem of stock apps to support FirefoxOS. |
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| ▲ | chrismorgan 6 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > We couldn't have guessed it at the time, but as of 2025, Google is pushing developer verification and stepping closer and closer to ecosystem lockdown. We did guess it. Google were already past their “don’t be evil” days in 2013. They were possibly better than other companies of similar scale, but the decline was already clearly beginning. People had long warned that Google could not be trusted to keep Android open in the long term, that eventually their benevolence would fade. A good chunk of the enthusiasm around Firefox OS was in breaking the duopoly and the idea of a platform that would be much harder to lock down. |
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| ▲ | glenstein 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Fair point, I think I have to concede that you're right that it was perhaps perceivable at that time. In my defense, I will say that we are seeing some pretty concrete actions out in the wild in 2025 that we were only speculating on in 2013 heightening the urgency of the issue. |
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| ▲ | benoau 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I installed FirefoxOS on a phone years ago, it wasn't even bad really. |
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| ▲ | szatkus 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The main problem with Firefox OS was that it was really slow. At the same time it was targeting budget phones. But on the other hand progress was quite good. Back in the days I was maintaining unofficial images for Alcatel Fire. Each version was a little bit faster, but you really can't do much when the whole OS is a browser running on a device with with 256MB of RAM and a single core CPU. | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Wasn't webOS effectively an OS built on web standards and effectively just a browser engine? The Pre had 256MB and something like a 600mHZ processor. While it was no speed demon, I was always impressed with the animations and multitasking they pulled off with it. | | |
| ▲ | mikestorrent 6 days ago | parent [-] | | People forget we used the web on 100mHz 486s with maybe 16MB of RAM and sites like Slashdot were plenty usable. | | |
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| ▲ | flaburgan 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I use it as my primary phone for 2 years, first with the Flame, then with a Z3C.
For me Firefox OS was the finale move of Mozilla, either it successes and Mozilla becomes a major actor again or it fails and they slowly die. And thebmy decided to kill it right when it was becoming stable enough. | | |
| ▲ | glenstein 6 days ago | parent [-] | | It's another damned if you do, damned if you don't. FirefoxOS is regularly listed by commenters as an example of a wasteful side bet, whereas my feeling is more along the lines of yours, that it was striding greatly, as the saying goes, and attempting to be a major actor. A big part of the market share loss was due to monopoly and distribution lockdown of a controlled platform tightly tied to hardware, so I can certainly see the strategic wisdom of the attempt. I suspect they didn't have the resources to press forward, they had a lot less money then than they do now. Which makes it all the more maddening that Yahoo's role as a partner was so muted; it could have made the difference for both of them. |
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| ▲ | MattTheRealOne 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | As with most new operating systems, its biggest problem was lack of apps. Mozilla seemed to abandon Firefox OS right as Progressive Web Apps were starting to take off, which would have done a lot to fix that problem. |
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| ▲ | fsflover 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > And just to add, I kind of mourn FirefoxOS. Today, we have Mobian, postmarketOS, PureOS and many more GNU/Linux OSes for smartphones. |
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| ▲ | Flere-Imsaho 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It's too late. If I want to interact with modern society, I have to use banking apps, the NHS app, WhatsApp, numerous IoT apps... The list is endless. Many of these will refuse to run on rooted phones. Google and Apple won. We can learn from this and hope the next big thing to come along has some competition from the truly open source side of computing. | | |
| ▲ | vpShane 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | They didn't 'win' - use a laptop. Phones are decent for certain things but no, you don't need to use WhatsApp, IoT apps -- most have bluetooth, and you don't have to 'interact with modern society' Interact with good circles of people and stuff. I mean, it's cool that my pixel is some mini high powered TPU computer that can run apps, F-Droid etc, but I only really care about the 5g data link within it. If any app refuses to run due to rooted phone -> open a browser go to the web version. I know that you know these things and I'm not trying to make any point other than: no, you don't have to use those things. but if you want to, you can. the next big thing to come is already here, Linux with its infinite mix of desktop environments, user environments, distros with pre-set up things. You can have a device use your SIM/e-SIMS. Google and Apple's push notification system being locked for what they deem allowed and control the push tokens, browsers have push notifications too. All I'm saying is: Google and Apple didn't win anything and there's great things like GrapheneOS, plus Google's TPU chips are awesome. But, they most certainly didn't 'Win' and 'modern society' is crazy. | | |
| ▲ | mafuy 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Don't close your eyes from reality. I am forced to use a phone app to log in into any of the several banks that I use. There is no web version. | | |
| ▲ | fsflover 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I use Librem 5 as a daily driver. I switched my bank to avoid an app. I do my banking on their website. | | |
| ▲ | MarsIronPI 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > I switched my bank to avoid an app. When feasible, this sounds like a great reason to switch banks. If enough people did this, banks would all offer web apps instead of forcing native apps. |
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| ▲ | endemic 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | cool story, I can log in to all my banks on the web! |
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| ▲ | glenstein 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Well that's a fantastic point, and interesting in this context because the whole gambit of FirefoxOS was to use progressive web apps. The browser rather than the Linux ecosystem becomes the trusted execution environment and PWAs actually ask less of your bank or (insert security agency) than even Android or iOS development. | |
| ▲ | fsflover 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It's too late. Too late for what? Librem 5 is my daily driver. Would you also say that in the 90s Windows "won" and "it was too late"? Please stop with the security/privacy nihilism, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27897975 | |
| ▲ | aaronax 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | A law can fix that! | | |
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| ▲ | prmoustache 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Back then Firefox was a brand with decent recognition. | | |
| ▲ | fsflover 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Isn't Debian today also such a brand? Mobian is just Debian with minimal changes to run on mobile. |
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