No more FirefoxOS?

Hello, I am new here. I am interested in the project but I don’t want to buy a FP2 before being sure there will be another offer than Android as OS. Now Firefox OS is out, why not go for Ubuntu Touch or Tizen?

There is already work on Sailfish OS for Fairphone 2.

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Thank you for your answer.

I currently own a Jolla phone and I am very pessimistic about Sailfish OS future since Jolla, the company that develops it, lacks money (one thread in the forum talks about it).

My undestanding of this news is more :

https://twitter.com/fabi1cazenave/status/674335248004591617

FirefoxOS is not stopped. Its focus is not restricted to smartphones any more, and that’s good news.
(from a former FirefoxOS developer)

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Well that’s good news and bad marketing then

We got some news from Mozilla where they say they regret the news of yesterday and that they are still committed to the development of Firefox OS.

Their announcement was that they would not do new carriers partnerships. This unfortunately got spinned into “Mozilla is shutting down FxOS”, which is not the case.

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[quote=“douwe, post:11, topic:11240, full:true”]
We got some news from Mozilla where they say they regret the news of yesterday and that they are still committed to the development of Firefox OS.[/quote]

OOOHH this is very good!!! Now I’m still hoping for a Firefox OS version on Fairphone 2 :smiley:

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And we are with you in hoping that very much :smile:

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I’m really glad to hear this. Unfortunately the internet has a way of misreporting :-/

So, uhm, why would Mozilla announce they won’t do new carriers partnerships if they were committed to continue developing Firefox OS in the long run? Sorry, trying to understand the background and implications of this, but haven’t done much digging…

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Thank you. I have to say the first announcement was far from being clear if it is what they wanted to say. in fact, it changes nothing for the FP2 if I understood well since the porting is made by the community.

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The official version is that they will “stop offering Firefox OS smartphones through carrier channels”, not only putting a halt on new partnerships.

Here a full statement from Ari Jaaksi, Mozilla’s SVP of Connected Devices, according to Techcrunch:

“We are proud of the benefits Firefox OS added to the Web platform and will continue to experiment with the user experience across connected devices. We will build everything we do as a genuine open source project, focused on user experience first and build tools to enable the ecosystem to grow.

Firefox OS proved the flexibility of the Web, scaling from low-end smartphones all the way up to HD TVs. However, we weren’t able to offer the best user experience possible and so we will stop offering Firefox OS smartphones through carrier channels.

We’ll share more on our work and new experiments across connected devices soon.”

This does not sound like this was simply a question of misreporting, and I think it’s anyone’s guess now as to what will happen to FirefoxOS on phones in general and FP2 in particular.

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If I take Sailfish OS as an example, Jolla helps only one partner, Intex, but the community made it available for many other smartphones. And I wonder at which point this is not also true for Cyanogen Mod.

It seems it is quite a lot of work to make work an OS on a specific hardware and that Mozilla doesn’t want to pay people for this task.

Ubuntu mobile has no (good) track record yet and hence not suitable for the John/Jane Does amongst us (http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/24/ubuntu-phone-review/) Tizen is in theory open standards OS (not open source!), but mostly Samsung-controlled (Samsung has it’s own flavor; similar to the Symbian OS that was also open standards but in the end 100% controlled by Nokia).
The (only) criteria for a sustainable mobile phone eco-system: great apps, both free and commercial; so it’s either iOS or a (personalized) Android flavor.

In general I have the impression that you underestimate the effort needed to develop a solid mobile phone OS for a smart phone. OS development for the iPhone started in 2004 (first iPhone 2007); Android development started in 2005 (first Android device 2007). That was all for relatively simple phones. Maemo/Meego OS (one of the ancestors of Sailfish, developed by Nokia) has also a long history that is worth reading

So basically 3 years of focused development by 1000s of developers full time with virtually unlimited budget before you have a stable OS. Not a realistic option for a startup of 25-30 people


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeeGo

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True. I would argue it’s even not that important if it was a case of misreporting or not. The news is out, the trust is gone. Even when looking at the last months, it seems clear that are is no foreseeable future for Firefox OS on phones.
There was a switch away from low-cost devices, a communicated change of focus in development, a switch from the dedicated development devices Flame to the Xperia Z3 for internal developers etc. Now with this announcement, there is no reason anymore for any hardware manufacturer to invest in Firefox OS.

I can imagine FxOS in devices like smart tvs, maybe Point-Of-Sale screens etc, but no longer on the phone. And I could very much understand if Fairphone stops putting is valuable and scarce development resources into a OS that has no longer the trust of it’s developers.

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Hey guys! No fear! You’ll have FirefoxOS running on Fairphone 2… I already have one running :wink:
And for those who love playing with compilers, linux, and other torture tools, you can build FirefoxOS from scratch by your own, right now!. Instructions here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Building_and_installing_Firefox_OS
There’s still some parts that need to be fixed, like flashing through flash.sh script but they will be fixed pretty soon.
Stay tunned!

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Contine here:

This Mozilla announcement came out 7 hours ago:

https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/firefox-os-connected-devices-announcement/6864

Quotes:

Is the Firefox OS user base big enough to support ongoing development without Mozilla staff involvement? Or is it useless now, to build Firefox OS for the Fairphone 2?

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As feared, but better read for yourself. :frowning: Mozilla is doing the Canonical dance … I wonder how healthy Ubuntu Phone is right now … I better check. Here are some quotes, the source is listed below.

We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the version 2.6 release.

"Therefore we are announcing our plan to end-of-life support for smartphones after the Firefox OS 2.6 release. This means that Firefox OS for smartphones will no longer have staff involvement beyond May.

We will continue to assess the stack to determine fit with new projects coming through the innovation process (outlined below). Of course, Boot to Gecko (b2g) always has been and will continue to be an open source operating system open to contribution."

Source:
https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/firefox-os-connected-devices-announcement/6864

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Regarding Ubuntu, please read the update posted here. Apparantly a working version of Ubuntu Touch has been ported Fairphone 2.

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