Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

Re:Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smart... by mei0Iesh on Tuesday December 08, 2015 @03:49PM (#10699379)

Phoenix appeared at a time when web browsers were bloated, and it was refreshing to have a minimalist app that simply browsed the web. It wasn't that potential was being stifled; other browsers had too many features. It was that we could download a small binary on dial-up, that opened up quickly and just did what we needed without any fluff.

Notice that last part about downloading? That's the key. We could download Phoenix, and run it. I can't download FirefoxOS, and run it. My devices are locked to what they can run. If mobile appliances were like personal computers, then a Phoenix could rise. But it's a completely different situation, so there is no way to compete like you could with web browsers.

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Re:Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smart... by andrewaylett on Tuesday December 08, 2015 @05:17PM (#10700080)

Actually you can, just about. I've got b2gdroid[0] installed on my Android phone, which gives you the Gaia experience as your home screen, and access to the built-in applications as well as being a launcher for your Android apps.

It's not ideal, as the integration points don't appear to be fully worked out and it doesn't always perform very well, but I'm sure it could be turned into essentially a downloadable FirefoxOS as a hook to try to get people to get a native device next time, if some development effort was available.

[0]: https://github.com/fabricedesre/b2gdroid

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Re:Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smart... by yenda on Tuesday December 08, 2015 @03:59PM (#10699469)

Good point, maybe a hack that would be runnable from android to override it on the phone would have done the trick

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