News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on There is something magical about Firefox OS. Parent comment

Re:There is something magical about Firefox OS by JackC on Thursday September 13, 2012 @09:59AM (#4516137)
FWIW, I agree with masklinn that it's a little weird not to mention WebOS in the article. In particular when you wrote "In short, Firefox OS is about taking the technologies behind the Web, like JavaScript, and using them to produce an entire mobile operating system. Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript!" I let that sink in back in 2009 when they announced WebOS. I was pretty excited about it. The way it crashed and burned from internal wrangling, delays, buggy releases and odd marketing was really sad. This is like you're showing up a year after the Hindenburg crashed and saying "Just let this sink in -- we've invented a rigid lighter-than-air flying machine!" That's not where we are in the conversation.

The rest of the article is really exciting, and I really hope you can launch and get some traction. I agree that Mozilla is important in this space for exactly the same reasons Firefox was important when it launched. I just think it would be kind to tip your hat to WebOS along the way.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:There is something magical about Firefox OS by zabraxias on Thursday September 13, 2012 @04:27PM (#4518407)
WebOS was targeted as an Android/iOS alternative on higher-end devices using proprietary APIs. It was also being developed by a company with shareholders who were purely focused on the bottom line.

I am not trying to criticize them but there are inherit differences between the two projects. I am thinking Mozilla is also partly betting its reputation of protecting user information while being developer friendly.

The free market will decide of course but at least initially that free market won't be North America.

[ Parent | on HN ]