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Mozilla Partners Up With LG To Combat Apple and Google
MrSeb writes "At Mobile World Congress, which begins in three days, Mozilla will finally take the wraps off the Mozilla Marketplace and allow developers to submit their open web technology (HTML5, JavaScript, CSS) apps. While the Marketplace will play an important role in keeping Firefox in step with Chrome, these apps will actually play a far more important role: Boot to Gecko (B2G), Mozilla's upcoming smartphone and tablet OS, will also use the Marketplace. For B2G to succeed it must have apps, and to create apps you need developers. That's why, at MWC, according to a source close to the matter, Mozilla will also be announcing that it has partnered up with LG to make a developer-oriented B2G-powered mobile device. Even more interestingly, Brendan Eich, Mozilla's Chief Technology Officer, says that it will unveil other partners at MWC as well — probably carriers, who are eager to use the open B2G and its Marketplace to escape the huge control that Apple and Google currently exert in the smartphone space."
Dear Mozilla,
I have been a tester from mozilla M18.
I hope this is true opensource and a good product.
Sincerely,
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
probably carriers, who are eager to use the open B2G and its Marketplace to escape the huge control that Apple and Google currently exert
I suspect B2G comes somewhere behind WebOS and possibly even Windows Phone 7 and whatever the Linux flavor is called these days (not Meego, the other one(?) that came after it) in degree of carrier eagerness. If carriers are rushing to escape Apple and Google then they do have choices.
How would one make a barcode scanner application for this platform? I was under the impression that web browsers had no standardized, widely implemented way to (ask for the user's permission to) read from the camera and microphone (if any) connected to a device.
Come to think of it, the 'LG XULRunner' would actually be a better-than-average name for a cellphone...
If LG is doing it, the point is to stick it to Samsung. Those companies hate each other even more than Apple hated Microsoft in the 1990s...
used to love firefox, now its so bloated and non functional, moved on to chrome so they can steal my info, but at a much faster pace.
Why another smartphone OS? It seems like so many companies just copy what is doing well in the market, and the resulting product flops within a few years. Mostly Apple products are being copied (look at Mircosoft, the Gnome project, and now Mozilla). I would rather like to see some original innovation. Not an Apple fan, just my $0.02
I think a company announcing they're NOT doing a marketplace would probably get bigger headlines these days.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I just wish I could open up a wormhole, and send this headline to the version of myself who existed 10 years ago. That would be one confused sonofa...
Free unix account: freeshell.org
As anyone who has ever hosted their own extensions knows, you can forget about self-hosting once there is an "app store". Great. You can still host your own software, but nobody's going to find it, and if you want to be found, you have to accept the middleman. This is a game that I won't play. Fuck the middleman.
How is something like B2G going to be both FOSS and yet prevent OEMs from modifying the hell out of it so it's inconsistent and incompatible with other B2G devices a la various Android?
Firefox crashes too often. Each release fixes a stunningly large number of bugs. But as stability doesn't noticeably improve, each release must be introducing a comparably large number of bugs.
I used to beta test Mozilla back in the early days when nobody else use it. It is kind of discouraging that it is still the most unstable app I use, all these years later.
Mozilla has found another source of income in addition to Google. With LG's money, Mozilla will be able to add features that counter Chrome's increased share in the browser marketplace. I assume FirefoxOS will counter ChromeOS and webOS more than Android and iOS.
Wether or not this adversely affects Mozilla's ability to increase user satisfaction with FireFox being used as a browser remains to be seen. I hope and wish them the best, but am concerned that they will lose focus on their core product which should be a web browser people would actually like to use (or in my case continue to use).
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
If B2G is as slow and has the memory leaks of Firefox, I don't think I'd want to develop for it. Right now, it often requires 1GB of RAM dedicated to Firefox with Firebug running -- and that with only one page open! Imagine what will happen when you have your app running for a significant period what that would do to the device along with other programs running in the background.
"Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two" -- RFC 1925
Windows Phone 7 is peering through a window to watch the fight, eyes welling with tears.
Your tablet will be out of date
http://saveie6.com/
YO DAWG, I herd you like apps, so we put a marketplace in yo app so you can use apps in yo app!
LG? I've owned LG phones in the past. While they were inexpensive, they were the cheapest (quality wise) phones I've ever owned, and simultaneously lacked features common on competing products. Mozilla could have made a better choice by going with pretty much any other company.
I hope it makes sense and is well done. I guess the sign of it becoming real is when google applauds it at the same time as apple/microsoft sue Mozilla. So, 6 months? Again, how it is designed is going to be important. Anyone can clone the whole smartphone layout as it exists but they're going to need to do something *different* for it to be worthwhile.
I should also point out that apple and google are considered competition, but Microsoft is not (as microsoft is not relevant in the smartphone market). Quite a telling point.
B2G is just ane of the attempts at creating a "web" OS, or actually an environment for which applications can be written in HTML/JS.
We already had HP WebOS, Blackberry WebWorks, JIL, BONDI, ChromeOS, PhoneGap, Appcelerator, WAC and finally Tizen.
Nothing new here. Move along.
Um, am I right in thinking this will give carriers more control over my phone?
From TFA, "Basically, Apple and Google have so much control over the smartphone landscape that carriers have effectively become nothing more than retailers. Worse than that, their infrastructures have been reduced to that of a dumb pipe, where it is Apple and Google who ultimately decide how the network will be used."
I don't know about other countries, but the last thing I would ever do in the US is give a mobile carrier more control over my phone. It that is the case, I'll pass.
It's cute to watch a certain type of geek when he's delusional enough to think that a plan such as this will work. They don't understand the way business incentives actually work, which makes it even funnier when their predictions don't come true. ;-)
Mozilla claims that they are 'the good guys' because they promote an 'open' Web, versus Apple and Google's 'closed' Web.
First of all, I'm sick of this 'open Web vs walled gardens' argument. The important thing is the Internet, not the Web. As long as we have interconnected networks, everybody can use them for whatever they like, be it the HTTP protocol or some other alternative.
Second, the usability of the web apps simply sucks, because the web wasn't designed for them. I prefer an app with an interface that takes all the advantages that the hardware offers, although it lives in a walled garden.
Look LG & Moz aren't doing this to fight some evil in the world. They are doing this because they have a product (and/or services) they want to sell. I am not saying this isn't a good thing, but this is good old fashioned competition, not a holy quest.
What do you know I wrote a novel
Isn't everything about mobile phones patented? How is Mozilla planning to survive the lawsuits?
Will it also save you 15% on your car insurance?
Don't get me wrong. Microsoft and Nokia advertise the hell out of it and are doing whatever they can to sell it. But, as an iPad to Windows 8 tablet convert for the past 3 months, I have to say that if Microsoft does get Windows 8 Phone up and running on an x86 platform with moderate battery life, I'll consider dumping iPhone as well. See, on my Windows 8 tablet, I run iTunes desktop which lets me keep all my music, movies and videos. I have apps like TomTom for U.S. and Western Europe which were big investments I'll need an iPhone for, but the rest of the apps were a buck or two and most of the ones I actually use are free. So, I really think I'd be happier with a Windows 8 Phone than a iPhone if the Windows 8 Phone is like the Windows 8 tablet which gives me the ability to plug it into a screen and keyboard and use it as a PC as well.
I'm looking forward to a time when I can have the power of a dual core Sandy Bridge Core i5 as a telephone running Windows 8 with the phone interface when I carry it and the desktop interface when it's docked. A single device to do everything. Then I can have some sort of laptoppish dock for when I need a desktop on the road. This way, I can find a dock with the perfect screen and perfect keyboard and then find a PC/Phone with the perfect specs and only upgrade one or the other when I find something much better.
I type this now from an AWESOME Asus N53SV notebook with a Core i7, 16 Gigs of RAM and dual 400GB 525/500 MB/sec SSDs... it has the worst keyboard and trackpad EVER!!!! though. I would love to buy the ultimate keyboard and screen dock... use it until I'm 150 years old and then just upgrade the computer part which would effectively be my phone as well.
So... bash Windows Phone all you want.... but the way things are going, Windows 8 Phone will almost certainly be the first truly converged device operating system. Able to run Windows Metro, Windows Desktop, Android, etc... apps. Able to run practically every program made since 1978. Able to work on phone, tablet, laptop, desktop and TV all equally well. Etc... Sure, it could end up being a niche, but I'm pretty sure that this is what people will demand in the years to come.
LG is what you buy when you desperately need a phone while your real phone is in for repair.
I have heard of old people and REALLY poor people using LG phones because they're cheap. The old people don't want the gadget phones and LG makes some with big buttons. The poor people just want a phone and you couldn't just reach into the telephone recycling boxes in the past, so you bought an LG.
It's been a shit idea for the past 12 years. I was demoing products like this back at CeBit 2000 with Ericsson. It was a bad idea back then, it's a slightly less bad idea today.
I have a Samsung Series 7 Slate and I can run IE, Opera, Chrome, Safari and that one from the guys who rewrote Netscape's old crap... can't remember their name since they died so long ago.
How about a device which runs them all and if you need one, run that one. If you need another, run the other instead.
Oh.... sorry. Forgot, these days we're support to have some sort of compatibility between browsers by using standards and stuff. But still.. my tablet run Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OS X or a pile of other operating systems. Choice is nice.
It's not about the only browser without a tablet presence trying to get a tablet presence by latching onto the last major electronics company to not have a tablet strategy?
You're saying they have a product. I see it more as not having a product and slapping some shit together hoping what they poop out will become a product.
Under that definition of "real time", I'd argue that "real time" performance isn't needed for the intended use. You don't need to analyze 20+ frames per second because the image from a handheld camera pointed directly at a barcode isn't going to be changing that fast. It's not like you're scanning strobe-lit products going down a high-speed conveyor. I think ZXing does a quick pass looking for the big black boxes in concentric rings at the corners of the QR code and processes the image further (possibly taking half a second or so) once it finds them.
That's genius right there. A shame you didn't sign that one.
Help stamp out iliturcy.