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Firefox OS Will Win Big With Developers - Mozilla
judgecorp writes "Mozilla's mobile operating system Firefox OS will win overwhelming support from developers because it dropped XUL in favour of HTML5, says the head of Mozilla Europe in an interview. Firefox OS is more open than iOS and Android, and 75 percent of apps are already written in HTML5."
This just in: Mozilla employee tells us that Mozilla product will be a huge hit!
Why don't we wait until it comes out before making such claims?
Firefox OS? Didn't Netscape try to do that with Communicator 4 and fail horribly?
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Actually it won't.
Developers will look towards the jobs which earn money, meaning the popular platforms like iOS and Android. To even think Firefox OS will in any way take a reasonable portion of the marketshare is a complete and utter joke.
Mozilla missed the mobile boat 2 years ago. Hear that mozilla? It's the sound of a fog horn in the distance, get swimming(which is what they're doing right now).
They should refocus their efforts or they're going to drown.
XUL was lots of fun to work with. There was some pretty easy to develop with tools out there for quickly designing interfaces, but then the javascript still took forever and was a pain to work with. Things like Jquery have made pretty HTML interfaces easy to produce and its definitly going to be the way to go over XUL. RIP XUL
http://interserver.net/
while I'm not sold on the idea that we need another phone OS, I would think the combination of a cheap tablet with an HTML5 based OS on it is a decent alternative to laptops and netbooks for elementary education purposes. Books, interactive exercises, and word-processing abilities all in one. Allow a school to run their own Google Office-style server to keep things local...could be neat (:
Yuma, AZ...You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
It is going to be really tough for Mozilla to make headway with their own mobile OS. Palm, Nokia, RIM, etc. have all failed in spite of enormous efforts, and the only ones that have succeeded now have complete ecosystems built around their devices.
So, I believe that the chances of Firefox OS succeeding are really slim.
And this is coming from someone who believes that Mozilla saved the Web, and who runs firefox on their phone (which is part of the problem - I already have mobile firefox).
WebOS also promised that you can write apps in HTML/JS and look at what happened to the Touchpad when it took on the iPad.
Developers flock to the platforms with most users, ease of development is only a small factor because the alternatives like iOS, Android and WP have reasonable dev environments. If the market was owned by Blackberry, he would have a point, since it's just TERRIBLE for development.
iOS and Android have big enough flaws that if another group finds that magic bullet, they can win big. The design problem is they have to come at from the approach of competing against and with the big boys and not just making a mobile OS that works. There are plenty of failed OS projects out already that "work."
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
XUL is actually really nicely done. Much better than that mess HTML5, that is for sure.
XUL is one of the better things Mozilla have made. This saddens me more.
I was hoping it would get adopted as menu interfaces for web apps in the now-future, but it never did.
If only they pushed it a little harder.
RIP XUL. RIP.
HTML5, while faster than previous incarnations of HTML+JS, is still massively slower than native applications. I predict a very sluggish experience.
OK, maybe. But what percentage of good apps are written in HTML5?
Firefox already uses more memory than any OS I own so what the hell, go for it. Maybe Windows 8 can become a light-weight browser that runs on top of it.
Good fucking God, Mozillia is nothing but a bunch of copycat Google fanbois now.
They even copycatted Google's release numbering scheme.
Yeah, that'll fool 'em all.
"With Firefox 14, Mozilla will automatically encrypt searches conducted via Google's search engine in the browser's location bar, search box, or the right-click menu. The idea is to "protect your data from potentially prying eyes, like network administrators when you use public or shared WiFi networks," Mozilla said in a blog post. At this point, Google is the only search engine that will support encrypted searches, "but we look forward to supporting additional search engines with this feature in the future," Mozilla said." (From the PC Mag article) http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407263,00.asp
Finally! Something new in the world of mobile operating systems.
http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/firefox-os-phone/07-firefox-os-mobile-icones.jpg
And I'm hearing that it will win overwhelming developer support (among users of desktop Linux)!
The source for WebOS is available under an open source license: http://opensource.palm.com/packages.html WebOS did not fail. Palm failed to successfully market its products for 20 years. Mozilla can make a lot of headway quickly by using WebOS as a base. With Mozilla's community clout and business position I would not be surprised to see devices running Firefox OS in a year or two.
Because playing for third place is really working out for MS. I honestly don't see what's going to attract users to Yet Another Mobile Platform.
Do you see what I did there?
Why would I develop for a browser when I can produce an app for Android or iOS instead which will meet all requirements? A single codebase (more or less) catering to each of the platforms strengths that doesn't need to worry about browser inconsistencies and/or HTML5 implementations (esp. with video/audio) - or, should I say, less cost than having to support HTML5. Perhaps if Flash had remained a viable alternative, then that may have been a possible argument in its favour, but with HTML5, I'm quite unimpressed - slow animations, browser extensions, limited scripting language - and the fact that web apps seem to be trying to be native apps anyway (jQuery mobile) doesn't help. Might as well go native.
Assuming your platform will "win big with programmers" is silly. Programmers will work with whatever you give them, and combine it with whatever they know. And no two programmers will have the same approach. Thinking you know what programmers want is like believing you know what women want. As if every woman (like every programmer) would be a cookie cutter copy of the other.
There are only a select few things I've found that programmers esteem and have in common, and it all has very little to do with programming per-se. They are patient. They often have the ability to hyper-focus for hours or (in extreme cases) days on a specific problem, going without food, water, sleep, social contact... in fact, interrupting them may get something chucked at your head. Prolonged and intense programming over a period of days or weeks can result in epic logic failures in their daily life -- "Hey hun, can you go to the store and if they have bread, pick up some eggs?" Programmer comes home with just eggs. They can and sometimes do become obsessed with details of a project (not just computer projects... ANY kind of project) and totally lose track of everything else; time, space, the fact that the house around them is on fire, that the girlfriend (cough, hi) is threatening to bean them if they don't come to bed and cuddle them, etc. Programmers are also endlessly fascinated with a difficult to define quality I call "Niftiness". If something is nifty, they will be drawn to it like a moth to fire. However, what is nifty to one is completely mundane to another... and "Niftiness" is a time-sensitive thing... it degrades rapidly with time.
You'll note that nowhere in there did I mention anything resembling a computer, or anything about programming itself. Programming attracts a particular kind of person; It is not the result of a particular way of doing something.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Or, "Everyone uses HTML5, right? So if we just gut our UI code and write it in HTML5 and tout its HTML5 use enough times on HTML5 news sites and our HTML5 wiki-thing, then we'll get lots of HTML5 fans to use our HTML5 OS. HTML5 HTML5!!!!! *continues to yell 'HTML5' and 'Beefcake' with decreasing coherence*"
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Developers go to where the customers are, no matter how good an OS may be.
Just look how long it's taken for them to start taking Android seriously.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
They are still on HTML5? Shouldn't they by now be on at least HTML23 to get ahead of Google?
HTML23 was soooo 30 minutes ago. Firefox 143 has HTML25.
Oops writing this post took long enough that we are now on Firefox 150.
too processor and ram heavy
good luck trying to toss that at people
WebOS was HTML5, that didn't light a fire with developers. I don't see any tablet maker outside of maybe Samsung with more pull than HP, so the issues with hardware will be even worse.
iOS used to be webapps only, until people realized that touchscreens and HTML weren't a good match. I'm not sure if HTML5 is so much of a leap to make them that much better. I still prefer Mail.app to GMail and GMail uses some of the cleverest HTML ive seen. Even on a phone which guarantees a network card, you can't guarantee a network presence 100% of the time. Local storage will be interesting.
Good luck.
I think Mozilla is absolutely insane coming in to the market so late, but I welcome the competition. As others have pointed out, I am not sure how well it will go over as a Phone OS, but I can absolutely see it as a hobbyist OS. It would be great on tablets, set top boxes (or flash the firmware on your Smart TV), Raspberry Pi.
I already have a few idea's I could use it for. Small personal projects, mostly based around a Raspberry Pi. I use and like Android but FirefoxOS would be better suited from what I have read so far.
I do web development for a living. The idea of HTML5 apps excites me as it is a system I know very well.
Huge win if they come out with an easy to install distro for Raspberry Pi.
Haven't they learned anything? You shouldn't be able to control device fundamentals from the browser, it's a complete security nightmare. Modern OS and browser designs try to sandbox the browser from the underlying architecture with good reason. Remember ActiveX? That was a security disaster. Java is the modern equivalent, I probably patch it more often that I use it. If the Firefox OS ever takes off then the weak security model will probably ensure that it crashes down to earth.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
as ChromeOS did. People still aren't interested in dumbing down their devices to a mere terminal.
This.
Besides, they're not the only ones pitching HTML5 as a dev platform for mobile. Win8 also does that, and it has far more mature development tools to back that.
The Touchpad failed because it was too expensive. It is/was an awesome device and OS but if you're plunking down an iPad amount of cash, which do you think people are going to go for? I mean the choice is between something awesome but new, which might be better and something crappy but already established and ingrained in popular culture. People take the path of least resistance. Only money would have changed their mind. The fire sale proved it had a nearly limitless market for the right price (yeah, they could not have sold it for those prices but they could have sold it closer to their actual cost instead of artificially jacking it up to meet the other players in the market).
This sounds like a fantastic project. I really hope they succeed. My two main concerns are security and efficiency. Firefox really seems to be a resource hog on my desktop system. They need to make drastic improvements in efficiency in order to compete in the mobile market. Sure, I have a lot of FF windows and tabs open but sometimes I have to nuke FF because it is consuming a lot of CPU while it seems to be doing nothing.
My other concern is security. FTFA:
Applications can for example, be installed directly from a website, without going through the Marketplace. There will be several application stores and applications can be submitted for free.
I sure hope they put a lot of thought and effort into security otherwise it is going to be malware central. I think they are going to need to provide the option of only running digitally signed apps. As long as the user/owner has control of which keys they are going to trust then this won't impinge on the end-user/owner's freedom.
It would also be really good if there was some way for trusted key-holder to disable apps remotely for cases where an app that contains malware gets accidentally accepted. Again, user/owners would have to be able to opt-in to this feature. There also needs to be a way to lock the phones down so a business can have control over what apps are allowed on the phones they give out to their employees. IOW, control should be in the hands of the owner, not the user. If I lend my phone to someone, I don't want them to be able to install apps.
Just because the OS is Free as in Freedom should not mean that all contributors are automatically trusted. ISTM it is important to give user/owners the option of using a web of trust from the get-go. As long as the end user/owner has control over which keys are trusted and whether keys are used at all will keep this security feature from impinging on the Freedom of the device.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Finally -- an OS that CAN'T PLAY MP3's. I'm sure it will be very popular.
Mozilla is floundering hard -- maybe they should just go away.
Most Android users complain about not getting major OS upgrades for their existing hardware.
With Firefox OS, every user will have 37 major OS upgrades forced on them every month!
I guess that they made FireFox stop sucking? Then please stop keeping the good desktop version a secret and let me use that instead of the ever-increasingly-crappy versions they've been giving us. I won't bother installing it on my phone until they can at least do that.
Mark my words, YAMP will blitz the mobile device market!
What on earth made you think anything with "Firefox" in the name would run on a device with only 256MB of RAM?
HTML5 is the last HTML. From here on, all changes will be integrated into HTML5. HTML5 is a process, not a fixed set of specifications. I don't think I'm kidding.
Until Firefox OS gets installed at the factory by handset makers, no one will care. It'll enjoy the same dead-cat thump that Meebo/Maebo did.
Now we have another organization betting the (a) farm on HTML5, which in and of itself if flawed/broken. Even worse is that Mozilla dumped their better and richer XUL for it.
I'd rather see Gecko+XUL turned into a desktop environment to compete with GTK+, KDE, and the like. But that's the smart thing to do, which means Mozilla will never do it.
How is your employer able to do that, exactly? Doesn't your browser give you a big "OMG DONT DO THIS" warning every time you try to connect due to the certificate error?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Will Firefox OS have driver and firmware blobs like almost every other smartphone? If so, I won't be buying.
So tizen is also focusing on HTML5. Wheres the difference?
Seriously, how can I take their OS seriously when they cant even write an browser that doesn't keep locking up/crashing.
I bought 3 TouchPads during the fire sale. Having them for almost a year now, I can tell you from experience that anyone who paid an iPad amount of cash for it is probably kicking themselves in the head right now. As is typical with of everything with the HP logo, quality control was likely non-existent. Anyone that follows the progress of Android on the TouchPad is likely also aware of the ridiculous number of TouchPad owners that have had to send their TouchPad back to HP for repair due to hardware and manufacturing defects.
Mozilla using WebKit? It will be a cold day in hell when that happens.
"I don't think I'm kidding."
So... who would know for sure?
It is nice to have a good variety of quality pre-built widgets when building a user interface. HTML doesn't really provide this. You could conceivably design your own widgets with Javascript and the Canvas or Javascript and SVG, or use a library built on top of Canvas or SVG. The problem here is that there are hundreds of projects trying to do this and nothing at all resembling a standard set of widgets. Also has WebSockets been standardized yet or is there still the open security bug holding it back? Long polling seems like such a hack.
You tell me.
But the presence of those "ecosystems" does not preclude competitors. Nor do they mean that no one else should try.
Specially given that one of the two ecosystem - Android's/Google's - is rather open (due to that phone aren't Google core business - keyword searching is their core technology and they monetize it by leveraging it to serves ads. Anything else they produce is ancillary to that. Developing phone OS and corresponding ecosystem is not a main busness target for Google. It's only a side activity which has the advantage of bringing more people online and thus expanding the number of people they can serve ads to).
Android Apps have been already running on other systems (on the QNX powering some blackberry, on the standard GNU/Linux at some canonical experiences, etc.) and Firefox has been running on Android phones too.
That could also be the point of entry, an overlapping echo system. (Initially, people running Firefox App on Android, and having both access to android apps and newly developped HTML5/Javascript apps. Once the second ecosystem is big enough, non geeks could be interested in a boot-to-gecko phone).
On top of that, if you focus on regions using GSM that don't have their handset choices constrained by the regional carriers you have a far better chance than in backwards markets like the US.
Welcome in Europe.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
But OWAs won't only run on FirefoxOS (if the other vendors implement the WebAPIs).
I don't see Apple fully implementing the WebAPIs and losing the $300* per developer per year revenue stream plus 30% take from App Store sales. It's in Apple's rent-seeking interest to require use of a native app (even if made with PhoneGap) in order to access an iDevice's microphone or camera.
* Breakdown available on request, based on this article.
Just think about this for a minute. You actually by some odd set of circumstances come to depend on Firefox OS. And then they pull the same release strategy on you that they did with Firefox. Then the project fails and you go on unemployment.
Most be cold in hell, because Mozilla has had iOS apps for years which use webkit, like:
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile/home/
Because Apple doesn't allow Opera, Google Chrome or Mozilla to port their engine to iOS and "sell" it on in the Apple App Store.
New things are always on the horizon
The source for WebOS is available under an open source license: http://opensource.palm.com/packages.html
WebOS did not fail. Palm failed to successfully market its products for 20 years. Mozilla can make a lot of headway quickly by using WebOS as a base. With Mozilla's community clout and business position I would not be surprised to see devices running Firefox OS in a year or two.
You seem to fail at understanding fail.
There is only XUL.
The degree to which the GGGP is kidding about the state of HTML5 is itself a continually-evolving standard. It's Agile, Agile, Agile, all the way up!
Accepted answer.
That would be the irony of it, that Mozilla, whose browser succeeded because of users opting to "Get Firefox", would succeed in its phone OS venture only through the support of monopolies. Carriers already selling cheap or prepaid plans could offer Firefox OS as an alternative to plain dumb phones.
And watch your native application take two weeks to deploy through the platform's approved app store, while web workers are running on users' devices the next day.
Who pays the MPEG-4 system, AAC, AVC, and MP3 patent royalties for a Firefox OS device?
We also believe that developers will overwhelmingly support our approach, because 75 percent of applications are already designed in HTML5...
Wrong. The ability to make money by writing for a platform generally determines if developers will flock to that platform. Even if the apps are already in HTML5, if it's not worth a developer's time to spend 5 minutes making an app bundle and uploading it, they won't bother, no matter how simple you make it. And platforms aren't free. Even if you could snap your fingers and make a version for Mozilla, that's still yet another platform and yet another group of users you have to support.
Also:
By... adopting standards such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, we want to attract hundreds of thousands of web developers on OS Firefox. No need to learn the development languages of Apple or Google.
One word (ok, sorta two): PhoneGap
And finally: how did "ZOMG apps can be written in HTML5!!!!!11" work out for Palm?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I figured someone on Slashdot might direct me to the info. Thank you very much.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
You know Firefox Home is not a web browser right? What makes you think it uses Webkit?
Whoever's on the process standards committee.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Windows 8 allows users to do HTML5/Javascript as one OPTION. It also supports .NET (C# or VB, maybe more?) or native C/C++ code for the language, and XAML or DirectX for the UI layer. Or many combinations of all of the above within one app. In other words, use the right tool for the right job. Most developers I know would much rather avoid large-scale Javascript work if other options are available.
Am I the only one who thinks that Android is going to basically overtake the traditional Linux distros as the most popular face of Linux not only on the Phone and Tablets but eventually on laptops and desktops?
There are a lot of advantages to Android over basic Linux. Easy to install apps. Commercially supported apps -- like Netflix. Easy market for businesses to monetize with software sales, etc. Games. Commercial backing by one entity.
Seems to me Mozilla is rather missing the point, or perhaps, is struggling against a perceived future of irrelevance.
My point was that if Mozilla thinks that HTML5 as app framework gives them dome unique technical advantage that would entice developers to write for them, they are mistaken.
OK. Mozilla no longer has to keep XUL up to date which means those awesome listboxen with sortable columns, and various other cool things I loved so much, are back to being a complete and total PITA to write. Outside of that, what has changed? XUL was XML and it required Javascript to do its client side interactivity. HTML5 is a sub of XML and it requires Javascript to do its client side interactivity.
As far as it being an OS that developers like, the Mozilla guys seem to like it. Maybe they will write some really cool stuff with it.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I can run firefox on a toaster, can firefox run outlook? Fallout 3? visual studio? virtual box running debian? GCC toolchains? chrome when firefox fucks up?
I dont need a shitty computer that uses a browser as its "os", I have plenty of shitty computers that already do more
Media right ?? Thats what usually happens. Personally, I don't think the UI elements introduced in HTML 5 like drag-drop, placeholder, content-editable etc. etc.. won't be much of a use because there are already super stable javascript libraries for that. I am not at all willing to rewrite the existing code just to make my site HTML5 compliant. Other than that, the backend stuff like client side storage, websocket protocol, geolocation APIs are the cool stuff I am looking forward to using.
Personally, I prefer gecko to webkit. So if it's adopted by anyone, and I have a use for it, you'll probably see me writing code for it... provided that they DON'T FUCKING DISABLE SQLITE BY DEFAULT. I mean, seriously. It's like having the best platform in the world, and handing it to the majority of people who use it with the balls cut off. Makes no freaking sense. Hopefully, they've learned from past mistakes.
This signature intentionally left blank.
More importantly, if you can write a mobile app in HTML5, you've already got an iOS and Android app.
What does Firefox bring to the market? Other than being an also-ran?
Only WHATWG are declaring that. W3C are still publishing versioned snapshots based on the work done by WHATWG.
The mobile OS market is far too saturated for yet another entry. They should stick to what they are good at and leave the OS market to everyone else.
The fact that apps can be written in the exact same programming language for Win Phone 8 and Firefox OS is a point in Mozilla's favour, not against them.
They're banking on cross-compatibility between the other platforms to ensure that they get a decent ecosystem very quickly. That's presumably what both Mozilla and MS picked HTML5- maximum cross-platform capabilities.
(I've never used it)
Well, then I guess it links to Mobile Safari a webkit browser.
And their was this other recent project that I can't remember right now...
New things are always on the horizon
This is supposed to be funny ?
Everyone wants to be standards compliant, right? So if we just gut our UI code and write it in standards compliant ways and tout its standards compliance enough times on standards compliance news sites and our oh so standards compliant wiki-thing, then we'll get lots of standards compliance fans to use our standards compliant OS. Standards compliance Standards compliance !!!!! *continues to yell 'Standards compliance' and 'Beefcake' with decreasing coherence*"
HTML5 a mess you say ? But it is Standards compliant ! Still a mess you say ? But it is Standards compliant !
I have a question. Ever since HTML5 came out, I've been looking to see whether there's also been an accompanying XHTML5 standard. Is there? One thing I've been curious about - while going from HTML4 to HTML5, it would have been a good opportunity to merge both HTML and XHTML, and make the latter the standard, and then build in all the new tags.
A web browser for an OS is a horrible idea. Web is layers upon layers of turds. Anyone wanting more performance or not wanting to deal with the layers of crap would stay away from something like this. Anyone not interested in fiddling with hardware and software and more interested in playing games will again not bother with this. Where does that leave a browser based OS? Can it do anything that a less retarded OS can't? Can it do anything better?
Why anyone would want to use something like this, and why anyone would think this is a good idea in first place is beyond me.
Isn't Facebook going back to a more closed language build b/c HTLM5 just didn't work very smoothly for more complex apps? Course WebOS was supposed to take off as well because anyone could write an HTML5 app.
Yeah everyone is so impressed by HTML5...it really isn't that revolutionary I don't think at least. It has been around for a while, but does bring some interesting things to the table. I love that it makes rounded corners so easy, back in IE days you used to have to use a script that made your page slower than a pentium 2 i swear.
Anyone else notice the problem on picture 4 within the article?
With the decline of firefox and the rise of chrome, they should really be worried..
The problem for them is, the ammount of Android/iOS devices out there, people already invested a lot of money in those OSses and aren't willing to part with those apps and games they already paid for.
Also there aren't any real devices yet which support FirefoxOS and I don't really think the major companies will support it, too much fragmentation.
I just hope (as an Android user) Google is going to optimize the dalvic much MUCH better, as de mono/moonlight devs proved that porting Android to C# improves the speed by almost 80%, that tells me as a developer that the dalvic is really a slow piece of crap.
HTML6 will include sarcasm detection for the ironically impaired.
DuckDuckGo integrate nicely into Firefox and it defaults to encrypted search. Been using it for at least a year and it's par (sometimes worse, sometimes better) with Google.
JigJag
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Wasn't the last "specified by comittee" Operating System a big success?
Let's see WebOS.. no ADA
Can't wait for ADA on my Newton.
Always will be the best, Just not for retards, come on all the plugins how can you surf with out them.
WebOS was largely HTML/JS/CSS... that whole "web" thing. The problem wasn't so much that idea, but the simple fact that Javascript performance SUCKED on the Touchpad, at least at that stage. One would kind of think that, given their decent hardware and total dependence on Javascript for performance, they would have had a decent JIT and all. But the Touchpad trailed pretty much all the other tablets and phones of the day. Heck, Apple usually had the best Javascript performance out-of-the-box, and they were so protective of allowing non-vetted (and taxed) apps on the iOS devices, they didn't even allow a full Commodore 64 emulator in the iTunes store. Android performance was decent, and once you installed Opera or Firefox, it takes the lead (assuming decent hardware). Apple didn't allow anyone else's JS on the iOS devices, of course.
It will be the best OS nobody every uses.
Face facts- if major product creators aren't shipping it, it's not going to be successful.
I'm always amazing how rather than learn from Linux's mistakes, development groups choose to repeat them.
the libraries (next versions) will use the native controls, when your browser supports it.
Online sarcasm was deprecated in 1986. Look it up.
STORY:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/KdoffDJdSXU
Btw situations like these arise constantly with Firefox.
Slow and unstable JS engine to run an HTML5/JS based pseudo-operating system. Sounds about as horrible as Microsoft's MetroUI.
All WebOS type systems have the potential to create a technically inferior, buggy rapid development platform for dummies, which is used by the bottom feeders in Open Source ecosystem to create cheap implementations (imitations).
QUESTION?
Why does Firefox OS need to exist? The reason to exist, raison d'etre being?
A lot of apps on iOS and Android are already build with HTML5. Usually with a native wrapper, which you obviously wouldn't need with Firefox OS.
Even then, the company which ordered the app still needs to "go through the hassle to port" it to Firefox OS. If the company was too cheap to actually hire the necessary work force to make full blown app, chances are that "porting the app to Firefox OS" (even if in practice it boils down to ripping out the wrapper and making sure the HTML5 works as well on Firefox OS's Gecko engin, as on iOS' and Android's Webkit engines) specially for an OS with such a small market share.
It has been seen before: HTML/Javascript was one of the possible solutions on Palm's/HP's webOS and still, not everyone re-published their "webapp-with-a-wrapper as a glorified app" on Palm Pre.
My logic is that, for that to happen, you need a sufficient market share, and for sufficient market share you need to attract users. /.ers, other geeks, etc. *could* be attracted by the shear technical merit of a platform device.
normal users tend to either buy what everything else has, or to buy at least smartphones with a big enough choice of app (no matter if 99% of said apps are just fart sound boards and other useless crap).
So I think that we end-up with a sort of loop. One way of breaking free out of the loop would be the ability to run more types of application. Hence the idea of Android apps and pure HTML/Javascrip apps on the same device.
Once there are enough of them, the situation reverse:
HTML/javascript becomes interesting become its cross-platform (Android, Firefox OS, iOS, webOS, blackberry, etc... all have rendering enginges which are HTML5 capable. In adition Android can also run the exact same browser. And HTML/Javascript are already first class citizens on webOS [and recent blackberries, I think]), and because it can also nicely integrate with existing web infrastructure, also it leverages the existing know-how (Javascript, etc.) that a lot of developpers already have.
And suddenly, developping HTML5 applications becomes much more interesting for application which are rather simple in design and doesn't require complex interraction with the hardware.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]