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Mozilla Launches Firefox OS Simulator 4.0 With Test Receipts
An anonymous reader writes "As promised, Mozilla today announced the release of Firefox OS Simulator 4.0 with a focus on developers who want to make money in the Firefox Marketplace. You can download the new version now for Windows, Mac, and Linux from Mozilla Add-Ons. First and foremost, the new simulator supports test receipts for paid apps: each app's dashboard features a drop-down menu where you can select a receipt type. Choosing one of these will have the simulator add-on downloading a test receipt from a Marketplace receipt service and reinstalling the app using it. This lets developers test receipt verification with whatever receipts types they may require (valid, invalid, and refunded)."
Wrong, an OS is a kernel + standard user space libraries + standard executables. Firefox OS is an OS using the Linux kernel much like OS X is an OS using XNU kernel, Windows Phone 8 using the Windows kernel, Windows Phone 7 using the Windows CE kernel, etc.
Why the fuck would they? Android is available on cheap phones
CDMA2000 carriers have been known to refuse to activate Android phones on voice-only plans, and GSM carriers have been known to "cram" expensive data plans onto a voice-only SIM inserted into a smartphone. This is just speculation, but perhaps a carrier might find some reason to charge less per month for a Firefox OS device than for an Android device. If the billing department of the wireless carrier with the best coverage in your area had a policy of treating Firefox OS phones as "feature phones" and Android phones as "smartphones", and you were on a budget, what would you choose?
Android is available on cheap phones
Apparently FXOS is supposed to run better than Android on low end hardware, though I still haven't seen anything to justify that claim. The other thing is they would still need to build up an application library to rival Google Play, but also to function well on the low end hardware that FXOS will ship on. They could have put in some mandates to avoid the version fragmentation and OEM/carrier forks that play havoc with the OS updating mechanisms, which would have actually been beneficial but it seems they haven't chosen to do that.
and you are an asshole......
Maybe, but he's not calling himself an OS...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
If it managed to release prior to ICS, *maybe* it could have had an in, but as it stands Android is just too capable and clean.
Clean, but not lean. This article claims that Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) requires more RAM than Firefox OS, and I guess that's why 256 MB devices are stuck on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread).
If you find any bugs, would like to request any features, or want to help out by contributing to some open source code, please let us know in our issue tracker [1]. The beauty of open source is that you have the ability to affect the trajectory of the project! [1] https://github.com/mozilla/r2d2b2g/issues
I'm looking for this information all around. I'm wondering is Gunk/Gaia (parts of Firefox OS) open source, will I be able to modify it on my Firefox OS phone? Or did they sell out to carriers?