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Mozilla Has Stopped All Commercial Development On Firefox OS -- Explains What It Plans To Do With Code Base (google.com)

Posted by msmash on from the end-of-things dept.

Mozilla announced last year that Firefox OS initiative of shipping phones with commercial partners did not bring the returns it sought. The company earlier this year hinted that it intends to shut the project. It is now sharing how it will deal with Firefox OS code base going forward. From their post: We would stop our efforts to build and ship smartphones through carrier partners and pivot our efforts with Firefox OS to explore opportunities for new use cases in the world of connected devices. Firefox OS was transitioned to a Tier 3 platform from the perspective of support by Mozilla's Platform Engineering organization. That meant as of January 31, 2016 no Mozilla Platform Engineering resources would be engaged to provide ongoing support and all such work would be done by other contributors. For some period of time that work would be done by Mozillaâ(TM)s Connected Devices team. We had ideas for other opportunities for Firefox OS, perhaps as a platform for explorations in the world of connected devices, and perhaps for continued evolution of Firefox OS TV. To allow for those possibilities, and to provide a stable release for commercial TV partners, development would continue on a Firefox OS 2.6 release. In parallel with continued explorations by the Connected Devices team, we recognized there was interest within the Mozilla community in carrying forward work on Firefox OS as a smartphone platform, and perhaps even for other purposes. A Firefox OS Transition Project was launched to perform a major clean-up of the B2G code bringing it to a stable end state so it could be passed into the hands of the community as an open source project. In the spring and summer of 2016 the Connected Devices team dug deeper into opportunities for Firefox OS. They concluded that Firefox OS TV was a project to be run by our commercial partner and not a project to be led by Mozilla. Further, Firefox OS was determined to not be sufficiently useful for ongoing Connected Devices work to justify the effort to maintain it. This meant that development of the Firefox OS stack was no longer a part of Connected Devices, or Mozilla at all. Firefox OS 2.6 would be the last release from Mozilla. Today we are announcing the next phase in that evolution. While work at Mozilla on Firefox OS has ceased, we very much need to continue to evolve the underlying code that comprises Gecko, our web platform engine, as part of the ongoing development of Firefox. In order to evolve quickly and enable substantial new architectural changes in Gecko, Mozilla's Platform Engineering organization needs to remove all B2G-related code from mozilla-central. This certainly has consequences for B2G OS. For the community to continue working on B2G OS they will have to maintain a code base that includes a full version of Gecko, so will need to fork Gecko and proceed with development on their own, separate branch.

6 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Mozilla is wasting money, brains, and time by sjbe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Mozilla announced last year that Firefox OS initiative of shipping phones with commercial partners did not bring the returns it sought.

    And did anyone expect otherwise? Mozilla is an organization which has lost its purpose. It keeps chasing fads, copying the work of others, wasting money on projects that no one needed or wanted, and can't seem to figure out what to do next. Mozilla's original goal was to ensure there was an open web. Internet Explorer and Microsoft were in danger of turning the web into a monopoly. Firefox provided the fireblock to prevent this from happening. Problem is that once they accomplished that goal, they didn't know what to do next.

    I like Firefox and use it as my primary browser. It's a decent albeit imperfect bit of software. But if Mozilla really wants to make a difference they need to focus on solving actual problems instead of trying to do a second rate version of whatever Google is working on this week. They need to focus on a specific problem and do it really well. They did that for a while with browser software. Time to genuinely focus on something new.

  2. Re:(Gecko = "Web platform") = WTF by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's hard to justify a multi-million-dollar budget if you're only making a web browser.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  3. I want alternatives by SumDog · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So with Windows, FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Mobile fading out, are we just stuck with Android/iOS now?

    1. Re:I want alternatives by benmhall · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes. This is exactly what we are stuck with. What's worse is that we're really stuck with Apple and Samsung, as they account for over 100% of profits from handhelds (meaning everyone else is losing money.)

      As we've lost choice in platforms, we will soon lose choose in who is offering the platforms. At the moment, LG, HTC, Samsung, Sony, BlackBerry, Asus, and a boatload of Chinese companies offer Android phones. If the second-tier manufacturers like LG, HTC, Sony can't be profitable, they'll have to exit. This will leave us with Apple with iOS, Samsung selling premium and mid-range, and everyone else squabbling for enough table scraps to stay afloat with Android.

      I applaud the effort on Ubuntu Mobile, but I'd put it's chances of succeeding as far less than BlackBerry's or even Firefox OS, which at least had good buzz and shipped devices for a couple of years.

      We've lost Symbian, webOS, BlackBerry OS already. Firefox OS is toast, and I can't imagine that Jolla has much gas left. If Microsoft wasn't Microsoft, Windows Phone OS would have died completely ages ago, and still likely will. iOS is a walled garden, Android is a sieve that sends everything back to Google for monetization. And it's still a usability disaster. It's a pretty bad state of affairs.

    2. Re:I want alternatives by grumbel5969 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, what's wrong with Android? It's based on Linux and somewhat Open Source. It would be nice if there would be more compatibility between desktop Linux and Android, but that's something that could be accomplished without reinventing everything. Ubuntu in fact worked on allowing you to run Android apps on desktop Linux, but they abandoned that many years ago and instead went the same "reinvent everything" route that Mozilla tried and they will probably fail just the same.

      If Free Software wants to stay relevant in the long run they need to work more on interoperability, portability and mobility. Back in the day there was a "many user : single computer" environment and cloning Unix solved that reasonably well, but these days we live in a "single user : multiple computer" environment and so far Free Software isn't really handling that all that well and all these "let's write yet another OS" efforts aren't really helping, as they are just yet another OS that it mostly incompatible with the devices I already own.

  4. Re:Guess what America?? by Alomex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sorry but this is bogus. Compare the performance of America's economy, wages, policies, foreign relations between Bill Clinton and Bush Jr.

    It does make a difference. Imagine what we could have done with the trillion dollars we spent fighting the war in Iraq?