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Mozilla Has Stopped All Commercial Development On Firefox OS -- Explains What It Plans To Do With Code Base (google.com)
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.
I want investor fun money.
There's your problem right there. How about concentrating on giving us a good *browser* instead, like you used to?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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.
Translation: We found it is useless so we've thrown it over the fence.
Firefox OS turned out to not be a success? Thank goodness I was already sitting down when I read this!
#DeleteChrome
If you people can't communicate more clearly & succinctly than that I'm not surprised it flopped. How long does it take you folks to order at a restaurant?
I'm sorry their investment and hard work is mostly going into the bin, but that's business.
Mozilla's golden goose is their focus on privacy and security. Keeping Firefox cutting edge and making new tools/protocols for privacy and security should be their emphasis, not (in already over-saturated market) an operating system.
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.
and if you bought into "a fresh alternative" Kool-Aid, you now have a doorstop. it's up to you when you go buy a replacement phone.
first-adopter syndrome, I left it behind some years ago.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
They're both psychopaths. Both of you are trolls. The vote doesn't matter. America is a monarchy. The government under Romney would have been the same. Now fuck off and stop pretending your vote matters.
So with Windows, FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Mobile fading out, are we just stuck with Android/iOS now?
Unix won.
Best Slashdot Co
Q: Clinton and Trump fall off a bridge. Who is saved?
A: America.
Q: Clinton and Trump jump off the Empire State building without a parachute. Who hits the ground first?
A: Who cares?
Q: Clinton and Trump fall into the ocean. Who drowns?
A: Neither. Shit floats.
Those two are proof that politics is like a septic tank - the really big chunks float to the top.
Try the fish.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Instead of fixing the tens of thousands of bugs in Firefox, its much more fun making useless OS's, making computer languages and fucking up the UI.
Bingo.
Personally, I'd be happy if they just fixed the memory leak problem(s). (The ones that some people rabidly insist don't exist and/or aren't a problem.)
Just sitting with two tabs open and doing nothing, FF gradually expands to gobble up 2.2 gigs of RAM on my PC, whereupon it starts to lag horrifically, becomes unresponsive to scrolling, and starts refusing to display images. The only add-ons I have loaded are AdBlock and NoScript, that's it. Yet it steadily eats more and more memory until it's kill-and-restart time.
Cue all the people who will insist that this isn't a problem, the leaks have been fixed, it must be a bad add-on, etc etc etc.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
"For some period of time that work would be done by Mozillaâ(TM)s Connected Devices team."
COME ON, SLASHDOT!
And now, a joke:
Q: What's the difference between me and Slashdot?
A: In the last 20 years, I've learned how to deal with common special characters.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
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?
Google could get the OS into thousands, if not millions of people's hands.
And then kill it a couple of years later...
with the wild success of android to many people where jumping on the mobile os train. even google has relisted this and are doing a chrome os android fusion pretty much getting rid of chrome os and keeping the good bits for use on andorid.
I've had that _exact_ same problem since the FF 2.0 days!! Yes 2.0.
I eventually gave up and switched to Chrome. :-/
I never did figure out why FF was a RAM hog. I suspected it might be related to video playback and/or Flash related. Do you browse YouTube (or any other video sites) at all ?
How many tabs do you regularly have open? 10? 50? 100?
I wish FF wasn't such a PITA to compile out of the box. I wouldn't mind logging EVERY malloc() / new() call to see what the hell FF is doing.
Do you browse YouTube (or any other video sites) at all ?
How many tabs do you regularly have open? 10? 50? 100?
I browse Youtube occasionally on my PC, but more often on my tablet. My tabs are mostly open on different webmail clients and a few of my own sites that I watch for activity. As for tabs, it doesn't seem to matter. I might typically have ~15 tabs open on two or three instances of FF, but I've seen it do this with two tabs on a single instance.
The odd thing is that it doesn't seem to happen any faster with more tabs open, but I haven't really done any serious testing on that. It just seems that after ~24 hours or so it hits the RAM limit and starts to barf whether I have 5 tabs open or 20 tabs open.
This has been an issue for a long, long time. I'm not sure exactly what rev I started noticing it with but I think it's been this way for several years on different boxes, laptops, etc. Maybe version 10 or 12? Now we're up to version 49.x and it's still doing it...
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
> As for tabs, it doesn't seem to matter. I might typically have ~15 tabs open on two or three instances of FF, but I've seen it do this with two tabs on a single instance.
That confirms what I used to see too.
>The odd thing is that it doesn't seem to happen any faster with more tabs open, but I haven't really done any serious testing on that. It just seems that after ~24 hours or so it hits the RAM limit and starts to barf whether I have 5 tabs open or 20 tabs open.
Interesting that you can hit this in 24 hours. In the past it would take me a few days.
I did a little testing over the years. Once I noticed FF used 2+ GB I would close all tabs except one. How the frig does FF use 2+ GB with only one tab open !?!?!
Garbage Collection was added inFirefox 38 via
But the Free Memory (GC), (CC), and (Minimize memory usage) does jack.
I'll restart FF with the single tab and FF will be back down to ~ 100 MB. /sarcasm Yup, there is no memory leak! NOT.
> Now we're up to version 49.x and it's still doing it...
I'm not surprised. I got tired of the devs making the excuse that FF doesn't have a memory leak when it clearly does for a few people.
I really resisted Chrome until 2010 until I noticed that the memory leak was never going to be fixed. Chrome runs each tab in its process -- which is awesome. You can kill each tab individually to get memory back !
I really should switch to Chromium ...
Cheap 'poorly supported' Android smart phones with Linux underpinnings provide some licensing income for Google. Google I think also provides some funding for Mozilla. Firefox OS would potentially undermine Google's Android OS, the way Mozilla's free Let's Encrypt service is undermining over priced and deceptive SSL certificate vendors - which to me is a GOOD thing.
Me thinks Mozilla Firefox OS has a rather large addressable market for free / low cost smart phone and TV's that Google would rather get licensing fees for. Expect there is a memo from Google to Mozilla about withdrawing Mozilla funding if Firefox OS becomes a viable threat to Google Android licensing.
I would like to see a viable mobile OS besides iOS and Android. Browsers and connected apps are the killer use case for mobile devices, it really shouldn't just be Apple and Google, I think eventually some form of mobile OS that's essentially free will emerge. Maybe RedHat needs to get into this space with Fedora mobile then?
The whole mess reminds me of a joke from the East Bloc (it's kinda telling when old Soviet jokes start to work in the alleged "free" world...) where they actually allowed "free" elections where you got to choose between candidates the communist party offered. Of course it was bullshit because, well, two candidates of the same party, what kind of choice is that? So the following joke surfaced
A man goes into a shop to buy a new vase. He finds the vase section with a lot of lovely red (in the US it would be red and blue) vases. He takes a look at one and notices it has a hole, rendering it worthless. He picks up the next, only to find that it, too, is leaking. He goes from one to the next and all of them are defective. He asks the clerk what kind of mockery this is. Surprised the clerk says "But sir, why do you complain, you have the free choice!"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yuri is waiting in line to vote, and the apparatchik gived him a sealed envelope containing his ballot, with instructions to put it in the ballot box. He starts to open the envelope, when the commissar says "Nyet, this is a SECRET vote, comrade."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
That doesn't work for our system. At least not yet. But how about this one. And since I don't want to play favorites, I'll tell it with the original names. You can replace Trump and Hillary with them, along with your favorite "slandering" news outlet.
Message in glorious newspaper Prawda
In a comparison competition between the imperialist Kennedy and our beloved leader Leonid Brezhnev, dear Leonid Brezhnev came in at the great second place while Mr. Kennedy only came in second to last.
Also in the news
Our glorious energy power plant at the Chernobyl site reports that they manage to complete the five year plan in power production in a mere five nanoseconds.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I really resisted Chrome until 2010 until I noticed that the memory leak was never going to be fixed.
I tried Chrome and I liked it, but I was a little leery of how much it phoned home...it seemed to be in constant contact with Google, every day, all day. It creeped me out and pissed me off. (It's the same reason why I don't run Win 10- too much telemetry.)
But maybe it's time to try Chrome again. As long as I can use NoScript and AdBlock I'll put up with Google monitoring my every keystroke and mouse click in the browser.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The funny thing is I'm currently considering switching away from Chrome. I never realized how much telemetry is sends. (I hear you about Win 10 !! I refuse to use it except when mandated at work.)
If you go the Chrome route there is an _awesome_ extension called: Tabs Outliner
It has a separate window that shows ALL your tabs (both open and closed) vertically !
https://chrome.google.com/webs...
I'm not trying to "sell" you on Chrome -- I really wish this extension existed for FF.
So if FF sucks due to memory leaks, Chrome spys on you, then what browser is left? Chromium?
So if FF sucks due to memory leaks, Chrome spys on you, then what browser is left? Chromium?
Good question.
For Windows I keep hearing about Opera, Pale Moon, K-Meleon, Safari and a few others, but for me NoScript and AdBlock are two must-have add-ons. If the browser doesn't have them or their equivalents, it's a non-starter.
For Linux it seems that Firefox, Konqueror, and Epiphany are the big ones. But again, it's the NoScript and AdBlock add-ons (or equivalents) that I've got to have, so I use FF on Linux (and it seems to behave better on Linux than on Windows in terms of memory gobbling).
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
And for porn, there's always Depravda
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.