Any life remaining in B2G?

[madbilly (Will)]

Hi everyone,

I am interested in supporting ongoing development of B2G OS. I really like Firefox OS, I would like to see it somehow continue to develop like UBPorts are somehow succeeding to do with Ubuntu Touch and like Jolla have managed to do with Sailfish OS for several years since MeeGo was killed.

I’m prepared to buy a phone purely to support development of B2G OS (see my other post)

Current status of builds and ports?

Hi everyone, I’d like to support the continued existence of FireFox OS as a user and tester, i.e. I can install a build, test it, feedback, bug, etc. But which ports are currently being maintained? Is the devices page still correct when it says Flame, Z3 and Z3 Compact are the official reference devices? Which of these is the most relevant? It’s actually quite confusing that the main B2G OS page actually links to a different page about B2G OS phones: The compatible devices page seems t…

But after I’ve investigated further it really seems like B2G OS is dormant (I won’t say dead, it’s not entirely consigned to web.archive.org yet!), barely on life support.

I can see there have been very few new topics on this discourse and few of the new ones have generated any discussion - even the suggestion to merge with LuneOS didn’t receive a response! It appears that many of the builds for B2G Installer are now missing, I assume as they were nightly builds that have now been removed because the code is no longer in Mozilla Central.

So, has the hub of B2G OS development moved elsewhere? Is there an epicentre that I’ve missed, that hasn’t come up in my searches?

If anyone can point me to people who are still working on B2G OS that would be great.

Cheers (I hope)

[vmx (Volker Mische)]

That’s great to hear. Some people that also want to see B2G alive hang out on IRC on moznet #b2g (there also bridges to other chat systems, but i use it via IRC).

Other than that, i think this forum is still the place to post updates/discuss things.

I still believe the way to go is porting as many of the APIs that were baked into Firefox itself into standalone apps/servers that can be used through HTTP/WebSockets. Those could then run on almost any platform (though I’d concentrate on AOSP for now). Though can then be wrapped into the DOM-like APIs Gaia is using, so we wouldn’t need to worry about the UI part.

[sizvix (simon g)]

Other than that, i think this forum is still the place to post updates/discuss things.
The problem with IRC is there is no log, so we can’t know all the informations about B2G evolutions :-/

[madbilly (Will)]

Hooray! It looks like there’s life in the old fox yet

Right now I can only really support by testing builds that others have made (hence why I went looking to see what was available in B2G installer). However I’m happy and willing to learn how to build myself, maybe a bit of tinkering to fix simple things.

However, to be honest, a lot of what you say needs to be done (porting, serious programming) is beyond me. I’m willing to test ports, but I need to know which device to get first

What I’m really missing - and I assume others too in my position, those who want to help but don’t know how - is some sort of summary of the current state of the project, maybe an update to the wiki (speaking of which, what’s the current state of this - it’s in the archive but some pages seem to have been updated recently according to the note at the bottom?). Some sort of regular blog/update would help give the impression the project is alive and working on things, whereas at the moment it does appear that B2G OS is almost completely abandoned.

Maybe the above sounds overly critical, so please excuse me if it does - I know you’re all very passionate about B2G OS and are probably working on many things behind the scenes, things that I hope to learn about over time.

So: 1) which device shall I get, and 2) how can I help?

Cheers

[quentinlamamy]

Hey,

I use the Z3C i get with the old fXOS foxfooding program. As you said it seems that the project is almost completely dead. Some day ago i was talking with developper from the Paris about my project of relauching B2G project with a french team of student but it seems that it will be very hard to restart this project without develop from scratch a big part of the code.

[madbilly (Will)]

Hi Quentin,
I was wondering about getting a Z3C or a Z3. The Z3C has a build available in the B2G installer, but the Z3 doesn’t. I’ve asked in another post if the Z3 is still suitable or not, but got no replies so far:

Z3 Leo or Z3C Aries?

Hi all, As you may know from reading my other posts, I’m keen to support the continued development of B2G towards being an open boot2web OS. I don’t have the skills to port, so I need to have a device that is already being ported to by others. In the B2G OS compatible devices page It says that both Z3 and Z3C are reference devices. However, Z3 isn’t supported in the B2G installer, it can’t find it in the foxfooding programme, although it is included in the B2G manifests on github. To me…

Maybe both are a dead end and a Nexus is a better bet!