Firefox OS Pivot To Connected Devices

B2G OS Foxfooding
#1

Hi Foxfooders,

In the past day you may have seen some tweets or news articles about Mozilla’s plan to stop offering Firefox OS smartphones through carrier channels.

While it is true that carrier partnerships are ending, Firefox OS as a platform is very much alive. We will use it to explore and prototype many more use cases with a new focus on connected devices, and it will be a true open source project with community involvement reimagined and even more heavily invested in.

Ari Jaaksi blogged today about this here.

As Foxfooders we want to make it clear to you that Foxfooding will continue and remains as a crucial method for getting feedback, testing and strengthening the OS.

We’ll share more on our work and new experiments across connected devices as it progresses, and we are excited about the opportunities and challenges ahead of us.

If you have any questions or concerns please send them to us at foxfood-central@mozilla.com.

Brian King & William Quiviger

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#2

I’ll jump in with a couple of things:

First, a thank you to the many many contributors who have brought the Firefox OS platform to the place we’re at now. There are few open source projects in the world that have achieved building a full operating system, and this place of strength we’re starting from now is one that you made possible.

Second, that this next exciting phase of prototyping will need all of your involvement and creativity, as we aim to transform the connected device space with the power of the web. I’m personally excited about what’s ahead and working with so many of you!

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#3

IMO, i agree that we need to look much far more ahead, than just smartphone,
since we are kinda late to penetrate to smartphone environment. But i
hope this far further vision, can walk inline to shape also the Firefox
OS for smartphone, since we are connected with the internet, mostly from our
smartphones, not TV, Lamps, Radio, Washing Machine, or any other future
IoT devices. IoT is very important for future. I hope we can set the priorities right.

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#4

Hi Folks,

I think losing consumer smartphone “chance” is huge lost, however there are several way to go. In my opinion we should focus to education to build education programs around Tessel and RPi FxOS like devices. We have got good experiences with our Firefox OS University Education Program in Hungary. Of course we can push FxOS to other areas like IoT, TV, Chromebook like devices.
For phone support a site like https://download.cyanogenmod.org/ with lots of supported phones is essential.
Currently which devices are supported? Are we planning to support older FirefoxOS devices like Fire or Peak?

KAMI

#5

What does

actually mean?

#6

I must admit I haven’t fully understood what plans Mozilla has for the future. All the news I found on Firefox OS tell what’s not going to happen anymore (that is, carrier partnerships). On the contrary, they are extremely vague on what plans for the future are. (BTW, I think this is why the news about FxOS future have been misinterpreted so much.)

“Connected devices” are mentioned, but this is an extremely broad category. In particular, do smartphones have first-class citizenship among those? Also, whatever path may be chosen and whatever FxOS may become, phisical devices will still be necessary. What are they going to be, if industrial partnerships are excluded? Will Mozilla develop and produce its own devices, or opt for third-part devices (such as Sony’s Xperia phones are at the moment)?

It’s also been said that Foxfooding will keep a central role in the future. Still, foxfooders are contributors and as such they cannot replace final users. Whom the future projects will be targeted at?

Now that Mozlando is over, I’m looking forward to know what the future of Firefox OS (and other projects) will be!

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#7

@enrico_ghiorzi, I would like to know too. I would like also have a CLEAR view of what will happen to Firefox OS on smartphone:
Will UI and UX of FxOS on smartphone be still update?
Will Alopex take care of FxOS on smartphone?

The official announcement of Mozilla are not clear at all for me.
My connected devices are for now my PC and my smartphone, and I think it will still like that for a moment…

#8

FxOS on smartphones is still continuing.
What’s not continuing is for us to ship smartphones through carrier
partners.

ie I am not sure what the roadmap is; I’m hoping that we adapt a model
similar to that of Cyagenmod.

I am also not sure about the plan, having said that there’s a realm of
possibilities with connected devices: NFC, flyweb (
https://wiki.mozilla.org/FlyWeb ), Moz Open Hard (
http://mozopenhard.mozillafactory.org/ ), FxOS TV, gaming, MozVR, etc.

I believe we’re aiming back to be more of a developer’s platform and
allowing the devs to have tools to create fascinating projects. To allow
people to hack together things on the web.

I could be mistaken… It’s at least what I’m hoping.

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#9

Thanks all for your thoughts on this thread.

I can tell you that Ari (and the Connected Devices/Mozilla leadership) were torn this past week. On the one hand, he had formulated parts of the strategy moving forward:

  • ending carrier partner relationships
  • continuing foxfooding
  • aiming the 2.6 release at developers
  • focusing on prototyping on connected devices
  • doubling-down on Firefox OS as a true open source platform and community

On the other hand, there are lots of questions and details still remaining. As many of you have pointed out, connected devices is a broad category, the specific areas of exploration are not clearly articulated, and there is no explicit roadmap. Exactly what we’re doing remains to be made clear.

With these two realities, Ari had a choice: 1) Say nothing. 2) Articulate what’s known, leaving a lot of ambiguity.

He chose (2), which I fully back. In a community like this I think that being open and honest about where we’re at is critical, even if there’s uncertainty. And yes, I acknowledge that ambiguity is uncomfortable.

Here’s what I know:

  1. There will likely be more clarity on focus areas/initiatives by January/February. And many of your questions will be addressed over that time frame.

  2. This new strategy will be one of exploration, which will, by definition, mean less certainty than before, probably for a couple of years. For me this is the exciting part of innovating!

Please…

  • keep your questions and concerns coming … they are very very useful
  • see this as a huge opportunity to influence the direction of the project … more details on formal mechanisms for that will be forthcoming

CC @pdol

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#10

Thanks A LOT @nhirata and @george, it’s more understandable right now.
And thanks for your honesty.

1 Like