LWN: Comments on "Firefox OS on the ZTE Open"

"difference between diesel and injector"

JanC_ — 2013-09-30T17:58:51+00:00

perhaps you can compare it to difference between diesel and injector

Almost all diesel engines use injection, and many of them use computer-controlled injection nowadays, so what's the difference supposed to be? (You can read all that in the Wikipedia pages you linked to BTW.)

Geeksphone

Kaejox — 2013-09-19T15:20:31+00:00

Another device option is Geeksphone Peak+ (pre-order available for 149 EUR)
Not sure if it supports 900 MHz 3G network (only 850/1900/2100 listed)

http://shop.geeksphone.com/en/

They have web forum too:

http://forum.geeksphone.com/

Does it have some similarity between Firefox/Iceweasel case?

http://forum.geeksphone.com/index.php?topic=5528.0

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

Kaejox — 2013-09-18T23:07:10+00:00

Hope that they develop easy installer for existing devices (like CyanogenMod is planning). My Galaxy S2 would be possible target for Firefox OS, but current install system looks risky and too much work.
I ordered ZTE Open, but would like to use FFOS with better hardware also.
Jolla phone looks promising (with Android compatibility), maybe after pre-order stage when prices drop.
They should sell their phones also via Ebay or some other site for international market...like ZTE does.

Виктор, Вы неправы

gvy — 2013-09-13T20:24:14+00:00

Yup, that kind of "everyone and his dog SURELY knows" reasoning is spotted in the wild along with attempts to cover up real world problems.

Correlation is a tool which can be useful to notice causation.

Like with Nth case of finding WMD in Mid East countries by pure accident and without any will to bomb a country into ruins swarming with fanatics instead of bombing it into democracy.

And yes, my correlometer tends to treat wikipedia links correctly: as links to *unauthoritative* source that is known to be manipulatable.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

freetard — 2013-09-13T10:01:48+00:00

The key contribution of Android is that it created a Linux-based OS that is friendly to proprietary software and it does have decent proprietary software.

Desktop Linux users also want AAA games, Photoshop, MS Office, etc.
They just do not have them (Steam brings some hope) and have to live with shitty open source alternatives.

Firefox OS's position is somehow strange.
Yes, ZET Open's price is OK for developing world.
But does developing world have decent mobile networks?
Does developing world have decent HTML5 eco-system?
At least in China, IE6 usage is surprisingly high and most Web sites do not bother to support Firefox well (glitches are here and there), many Web sites are still IE-only.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

glaesera — 2013-09-11T08:15:37+00:00

Android is non-free it is open-source, but it is a non-free proprietary product.
See here:
https://fsfe.org/campaigns/android/android.html
Also it is highly recommended, to not use the default app-store, but this instead:
https://f-droid.org/
Some free clone of Firefox-OS like Cyanogenmod should not be necessary at all, because this is free and open software by itself.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

hummassa — 2013-09-10T18:17:48+00:00

For a lot of time facebook's mobile web interface was better, faster, less battery-hungry than and as featureful as its dalvik-application. AND it didn't nag you with notifications all the time.

"looking out for its users"

rillian — 2013-09-10T15:44:18+00:00

The browser app has a back button on Firefox OS, as do a number of applications. But that's specific to that app. There's no global back button in the current design, the way android has and iOS doesn't. That's what people generally mean when they talk about Firefox OS "not having a back button." It affects inter-app workflow but not normal web browsing.

You can try these things out for yourself in the simulator.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

roc — 2013-09-09T22:25:17+00:00

There are a very large number of Web sites that don't have an equivalent Android app.

It remains to be seen whether the average "native Android app" (I can't tell whether you mean NDK apps or Dalvik apps) is "faster, less battery-hungry, etc" than the average FirefoxOS HTML5 app or Web page in the FirefoxOS browser.

"looking out for its users"

dlang — 2013-09-09T15:38:49+00:00

> Well, ok, in fairness, they just *removed* the button, but it's the same thing.

well, I'm using firefox 25 (the alpha version) and the back button works just fine.

I'll bet that firefoxOS has a back button or gesture that works just fine. Now, the discoverability of gestures is a problem, but that's a completely different topic.

"looking out for its users"

dlang — 2013-09-09T15:36:02+00:00

> They screwed IT users by going to the "everything's a major release" version numbering system

actually, if you are doing continuous improvement on a codebase, either everything is a major release or nothing is a major release.

Mozilla went one direction (a single number), Linus went a different direction (everything is a minor release, until he decides the numbers are too large)

In any case, the idea that major releases need more testing than minor releases (which is the basis of the "IT user" complaints) is false to begin with.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

Baylink — 2013-09-09T15:18:29+00:00

Very nice; thanks.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

Baylink — 2013-09-09T15:13:22+00:00

"Weapons of Mass Opinion".

Amazingly, I've never heard that before. And I love it. Thanks for starting my week off right.

"looking out for its users"

Baylink — 2013-09-09T15:08:50+00:00

Well, I guess that depends on whom you think the users are.

They screwed IT users by going to the "everything's a major release" version numbering system, and now they're screwing everyone else by violating the most fundamental rule of webapp design: *DON'T BREAK THE BACK BUTTON*.

Well, ok, in fairness, they just *removed* the button, but it's the same thing.

No; I think Firefox is following Google down the road to Mordor.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

khim — 2013-09-09T14:38:56+00:00

But users don't care about HTML5 and for them native apps (and there are way more native Android apps then good HTML5 apps) are better: faster, less battery-hungry, etc.

In a world where there are millions of HTML5 applications and few Android ones FirefoxOS will make sense, but this is not our world right now.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

kruemelmo — 2013-09-09T13:16:08+00:00

Anyway... testing this phone, could you place a phone call?

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

MKesper — 2013-09-09T09:13:39+00:00

Look what F-Droid thinks about it:
https://f-droid.org/forums/topic/maintaining-a-directory-...

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

korpenkraxar — 2013-09-09T08:10:49+00:00

Is it possible to search the Google Play store by licences somehow to locate FLOSS?

If not, then presumably, this is a "do no evil" goodwill gesture that Google would be quite likely implement if there was a public petition that received some traction.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

roc — 2013-09-07T13:18:07+00:00

FirefoxOS can run Web apps and a good Web browser on phones that can't possibly run Chrome on Android (and the Android "stock browser" is rubbish).

For Web browsing and running Web apps, running both Android's frameworks and a Web browser is a lot of overhead on low-end phones.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

horen — 2013-09-07T01:00:44+00:00

The article is, itself, interesting; but the portion relevant here is in the final five paragraphs, regarding ZTE.

Legislation Seeks to Bar N.S.A. Tactic in Encryption.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

khim — 2013-09-07T00:19:34+00:00

All you did is make a post that boils down to agreeing with me, that if you are the sort who runs Linux (see the masthead of the site you are posting on) that Android is about as useful as Windows or OS X or iOS.

WTF? Do you really want to imply that people who run Linux automatically reject proprietary software? Sorry to disappoint you, but that's not true at all. I know a lot of Linux users who are more then happy to use non-free software (especially if we are talking about things like games). This means Android is more then relevant to the LWN: this is, finally, version of Linux which you can actually use to do real work without fighting it tooth and nail at every step and if this version of Linux fails "ideological purity" test then so be it.

Probably less so since the bulk of the App space is shareware vs commercial software.

That's true for Windows and iOS as well. Sure, there are some commercial packages, but most applications are shareware programs with one or two developers behind them.

And yes all of my machines at home run some sort of Linux with an OpenWRT gateway and all but one machine at work does as well. And yes I have the f-droid repo installed on my phone.

Well, that's your choice. I use an OpenWRT router, too, but I that's because I wanted to make sure it can do some things which are hard to do on stock firmware. What this has to do with anything?

I think you've mixed sites. This is Linux Weekly News, not FSF-zealots Weekly News and not RMS-lovers Weekly News. Linus is Linux's soul and he quite explicitly said in the Forbes interview: The thing that makes me not want to use the GPLv3 in its current form is that it really tries to move more toward the “software freedom” goals. You really can't be more explicit then that.

Android is the Linux distribution exactly because it's possible and easy to write programs for it - even "evil" unfree ones. Linus was always apathetic to proprietary software (he prefers free software but his preference is pragmatic one, not ideological one) but Linux distributions traditionally liked to make life difficult for the proprietary software writers (especially for small shareware-like proprietary software writers) and Android finally brings userspace policy to match original Linus intent.

P.S. My only dislike of Android is the fact that it had thrown away the only pieces of GNU/Linux which were already usable for software writers (proprietary and free ones alike): coreutils, bash, gcc, glibc, etc. This is sad, but understandable: most of these were actually FSF's projects, ironically enough, and after FSF tried to change them to become "weapon of mass opinion" the only logical choice was to abandon them. I think only glibc is still not converted but it can be converted at any time thus from Android authors POV it was probably easier to cut ties early rather then to try to keep fork going after license change.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

jmorris42 — 2013-09-06T23:37:03+00:00

So? All you did is make a post that boils down to agreeing with me, that if you are the sort who runs Linux (see the masthead of the site you are posting on) that Android is about as useful as Windows or OS X or iOS. Probably less so since the bulk of the App space is shareware vs commercial software. Shareware tends to combine the worst parts of Open Source and Commercial software into a big ball of fail.

And yes all of my machines at home run some sort of Linux with an OpenWRT gateway and all but one machine at work does as well. And yes I have the f-droid repo installed on my phone.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

Lennie — 2013-09-06T23:29:31+00:00

Well, the goal of FirefoxOS is to be able to run web apps better on the same hardware.

Their slogan of their developer education/evangelism/promos videos is:

"Firefox OS: the platform HTML5 deserves"

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

liam — 2013-09-06T22:13:22+00:00

- FirefoxOS needs less resources to run than an Android phone

I hope this is true, but thus far its only been said and not demonstrated.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

liam — 2013-09-06T22:03:10+00:00

That's wonderful to hear, but I do share the concerns of those below, well khim at least, that changing the interface so soon after release may alienate your users BUT if the interface is substantially better it may be worth losing a few of the older users for the potential new users you'll gain.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

liam — 2013-09-06T22:00:46+00:00

Have you actually compared them side-by-side or are you comparing experiences separated by years?

Side-by-side. The Nexus S still works as it always has (well, not considering the changes the updates have made).

I've recently was forced to work with Nexus S (with Android 4.1, naturally) for a bit and quickly found out that it's laggy as hell when compared to Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.2.x/4.3 (I don't have Nexus 4). When I've used it as my primary phone years ago I've not noticed these same lags all that much.

The lag have ALWAYS been there in every device, regardless of spec. The frame rates have been a bit worse since 4.1 came out. The input latency seems about the same (I can't say for certain since I wasn't able to test those side-by-side, of course).

***SNIP interpreted language rant***

I'm not going to do your research for you, so if you want to know what geekbench measures you can look for yourself, but I will say this: it categorizes its tests as int, fp, and memory/streaming performance. The memory category was of particular interest to me since that has been a consistent weak area for ARM. The intel cpu had a better memory interface (upto about four times better).

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

brouhaha — 2013-09-06T21:14:40+00:00

Supposedly FirefoxOS has a number things going for it:
[...]
- there are 6 million webdevelopers and 'only' a couple of 100000 app developers for Android and iOS combined, many are even HTML5-apps with a native wrapper

So you're saying that it's an advantage for FirefoxOS to only run web apps, vs. an Android phone being able to run either web apps or Android apps?

"Too many SKUs"

tialaramex — 2013-09-06T20:55:01+00:00

"At least crash tests must be repeated because different engine types will destruct in different manner."

Probably not, type compliance for which destructive testing is specified would usually cover an entire vehicle model. Indeed this is not a coincidence, type compliance rules were written with an eye on what manufacturers considered to be one "model" of vehicle, and since then manufacturers obviously don't want to introduce a model which would consist of multiple types requiring separate compliance because of the added cost.

I haven't read the US rules, but the EU rules are clear that only a totally different type of power plant, e.g. batteries and an electric motor rather than a combustion engine, would count as a separate type and need fresh testing. So long as the body plan is the same, one vehicle can be tested as a stand-in for any number of variants in fuel technology, gearbox, etc.

Most of the crash testing we think of is actually voluntary, it isn't required by law as part of type compliance but is rather a consumer protection activity, albeit sometimes still funded by the government. NCAP and EuroNCAP for example, have no role in type compliance: vehicles that score badly in their tests aren't illegal, they can still be sold in the relevant countries and insured and driven. Car buyers do pay at least some attention though, which is why these programmers are still running. Like Europe's A-E letter efficiency grading on white goods, consumers show some interest in avoiding the poorest performers and that helps push manufacturers in the right direction without legislation.

But we have drifted far off topic.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

MKesper — 2013-09-06T20:15:54+00:00

Well, it's a little bit different: In contrast to free software for desktops, many free software programs built for Google Play include the non-free admob lib or even other obscure libs making it a hassle to build them with Free Software only.
And within f-droid, the ratio is 1:0. :)

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

khim — 2013-09-06T20:02:25+00:00

I'm pretty sure there are more open-source application on Google Play then that. The only problem: there are few thousand applications besides million of proprietary ones thus ratio does not look all that good. But it's similar to MacOS, Windows or any other popular OS with vibrant ecosystem thus I'm not complaining.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

khim — 2013-09-06T19:58:50+00:00

i'll be shocked if i ever see a firefox or ubuntu phone at any wireless store in the US, let alone foreign markets.

Why everyone assumes revolution should start in the US? US is actually the last place you want to do that (unless you are huge American company, at least). It's market is completely controlled by carriers, you need to spend literally years to convince them to do anything for you and time is running out. There are markets where it's much, much easier to sell new types of phones (India, Russia, to some degree China, maybe some African countries).

This is one of the few things which Mozilla does right. Elop for some unfathomable reason decided to mount "attack on the US", lost China and the rest of the world and failed miserably in doing anything in US, too, Mozilla's people are not so dumb.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

MKesper — 2013-09-06T19:54:57+00:00

Have a look at http://f-droid.org for really Free Software. Almost 750 apps are included right now.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

khim — 2013-09-06T19:44:46+00:00

Actually I'd say your arguments are the reason they SHOULD do any major changes now. Now they only have a few early adopters and few real customers.

Good point. Well, now (as in: right now, basically in the next few weeks or may be a month) will be a good time, you are right. And indeed, if your creation is not popular then it may be good idea to release something "with new user interface with new concepts and paradigms" (Microsoft is famous for making few mediocre versions of anything before creating a hit).

But this idea raises the question: if you can not create something which will be popular and you know that (otherwise why plan for the next version "with new concepts and paradigms" from the start) then why such product was released in first place?

If they have a hankering to get a big change that didn't make it onto the 1.0 hardware now is probably the last chance, six months from now would be too late, either way.

On that we can agree, too. I actually feel that now it already too late (IMHO critical point was "half of the phones sold are smartphones" and this point has passed already already), but, well, it's very close to critical time and they still have small chance of jumping on the bandwagon of the last car of a departing train… but as time goes on chances are becomes more and more imaginary.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

khim — 2013-09-06T19:16:14+00:00

What can I say… welcome to real world!

That's how most successful platforms look like (exceptions are even more closed: see iOS). It's the same on server, on routers and other places where Linux is actually successful, too. With perhaps smaller number of "one man band shareware apps", but that's because simple application which you can use to swindle couple of dollars from Joe Average are not all that successful among the more technical-minded public. But closed-source software and partial disclosures are norm there, too.

You can try to carve a niche for "true" FOSS software among all that chaos (with Android the natural approach will be to use Nexus devices and/or other easily openable devices, with routers you'll need to carefully select device supportable by OpenWRT), but if you'll insist on "FOSS way or the highway" then you'll quickly find out that Joe Average chooses highway 9 times out of 10.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

b7j0c — 2013-09-06T18:17:03+00:00

good points. k9 mail and firefox are probably the only two "daily use" apps i run on android that meet any open-ness test....sort of sad.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

Lennie — 2013-09-06T18:08:45+00:00

I've read somewhere that Mozilla's play is to have regular updates like Firefox and Chrome on the desktop for the top part of FirefoxOS (so not the kernel and daemons).

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

jmorris42 — 2013-09-06T17:55:38+00:00

Actually I'd say your arguments are the reason they SHOULD do any major changes now. Now they only have a few early adopters and few real customers. They have two futures:

1. They never get real installed base. Who cares if they change anything, dead is dead, so we can ignore this future.

2. They do get a toehold somewhere. At that point your argument would apply, pushing any major change all at once would be a bad idea.

So don't be confused by the 1.0 version number, this is still a developers release now, if they have a hankering to get a big change that didn't make it onto the 1.0 hardware now is probably the last chance, six months from now would be too late, either way.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

Lennie — 2013-09-06T17:46:06+00:00

Supposedly FirefoxOS has a number things going for it:
- FirefoxOS needs less resources to run than an Android phone

- there are 6 million webdevelopers and 'only' a couple of 100000 app developers for Android and iOS combined, many are even HTML5-apps with a native wrapper

- it's open source and I've heared it has an update process which updates the top part of FirefoxOS (so not the kernel and binaries) on regular basis. Just like Firefox and Chrome on the desktop

- there are still a lot more people with feature phones than smartphones. There are 6 billion phones in use, only 1.1 are smartphones. Most of these people don't life in a western country and don't have a smartphone partly because of price. A FirefoxOS can already be had for only 3 euros a month (for the fist 3 months, data is free the first 3 months).

Even if FirefoxOS fails, Mozilla has produces a whole slew of new WebAPIs:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI

Most of them have been proposed as standards at W3C and a number of them have become standards.

Including a new payment system for the web to bring a one-click payment system to the web. Just like the app-store model now has.

So still a win in Mozilla's book if it improves the web.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

jmorris42 — 2013-09-06T17:27:36+00:00

Or even worse, the current situation with Android where you have a half open and half closed system where almost all of the apps are either entirely closed or shareware/nagware/adware.

You get all of the fail from both open and closed and the only upside is the OEM and carrier buyin because they seem to like the idea.

Really, go look at the Play Store. Four classes of offerings:

1. Google closed source apps increasingly built on their 100% closed OS on an OS Play Services platform.

2. One man band shareware apps where you get the poor customer service implied by an small vendor, the uncertain future of depending on a single guy who at any point can decide it ain't worth it and stop development. Similar to any small open source project. But because it is shareware there is no source and no option for anyone else to pick up and carry on. So a lot of wheels get reinvented and the same basic app is posted a dozen times, each hoping to score a few dollars instead of collaborate one one or two really good apps.

3, Pure commercial software from larger shops. Think Angry Birds.

4. Real Free Software. This category is very rare. Even most of the core 'rooting' and other hacking tools are shareware. And this mindset means information is hoarded instead of shared. Go read xda-developers and see how often partial disclosures are made with a pitch to buy an app to actually implement. (The one I hit yesterday was triangleaway.) This makes coming up to speed on how Android works on real hardware is much harder than it should be.

Firefox OS on the ZTE Open

b7j0c — 2013-09-06T17:14:02+00:00

but thats only the start. where are your retail outlets? your carrier promotion and support? who is zte? everyone has heard of samsung. they have name-brand recognition, they have shelf space and sales kiosks. it all matters. i'll be shocked if i ever see a firefox or ubuntu phone at any wireless store in the US, let alone foreign markets.

and how do you get everyone in the mix to make space for a firefox phone? its an inferior product. people will make room for something better...but this isn't it