Update: There has been a little confusion. The web browser, Firefox, is still going strong. In fact, they're focusing their engineering efforts more on it, by cutting back on these secondary projects.
Less than a year after their decision to stop developing and selling smartphones through carriers, Mozilla has decided to end all commercial development of Firefox OS. Releases after Firefox OS 2.6 will be handled by third parties, such as Panasonic, should they wish to continue using it for their smart TV platform. Further, source code for the underlying operating system, Boot-to-Gecko (B2G), will be removed from their repository, mozilla-central, so it doesn't hinder development of their other products.
Obviously, this is quite disappointing from a platform standpoint. Many applications, especially for mobile and similar devices, can be created in Web standards. At this point, we usually get comments about how web browsers shouldn't be app platforms, and that JavaScript is too inefficient. The thing is, Web is about the best, ubiquitous platform we have, and it will only get better with initiatives such as WebAssembly. Also, native applications don't necessarily perform better than Web-based ones, especially if the latter are packaged standalone (versus sharing resources with other tabs in a browser).
Regardless, Mozilla needs to consider their long-term financial stability, and throwing resources at Firefox OS apparently doesn't return enough value for them, both directly and for its impact on society.
As a long time user of
As a long time user of Firefox (because of its plug-in’s) I am sad to see this. Still, if people want to use a pretty good alternative there is always Pale Moon. Which is a fork of Firefox anyway.
It’s not very ‘flashy’ in terms of look n’ feel, but it is very fast and supports all my plug-ins. So I’ll probably move over to that instead.
Their testimonials page says it all really- https://www.palemoon.org/testimonials.shtml
PS- I have nothing to do with Pale Moon, I just use it on my Windows Atom tablet, because it’s the *only* browser that doesn’t make me want to pull my hair out.
Firefox OS is a different
Firefox OS is a different product than Firefox browser.
It’s the Operating System that could be used for budget phones or smart TV’s that’s getting the ax, not the browser.
Oh, my bad. Thought they
Oh, my bad. Thought they meant both. Still, point stands, for low powered stuff like tablets Pale Moon is even better than Firefox if you want low overhead.
Nonono… Mozilla is focusing
Nonono… Mozilla is focusing on their Firefox browser by cutting back on their secondary projects. In fact, they're working on heavily changing the browser, possibly even switching the rendering engine from Gecko to a Rust-based alternative (or back-porting it into Gecko).
What’s Firefox?
What’s Firefox?
Basically Iceweasel 😉
Basically Iceweasel 😉
So where does this leave
So where does this leave Panasonic TVs? This is why I don’t really want my TV to run a “smartOS”
I’d be guessing that there
I’d be guessing that there will still be support, but no new features etc – just basic bug fixes and all that.
Nah. They’re telling their
Nah. They're telling their partners and the community to fork it, basically.
Wow, OK.
Wow, OK.