[hrodriguez]

I still see no reason why they couldn't reboot the project and agree with his thinking here: "Create a mid-range tablet ... Carve out a niche in developed markets first ... Firefox OS was actually five years too early!"

I always thought they were trying to put a ChromeOS competitor on a phone when it actually belonged on laptops, tablets and 2-in-1s (to start). I would have been very interested in a device running an extension-rich privacy-respecting browser, using open tech, focused on education and as a device to develop for.

It's essentially Mozilla's mission statement made into physical form. Dealing with corporate interests, as the article suggests, forced Mozilla to diverge from their base (end-users). It was a learning experience, that was all.

I don't actually expect the project to be revived and that's a real shame given the hostility of the alternatives (not including Linux, etal) available to (the rest of) us.

[vanadium]

I'd argue the same thinking could have been applied--perhaps moreso--to Palm/HP's webOS, which was thrusting in the same direction as mid-range tablet OS with the Touchpad, and into a desktop-capable OS (demonstrated in early state) before its EOL.

Plenty of parallels between the two OSes, down to some of the personnel who bailed to Firefox OS from HP.

[cmrdporcupine]

When I first heard about Firefox OS my first reaction was one of frustration, as I believe at the time WebOS had just been open sourced.

It seemed like a giant duplication of effort towards similar aims.