[josteink]

> I guess a free Firefox OS phone would be great for homeless or families too poor to afford a decent phone.

Or people who value freedom over eyecandy. Or people with principles and ideals. And maybe even people who can see outside the San Francisco hipster smug.

People with long term visions, like the people who originally created the WWW had. We definitely need more people like that and we need the tech crowd to support them.

Your comment adds nothing of value.

[embolism]

Android is also free and is far more capable. What does Firefox OS bring to the table?

[josteink]

All Android apps (which most users see) are still closed apps, delivered through a closed app store, using propietary APIs.

Chances are that all the apps you have invested in and the data you have put into them will be lost if you migrate to another phone or eco-system.

Firefox OS, by ensuring that everything is HTML-based and pretty much delivered as web-pages means that you can never have your data and apps locked in the same way you can on Android and iPhone.

Firefox OS delivers freedom in such complete form that no other platform can compete. Firefox OS is in fact so open that if you in the end get fed up with it (for whatever reason), you can still take all your apps, all your data and move on to whatever you want. You will lose nothing.

You have to admit that is something pretty unique.

[st3fan]

"... you can still take all your apps, all your data and move on to whatever you want ..."

Well, in theory :-)

1) Only to other Firefox OS phones that support the same WebAPIs that your apps require. Mozilla is working hard to push those APIs through W3C and encourage others to implement them. But that is a slow process and it remains to be seen if the other players want to do that.

Until that happens, Firefox OS is just as proprietary as any other platform. Sure, it is technically more open, but you are still locked in to a specific runtime implementation where you can't easily move away from.

2) Only if those applications are completely standalone and do not depend on server side components. Developer goes out of business or loses interest in the app? Good luck reverse engineering minified JavaScript or reimplementing a backend that the app depended on.

Firefox OS is great and it is a long term plan. But to claim it solves all problems we have now with mobile software goes too far in my opinion. Those same problems will just exist on any new platform.

(Yes, yes, the web is the platform. See point 1)

[Yoric]

> 1) Only to other Firefox OS phones that support the same WebAPIs that your apps require. Mozilla is working hard to push those APIs through W3C and encourage others to implement them. But that is a slow process and it remains to be seen if the other players want to do that.

In theory, it will work anywhere, eventually. But today, almost every single FirefoxOS applications can run unchanged on Android (using Firefox for Android). Most of them can also work on laptop/desktop (using regular Firefox). That's already way better than whatever Android or iOS offer.

> 2) Only if those applications are completely standalone and do not depend on server side components. Developer goes out of business or loses interest in the app? Good luck reverse engineering minified JavaScript or reimplementing a backend that the app depended on.

On this point, I agree with you. The parent post was overpromising.

> Firefox OS is great and it is a long term plan. But to claim it solves all problems we have now with mobile software goes too far in my opinion. Those same problems will just exist on any new platform.

I, for one, don't claim that. But I am convinced that Firefox OS is a great step forward, and that's all we can ask, really.

Caveat: I am a Mozillian.

[embolism]

This is all true, but it's too late. The open source community (and HN) proclaimed Android as open for years, and frankly shouted down anyone who suggested otherwise as an iOS apologist (which clearly some of them were),

People believe they are getting something free and open when they buy Android.

These fine distinctions aren't going to make a difference in anyone's mind since the Geek vote already went to Android.

[Ygg2]

Really?! The gist was that Android was more like eventually open, because real development lags behind the OSS version?