Firefox OS
- I bought a Peak phone from the spanish company Geeksphone in May 2013, which was the first Firefox OS phone available for developers.
- After exploring the Mozilla APIs, the Building Blocks library, the FFOS Simulator and AppManager tool, etc., i wrote my first webapps, providing backup/restore of contacts using the SD-card:
- Contacts2XML: to backup the contacts to the SD-card.
- XML2Contacts: to restore the contacts from the SD-card.
- Cockatoo: to manage the contacts using the classical Firefox browser.
- Then:
- Cactus: an offline calendar tool with categories and repeat events.
- a few scripts to synchronize my sdcard every time i plug the device on the PC.
- And more recently:
- StatsCars: a car manager providing costs and statistics of your "precious".
- Extra!
- Others webapps with code and unzipped files: backup of others FFOS webapps, since Mozilla closed the marketplace on March 2018.
- Even if i'm not a power user, my experience of Firefox OS is very positive, and that was really a shame to learn, at the end of 2015, that Mozilla stop it. I really guess the foundation has made its biggest mistake ever, leaving the mobile market to google and apple. Considering the war between the web browsers on the desktops, and that each GAFAM try to push others, i'm really concern about the existence of Mozilla in the next few years. New Firefox Quantum is faster, ok, but it will not save Mozilla in the end.
- In fact, Firefox OS was a good OS, not perfect at all and not the fastest one, for sure, but it covers the everyday needs for non power users, which simply need basics tools like contacts, calendars, IM, mails, and photos. The 2.6 version (the last one) worked very well. So there was no reason at all to kill the project, and finally stop the marketplace in March 2018, leaving working phones without applications. That's not only sad: that's definitely madness !
- The strategy of the Mozilla staff ask questions too, considering that the foundation has made all she can to not let a fork happens (except KaiOS in India). And when some old famous Mozilla devs tell they support google navigator now, you undestand better the difference between open source and free software...
- The only good news is that HTML webapps can be easily used in all of the current (and future) navigators, so webapps will survive all this madness for sure.
- We just have to be patient and wait for the next free phone. One day we will have a real compatible PC in the pocket, and that's day, the time of android will come to its end. It's just a matter of time.