Startup Acadine picks up the torch for troubled Firefox OS | Hacker News Reader

Startup Acadine picks up the torch for troubled Firefox OS

cnet.com

30 pointscpeterso6 comments

Key sentence:

"It's developing the software with $100 million in funding from Hong Kong-based Tsinghua Unigroup International, a subsidiary ultimately controlled by the Chinese government and the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing."

Sounds like the Chinese government wants its own Android alternative.

It's extra funny when you read this sentence, understand how business goes on in China, and then read Li Gong try to backpedal from the fact that everybody knows what is really going on here, saying "We carefully chose to incorporate in Hong Kong instead of the US, or mainland China for that matter, because we foresee geopolitical factors that may impact our global business down the line."

Yep, sure. I'll choose to follow the money over the rhetoric.

Not to be too pessimistic, but this basically sounds like someone wants to create a more-burdened/less-free clone of FFOS.

Mozilla was in the best position to pursue FFOS in the purest possible manner (as they're not necessarily so driven by profits) -- glad there's interest, but I highly doubt Acadine is going to make a product I want to install on my phone

> Mozilla was in the best position to pursue FFOS in the purest possible manner

Well, maybe philosophically, but they didn't have enough influence, money, or manpower to actually make it successful. The first version of FXOS shipped without a calculator app because they couldn't work all of the bugs out. Clipboard support didn't make it until sometime around v2 or 2.5. Apps never got API support for things like front-facing cameras or bluetooth, or even access to which wifi networks were available. One constant complaint was that the Alarm app would sometimes go off at the wrong time, and sometimes not at all.

There's also other components to FXOS that simply weren't free software. The everything.me integration (which was a for-profit service baked in) was truly abhorrent. Hardware vendors refused to provide open drivers in many cases, leading to chunks of FXOS not being open source. Operators and carriers insisted on installing their own crapware on devices and forced the OS to lock them down so they couldn't be uninstalled. At the end of the day, FXOS as it was sold wasn't nearly as free as it was made out to be.

I don't want to pick on Mozilla, but despite having a great vision for FXOS they ultimately were vastly underprepared to build a solid mobile operating system. Even worse, Gary Kovacs bet the farm on FXOS and let Firefox proper rot in a corner.

You really make a tradeoff with FOSS. You can have software that's free in the most pure way possible, but it's ultimately going to be terrible unless the company putting it out is fiscally incentivized to make it great. If Acadine keeps FXOS as open as it is today, that's still a great win for the community and probably most of the users.

I'm not familiar with everything.me... I had the Flame (and now a flashed-by-me LG Nexus 5), so maybe I never saw that integration.

All the things you mentioned are true though -- it did have it's slew of problems, but the beauty is that most of those things are fixed now :)

Mozilla didn't have what it takes to bring up a mobile operating system, but I'm glad they had what it took to start it -- It has a life of it's own now (as I've previously said)

Highly doubt Acadine will have what it takes to put FFOS on par with Android and iOS (mostly because I don't think any company does) -- so it feels like they lose both on the philosophical and practical ends.

But love the publicity for FFOS :)

I would like to pay for my mobile os, as long as its open source and I can reinstall it. Why does the os have to bundled by the phone for free and spy on you?

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