Hacker News Reader

When will Microsoft start working to remove their arbitrary limitations on Windows Phone so that Google and Mozilla can port their browsers to it?

View on HN

What limitations are those? Windows Phone 8 allows native code which was a stumbling block in WP 7.

You might be right -- WP8 introduces an unmanaged C++ SDK, and some people from the Chromium project are currently evaluating it:

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=153802

The other stumbling block was a licensing issue where the Windows Phone Marketplace prohibits copyleft licenses, which prevents software like Firefox from being published there:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/02/window...

That's again from the WP7 days, so the agreement might have changed since then, but if it hasn't, and if there's no way to sideload apps onto WP8, then it's a major blocker for Firefox.

Opera's last statement on the matter was on Oct 1, and at that time they were still waiting to see what avenues the SDK would allow.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com