Firefox OS's story from a Mozilla insider not working on the project (2024)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

User Experience & Nostalgia

  • Several commenters fondly recall early Firefox OS devices (ZTE Open, Geeksphone, Alcatel, etc.) as cheap, hackable, and “good enough” for calls, texts, light browsing, and HTML5 tinkering.
  • Others report them as essentially unusable: severe lag, broken scrolling, constant app kills, unreliable alarms, and painful typing on ultra-low-end models.
  • v2.0 on some devices is remembered as surprisingly smooth given the hardware, but the $35-class phones were widely seen as beyond saving.

Technical Architecture & Performance

  • Debate over whether the core problem was timing (GPU/pixel explosion vs CPU-bound web rendering), hardware targets (256MB → 128MB → dreams of 64MB), or poor product decisions (shipping before tuning for those specs).
  • Mozilla engineers describe major efforts on memory and rendering (e.g., will-change, Memshrink), but say management pushed devices below what the software had been optimized for.
  • Some argue HTML/CSS as a UI toolkit and a “JS everywhere” ideology were fundamentally ill-suited to ultra-cheap hardware; others insist technical issues were solvable given time and resources.

Strategy: Low-End Focus, Timing, and Competition

  • One camp calls targeting ultra-low-end devices a fatal error: web stacks were too inefficient, and users compared Firefox OS directly to Android/iOS.
  • Another argues low-end was the only realistic entry point (chipset vendor support, sales risk), especially in emerging markets.
  • The window was extremely competitive: Android, iOS, Windows Phone, WebOS, BlackBerry, plus aggressive responses like Android Go aimed directly at Firefox OS’s niche.

Management, Culture, and Mozilla’s Trajectory

  • Several comments link Firefox OS to a major cultural shift: from flat, engineering-led Mozilla to a more corporate, top-down structure with many middle managers and “growth” projects.
  • Engineers describe frustration with decisions made without technical input, unrealistic commitments to carriers/OEMs, and poor internal coordination (critical bugs and dependencies not tracked properly).
  • Some blame B2G for starving desktop Firefox (e10s delays, performance lag versus Chrome); others say Mozilla never had budget to do desktop and mobile well simultaneously.

Apps, Ecosystem, and WhatsApp

  • Many see the primary cause of failure as the app gap, especially messaging: without WhatsApp (or later, banking and other “must-have” apps), users in target markets wouldn’t adopt.
  • Former insiders say WhatsApp support was pursued but blocked by business calculus: the projected Firefox OS user base never crossed the threshold Facebook wanted.
  • This mirrors analyses of WebOS and Windows Phone: no apps → no users, no users → no apps.

Openness, OEMs, and Legacy (KaiOS)

  • Some criticize Firefox OS for not being meaningfully freer than Android, due to Android layers, blobs, carrier lock-down, and Apache-licensed front-end code enabling proprietary forks.
  • KaiOS is cited as Firefox OS’s commercial heir: used on many feature phones and once successful (e.g., in India), but now described as closed, buggy, and unpleasant to use, with key apps (including WhatsApp) retreating.
  • A minority argues that with longer-term investment, Firefox OS could have been that third mobile platform; others say its niche and timing made long-term success improbable.