Now it's official, Firefox OS moves into the „Tier 3“ support category.
Tier-3 platforms have a maintainer or community which attempt to keep the platform working. These platforms may or may not work at any time, and often have little test coverage.
Quote from MDN — Supported build targets
… So this basically means there won't be any extended effort to make Firefox OS more stable, or to make it even more user friendly. Also, there won't be any new advertisements to get a wider user base.
Don't understand me wrong, this should not be a post of any upset Firefox OS addicted. Even if I'm one, I will try to be objective.
The lost of Firefox OS as phone operating system means to loose some diversity. So why should I care about diversity? If everyone just uses Android, doesn't that mean more development work is moving into Android and at the end, every user will benefit from that? Short answer: no.
So why ist the lost of diversity so important to me? Less diversity means less competition. And competition keeps companies to focus on features that are important to users. Let's say Android does not implement the new cool feature, that iOS has. So users will shift to iOS. Let's say this feature has to do something with your car. So if Android implements this feature in their own style, car manufacturers now have to implement two proprietary technologies: Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
If there is more diversity, like with Windows Mobile, Firefox OS and so on, these companies have to talk to each other and try to find a general standard. Because car manufacturers won't implement four+ technologies that basically do the same thing.
So the lost of diversity, at the end, means the lost of improvement / development of standards. And there's no way for „newcomers“ to get into the market (without paying a lot fees to use those proprietary technologies).
One small example, I've a new car with some fancy radio. This radio has a hands-free phone system based on Bluetooth. This was standardized some time ago, so now I can connect my Windows Mobile and my Firefox OS without any problem. This radio also has Android Auto and Apple CarPlay support. I simply can't use it, because it's proprietary technology. Android and iOS together have so much market share, that it's not necessary to develop and implement a better standard.
With no competition, companies can basically „do what they want“, because there are no alternatives for users.
I hope there will be further community based open development of Firefox OS, not only builds like fxpblog fortunately offers.
I like Firefox OS for it's openness, ease of development of own HTML5-Apps which is as easy as putting up some HTML-Page on the web and for it's simplicity. I'm always getting sick with those thousands of options in Android, often it wasn't clear to me what the option really does (especially regarding app permissions), and I don't want to have to sign up for a google account to install apps.
In short, I don't like Google, so I don't like Android.
I'm positive: Come on! There's life in the old dog yet!