Mozilla Hitting 'Brick Walls' Getting Firefox on Phones 228
meteorit writes "Mozilla has been working on a mobile version of Firefox since last year, and is now looking to repeat the success of Firefox on the PC. Although development seems not to have been completed, it is known that informal negotiations have already started with mobile network operators. Firefox Mobile is scheduled to be launched by the end of the year and the inaugural version will be compatible with the Linux and Windows Mobile operating systems. Work is already underway to determine what the browser's UI will look like. In the meantime those negotiations seem to be hitting 'brick walls', as cellphone operators resist the intrusion of the open web onto their platforms."
Because (Score:2, Insightful)
Just another reason to unlock your phone (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Because (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't necessarily make more money being consumer friendly, and cutting a little on costs here might net them more expenses in the long run. They don't make money by allowing the market being competitive. Both are benefits to the consumer, not the service provider. The article explains more along this line.
It's important to read the article (Score:5, Insightful)
So let's assume that the title of his little rant is indicative of what he thought he was writing about. Somehow he seems to be drawing the conclusion that, sans an open-source web browser, people aren't allowed to browse websites of their own choosing! I'd love to see Firefox on mobile platforms; but really - even my friends with Windows Mobile phones are checking their Gmail; I see them looking at all sorts of odd pages; and I have never heard them complain that their carrier won't let them visit any arbitrary page. I do hear them complaining about the crappy internet experience they're having, due to the poor design of the browser; but that's a completely different subject (and while Firefox could potentially address that, Safari already does - and it's got nothing to do with the openness of the browser, per se, anyway).
When the web was first getting onto mobile phones, I realize people weren't given free reign in their browsing habits - but c'mon, that was three or four years ago.
Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)
And from their perspective -they're right. If you don't control the application you want to make sure that the people who do control it are either under your influence, or have similar goals. Open source isn't under their influence, and the goals of open source are diametrically opposite of the manufacturers'.
Re:As of now (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another reason... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)
Many will think enough is enough with paying $3 for some crappy midi file for a ring tone and want to run their phone like their pcs.
I for one refuse to buy high end phones for this reason. I want to run my own apps and not pay through the nose for their drm infested crappy software.
If you read my posts I am in favor of the free market and not some gnu zealot but when a company dictates how to use something I paid for and halts innovation I get mad.
I am not the only one and a truly free phone will attract all the developers and therefore bring all teh apps and cool games. After this their business model is done. You can't just lock a whole market up. Eventually someone like lets say google and their andriod sdk will come along and provide serious competition.
Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a sinking ship you cling to, just in case you hadn't noticed.
its all about control, of your money (Score:2, Insightful)
I for one would welcome Firefox on all my mobile devices as along as it lets me download what I want.
Re:Symbian OS? (Score:5, Insightful)
The documentation is atrocious - there aren't many examples in it, and as opposed to Win32, where you can usually figure out how to use a function from the MSDN library's description of it, trying to do that will generally result in something that fails in an obscure way. As a rule the only sure way to find out how something is done is to find someone else who's already done it and try to figure out what they did that makes it work.
Symbian has only recently ported stdlib to it properly, in what I presume is an act of desperation to try and get people to develop for it. V9 solves the problem where all applications had to be DLLs with no global storage allowed, but it also adds a particularly paranoid code-signing system where your app has to be signed before it is possible to run it outside of the emulator.
That's been my experience, anyway. However - there is a whitepaper on how Opera was ported to Symbian. I can't find a freely accessible version of it right now, but it's a fascinating read and it illustrates full well why porting Mozilla would be very, very difficult.
Re:Because (Score:2, Insightful)
But that's what the bottom line is, that's what the expression means.
I understand that that's the common usage of the expression, but it can also be used to mean "the deciding factor", which is what I intended. All I'm suggesting is that in an ideal world perhaps money wouldn't be the only thing that corporations considered when making business decisions.
Re:Symbian OS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As of now (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:As of now (Score:3, Insightful)
it works in the rest of the world (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As of now (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm shocked they didn't have a company lined up before the effort to port was started.
Re:Because (Score:3, Insightful)
You win the gold star for today. A man talks about the clear problems with capitalism, and you turn him around and say "BUT COMMUNISM IS BAD." It's called a straw man. You can't argue against the center by saying he belongs to the edge.
Then again, you won over somebody, as you got modded up.