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Comment by ZenoArrow | Hacker News Reader

I'd suggest the best remaining option for a FOSS-driven phone (now that Canonical have dropped the ball) is Tizen. It's got the backing of a large phone manufacturer (Samsung) and the Linux Foundation, and seems to be actively developed. It'll probably end up being used on low-end devices at first, but is likely to be more open than the two leading platforms, so hopefully they get some traction amongst tech community.

It's also worth pointing out that Samsung has been investing in Servo, and that Tizen has good support for HTML5 apps, so hopefully we can see mobile web apps increase in popularity to get us away from the walled garden approach.

https://www.tizen.org/

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I, too, want competition in this space. Unfortunately, Tizen got some bad press this week: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/04/samsungs-tizen-is-ri.... The past year has not been good for Samsung on so many fronts.

If code quality is an issue, at least people who want an open-source phone OS can work on fixes:

https://source.tizen.org/

I don't see many other options emerging. It's possible that a community-led effort to finish work on Unity 8 (and possibly port it to Wayland) may emerge, but that would only solve the phone UI issue, the main problem holding back open-source phones is likely to be closed bootloaders and lack of drivers. By supporting Tizen we can get Samsung to handle the low level stuff.

Doesn't really help that there's a source website if there's not a sane process for actually submitting PRs and merging patches, and apparently there isn't one.

>"and apparently there isn't one."

https://source.tizen.org/documentation/developer-guide/getti...

"This document provides information about how to contribute code to Tizen, including the following:

    * Cloning over SSH
    * Submit a patch to the Gerrit
    * Review a patch on the Gerrit
    * Submit a package to the build system
    * Review and accept a package on the build server (for release engineer only)

For more information about the whole work process, please refer to Tizen Development Working Mechanism."

Tizen is a joke, they already rebooted the SDK multiple times.

1 - GTK+ based

2 - Took Bada OS C++ SDK with its Symbian C++ like flavour

3 - Rewrote the C++ API into something more appealing

4 - Thrown everything away and replaced with EFL, plain C API with C++ will come soon

5 - Now they are adopting .NET Core with Xamarin Forms

How can anyone invest time developing for them?

>"How can anyone invest time developing for them?"

What alternative do you suggest? I suggested they were the best remaining option for an open-source mobile OS now that Ubuntu were dropping out of the race. What other options are there? Sailfish? Anything else?

There are no alternatives.

This ideology of open-source mobile OS goes back to Openmoko.

None of them managed to sell enough devices to keep a profitable business.

>"None of them managed to sell enough devices to keep a profitable business."

Nokia managed it with the N900 and the N9, the only reason they didn't continue is they lost their bottle and sold out to Microsoft.

If you were fine with "open source" on those Nokia devices, you should be happy with "open source" on Android.

Also as a former employee I can tell they didn't sell that much units, specially when compared with Symbian devices.

What he said. On top of it, maybe next failed attempt can try building on one of these for a stronger foundation:

https://github.com/ExpressOS/expressos

http://genode.org/

Tizen is an alternative, whether you like it or not is another matter.

Oh, you make it sound so simple. A platform is an alternative to dominating ecosystems if it exists at all. It having apps, locking you into Microsfot, or even existing 5+ years down the road doesn't matter? If that's true, there should be all kinds of people on all kinds of smartphone platforms right now instead of most of them on two.

Meanwhile, Tizen is available for people wanting whatever their changing offering is. I guess just budget regular rewrites in a new language/platform you had to learn into your FOSS app on Tizen with either few contributors or the more common zero. That's some great ROI.

KDE's Plasma Mobile? Like Ubuntu Phone/Unity 8 it's also using Qt QML to build flexible layout apps that support touch and keyboard+mouse.

https://plasma-mobile.org/

That's even worse than the already-terrible market for FOSS phones. You get something that will have Linux or some standard API but probably disappear eventually. Then add the aggravation of having to change your stack constantly. Yeah, I'd pass on it unless it stabilizes into a standard stack. Preferably not dependent on Microsoft or Oracle tech either to reduce patent/copyright risk a bit.

Oracle aside, .NET core is open source and I don't see today's Microsoft pulling the same crap as Oracle did with Google.

What about tomorrow's? Copyright's, patents, and software last a long time. Better to know you aren't dependent on a malicious party who can turn against you any time.

In today's market, I think Microsoft would rather give a competitor a royalty free permanent license to all their patents than let Google continue to just own the industry. Mobile is only one of the many markets they compete in, but Google is using their mobile dominance to help lead and push their expansion elsewhere. Microsoft needs a new mobile OS option out there, even if it isn't theirs.

Microsoft makes several hundred million to billion on Android royalties alone. They did that with either actual lawsuits or the threat of them. I don't remember what it was in the start but do know they suck a fortune out of Android vendors (esp Samsung) while they did everything they could to put it out of business with Windows Phone. Nothing contributed, but billions taken via patent claims.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft...

How is Tizen different then Android from a privacy/OS perspective?

What will stop Samsung from closing it off when it gets too popular? (And, BTW, it's not like Samsung hardware is the pinnacle of OS design. Exynos is notorious for being hard to make custom ROMs)

Last two weeks I've estimating Tizen, Ubuntu or Sailfish worth port an app. Like sample apps, build scripts debugging, etc. Although Tizen has large corp support, Ubuntu and Sailfish look more developer friendly. CMake, QT , C++.

Perhaps you overlooked this?

https://www.tizen.org/blogs/dh0922/2016/tizen-.net-developer...

https://www.tizen.org/blogs/myungjae/2017/samsung%E2%80%99s-...

C# look like a dead end, though much better than first WinPhone with "SilverLight." If you have written c/ or c++ engine, you need just a good bridge to OS UI language. Well, also platform + tools that work well on each Unix/Linux.

Just to mention I used to like MS technologies. Least problems I had with ASP 2 / AJAX web app which works for nine years without significant problems.

>"C# look like a dead end"

http://statisticstimes.com/tech/top-computer-languages.php

> "you need just a good bridge to OS UI language"

For moblie apps, Xamarin is that bridge (can always build web apps too):

https://www.xamarin.com/

Plus, .NET Core is cross-platform, good cross-platform tooling becoming available (VS Code, etc...), and you don't have to use C#.

If you're interested in writing games, Unity uses .NET (Mono in particular):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine)

Tizen is not free software, and it's not a real platform. It's a toy Samsung uses to threaten Google with.

>"Tizen is not free software"

It's developed with the support of the Linux Foundation, with the code released under open source licences. There are some parts of the design that are licenced by Samsung (e.g the SDK), but overall it looks pretty open to me.

>"it's not a real platform"

It has shipped in multiple devices, including every TV Samsung have sold since 2015:

https://wiki.tizen.org/wiki/Devices

>"It's a toy Samsung uses to threaten Google with."

It's a little more than that. At the moment it's not got much traction on phones, but I still maintain it's the best option for an open-source mobile OS that we've got left now that Ubuntu are out of the picture. If you can think of a better alternative that currently exists, by all means feel free to share it.

Wait, the SDK is not open source??

> It's developed with the support of the Linux Foundation, with the code released under open source licences. There are some parts of the design that are licenced by Samsung (e.g the SDK), but overall it looks pretty open to me.

Some core components are not (or were not) free software. And the license for the SDK gives Samsung the rights to revoke forbid specific users from using it.

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