Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

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lifeisstillgood

I apologise for writing a long post - I have not time to write a short one

There is a reason MBAs are taught market analysis. Its important to position your product for maximum effect (usually maximum profit, but that may not be the case here)

The arguments for FirefoxOS seem to be

1. It's OSS 2. It's Web-technologies only 3. It's aimed at the "emerging" markets' mobile users 4. It runs on cheaper hardware better than the competition

1 and 2 are great. And no-one but us cares, except in 20 years when no child has even seen a line of code because OSS gets wiped out as all PCs are replaced by mobile devices.

(This is the reason I want this to succeed, and I want laptops to be certified FreeBSD compliant. It matters!)

Anyway this is about market positioning, not OSS. So.

Its a well-known truism that don't be in the middle of any market - you get squeezed from both ends.

The emerging markets have adapted enormously well to only having SMS and no smartphones (see anyone in Mumbai). That is not going to go away, so the true bottom end of the market is SMS capable devices. They will probably just give them away.

If Firefox OS says we are not as good as iOS then thay are squarely putting themselves in the middle of the market.

Aim higher folks. The world is not segmented into feature phones and smartphones. It is segmented into one market "I want to use a networked mobile app to get laid or get cash." You will never be the bottom end - that belongs to sending cash by SMS, or selling your harvest with a text.

So its the top of the market - what the cool kids have.

And so, 1 & 2 might just be our saviours. Apple made a great new product that was catnip to the coolest kids in the West. Firefox OS is geeky cool - it might just appeal to the coolest kids not in the West. And they will want to buy the 'best' phone - aim high folks.

I hope you succeed.

>1 and 2 are great. And no-one but us cares, except in 20 years when no child >has even seen a line of code because OSS gets wiped out as all PCs are replaced by mobile devices.

While these guys are off saving the world from the evils of proprietary software, is it ok if I just get on with teaching my kids to program using Codea on our iPad?

Edit: Ok, I too wish Apple devices in particular were a little less locked down, but hysterical prognostications about the end of hacker culture don't do the cause any favours.

> While these guys are off saving the world from the evils of proprietary software, is it ok if I just get on with teaching my kids to program using Codea on our iPad?

If it weren't for these guys we'd be much worse off than we are today. Firefox single handedly dethrowned IE.

It's philosophical but in the same way that IE was at one time the best browser and quickly became the worst - it's not unimaginable that iOS will do the same.

I'm a pragmatist myself but if it weren't for folks like RMS and Mozilla there would be no voice at all for FLOSS. I don't agree with RMS on many things but it's vital that someone as unwavering as him pushes back.

I completely agree, but spreading blatant FUD that anyone can see just isn't true, isn't the way to do that.

I see simonh as a respected and long time member of HN and hope that my reply can be constructive and beneficial to that community.

Anyway, my first home computer was a Sinclair zx80 that booted into a minimal shell and needed you to read the manual before anything worked.

So to use a pc I was forced to program. And RTFM.

But that was ok because there was a whole popular culture surrounding learning to use these new devices - I learnt basic and z80 assembler from magazines I bought in my small town newsagents, and watched prime time tv shows on using the BBC micro (way too expensive for us).

In short the devices were unlocked, the culture was encouraging and the prevailing expection was the devices were to be used for programming and put no blocks in the way (other than it was a z80 with plastic keyboard)

I cannot say for sure I would have found my way here otherwise, but it seems unlikely. So based on my one personal data point, I can say that a future where it is harder to program your devices to do what you want than it was for a kid in the 80's, is then likely to be a future that produces less programmers than my past.

if that is FUD then I must accept that. I am trying to start a after hours coding club at my local school, my nephew gets put onto Mac's term everytime I go round. But a country where most of our children are discouraged from learning to program will be a future that our country is at a competitive dis-advantage. That does sound like FUD I admit. But it also sounds like logically inevitable FUD.

Edit for clarity.

Thanks for the comment, I really appreciate it!

To be clear, I'm not educated in business so my thoughts are my own (potentially naive) conclusions.

However, there are some very sound business decisions behind us chosing to go with Brazil first, and to go with cheaper, low-end devices. I'm sure they know what they're doing more than I do!

As an aside, we do have versions of Fx OS running on high-end devices and it runs amazingly well. It's not our market though (for now) so it's merely a cool "look what we could do with the power" moment.

I hope we succeed too.

You are right to start with low-end devices:

Get it running brilliantly on cheap hardware. Don't waste anything. Make the OS efficient. Do things in the most direct way possible with a minimum of red tape. Expose the bare metal to Javascript. Put the bare minimum features in the OS and let open source grow around that.

I think out of everyone you've really hit the nail here. It's about starting a movement, and taking the platform in a direction it's been needing to go to for a long time. The collaborative nature of open source should grow around this project as soon as the product arrives, and I really hope it does.

Addendum: Don't fall into the Linux trap. Don't start off being "great on old hardware!" but eventually grow so huge as to need the same specs as modern Windows (my i7 laptop with 4 GB of RAM runs like crap, thanks Debian). Do things in a straightforward way, but in such a way that you can expand without tacking on loads of extra code.

Is Debian your problem, or GNOME?

My phone runs Linux, and it has 512MB RAM and a 1GHz ARM processor.

It's not GNOME, I haven't run GNOME on a day-to-day basis in over 7 years. Actually, I think it's probably Firefox that screws me as much as anything else.

Is Debian your problem, or GNOME?

Has to be said from experience that I'd never assume business people know what they are doing. Check it yourself.

Marketing isn't that complex. Unfortunately business people do tend to hide behind a facade of secrecy (often for good reasons -- you don't want to reveal your hand to your competitors because someone in your org leaks inside information). But that can also be used to hide poor / complete lack of analysis and bad decision making.

Its good to see you on here (I tend not to see authors of posts on HN - maybe its me)

Fantastic work - and if you dont mind answering dumb questions, what device would you recommend getting if I fancy playing (B2G_build_prerequisites has a list of a few - but I have no idea how to be sure I get specifc models, or if I can buy an Otoro in UK. Basically, really horrible starting questions :-)

Happy to be told just google harder

Cheers

Otoro is a prototype device not generally available. One of the listed models of Nexus S is your best bet right now. There may be something else in the near future, we're trying to firm up a target phone that is available for general purchase.

However, there are some very sound business decisions behind us chosing to go ... with cheaper, low-end devices. I'm sure they know what they're doing more than I do!

I'm not sure. Gecko is faster and lighter than Dalvik now? Since when?

> If Firefox OS says we are not as good as iOS then thay are squarely putting themselves in the middle of the market.

That's only if people actually perceive feature phones as the same "market" as smartphones. I very much doubt this is true. 2nd hand smartphones are already widespread in 3rd world markets. Having a "real smartphone" will have considerable cachet, functionality notwithstanding.

tl;dr - "mobile phone" isn't a market. "Mobile phone" is one market and "smartphone" is another people aspire to.

I really struggle with that - it's the app that counts. Having a web browser is probably the main dividing line, but having sms networjs that really allow your business to trade over SMS means to me that the functionality counts - it would be nice to buy an iPhone but if a LCD SMS device will allow me to sell my goods each week, then high end and low end are far wider than we presume

> allow your business to trade over SMS means to me that the functionality counts

Sure, if functionality were everything, Palm would still be ruling the world with Treo phones. Functionality is not everything. People are status and style conscious, even in the 3rd world.

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