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Comment by brador | Hacker News Reader

We need a truly open source mobile operating system.

"We need a truly open source mobile operating system."

We have one - Firefox OS from Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/os/

Because of over dependence on Google money, Firefox are essentially an arm of Google at this point. I've lost trust in them. The first thing a fresh install of Forefox does is ping Google.

Don't mistrust Mozilla because of their Google relations. Such conflicts of interest are complex, but this is a case where things are quite complex. It may be less than ideal, but Mozilla is still overwhelmingly positive.

So? I'm sure ~90% of all non-darknet sites in the world ping Google in one way or another. Do you distrust all sites? Do you not store a password on any of them?

They'd get money from Bing [1] if Google dropped the contract in 2014. Firefox sell a commodity product - their default search engine - so have no need to be blackmailed by their customer.

[1] e.g. see "Firefox with Bing" move last time renewal came up: https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9221226/Mozilla_Micr...

It would be nice if they had an option during install to pick your search engine. Google, yahoo, bing, duckduck.

If Firefox is supposed to be Google's serf, why aren't they supporting NaCl and Dart?

Look at Replicant OS, the GNU foundation's effort to put a free Android system.

How is it better than regular android?

It removes proprietary parts of the system.

So it's worse, but it confirms to FSF's philosophy.

From their wiki, Replicant is really bare-bones at the moment: forget 3D or having your camera work and it will probably need proprietary drivers for the foreseeable future. Also, very few models are supported right now, fewer than Cyanogenmod on which it is based on.

Why?

In the mobile space, a race to bottom of the price point along with operating in China is making it increasingly hard for hardware companies to maintain their IP. Life sucks when your team's design has been stolen.

Let me guess-- you're going to "no true scotsman" all the actual existing open source mobile operating systems.

Which ones? Afaik, every 'open source' mobile operating system requires proprietary software to actually function.

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