Adaptive search is a closed proprietary technology ?
I've heard that one of the core feature of Firefox OS, the adaptive search, is based on Everything.me. I've looked up and it seems that Everything.me is an entirely closed and proprietary technology startup. So If I understand well, Mozilla is spending money supporting a closed and proprietary technology that is at the heart of Firefox OS. I thought FirefoxOS was the fullest open-source OS out there in its philosophy, but having such a vital function (the search function) based entirely on something closed-source/closed-data is very disturbing. I can understand that they promote HEREmaps because there may not be any good HTML5 navigation app based on OSM. And anyways HEREmaps is just an app. But the search function is not an "app" it's part of the OS.
So I have few questions :
1) Is it true that that Everything.me is a closed technology (maybe I've missed something ?)
2) How many more closed proprietary technology are there in FirefoxOS (I'm not speaking about any app that may be installed be default like HERE map, but about features part of the OS such as the search function).
3) What's the point ? Mozilla is meant to be promoting and making open softwares/data . If they start to invest, develop, support and include proprietary technology in their product what's the difference with Microsoft and Apple. Is Mozilla earning $$$ each times ZTE or Lg sells a FirefoxOS device ? Why do they promote functionalities over values ?
Thanks
triquil modificouno o
All Replies (2)
Hi,
The people who answer questions here, for the most part, are other Firefox users volunteering their time (like me), not Mozilla employees or Firefox developers.
If you want to leave feedback for Firefox developers, you can go to the Firefox Help menu and select Submit Feedback... or use this link. (You'll need to be on the latest version of Firefox to submit feedback). Your feedback gets collected at http://input.mozilla.org/, where a team of people read it and gather data about the most common issues.
Sorry about that!
Curtis
from https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/976376
dhylands wrote: What bits are proprietary is typically upto the phone manufacturer/carrier.
Sometimes some portions of the bootloader is open, sometimes it is closed. Sometimes the bootloader is locked (i.e. requires a signed bootloader) and sometimes it isn't. It may also depend on which bootloader is being referred to (as there are typically several stages of bootloading).
I'm not aware of any phone manufacturer which makes the modem firmware source code available.
Mozilla delivers source code to the phone manufacturer and/or carrier for the gecko/gaia bits and they build the rest of the system. So the exact makeup of what goes into the phone is upto the phone manufacturer/carrier.
hub_ wrote: Everything from Gecko up to Gaia is open source.
The lower level layers underneath are mostly open, as the kernel, bionic and several other components from Android are released under an open source license.
Notable exceptions are GPU drivers (the vendor most of the time doesn't release the source code) that live in user land, some hardware binary drivers and in general the radio chipsets (wifi, cellular). This depends on the device, the vendors policy, etc. Also the RIL might be closed. We have an open source one, but the vendor might chose to not use it.
None of this is under the control of Mozilla.