Firefox OS The Journey

Mozilla has the mission to serve the user above all other agendas,

to advance the state of the web and keep it open,

and interoperable and improving.

They said that the web was being handicapped

against these native application platforms

on popular smartphones.

We saw the web being threatened.

We saw it going into what some call the decline

or a losing compared to the native stacks,

and we again found a technical reason why this should be.

So we wanted to improve the web and demonstrate

that it could be better and standardize as we go

and see the improvements show up

in other operating systems and browsers.

Everything can be executed on the web.

So I think this is really a correct path to work on.

We have to be the force that is fighting on behalf of people

and to do that we need to build amazing software

that's true to our principles.

The idea of starting Firefox OS

goes all the way back to Firefox 4.

We sent various representatives from engineering

to different countries where Firefox OS is being used

to launch event parties.

Really, the birth moment of Firefox OS

as a project of Mozilla was in Taipei.

From there on we started having a number of discussions.

We had a couple of discussions with Brendan and with Mike Shaver,

and both of them very quickly joined us in this effort to start it off

The Mozilla way, by being open from day one.

It started with an empty GitHub repository.

I don't think Andreas even knew how much it would blow up.

We realized that this is something that needed to be communicated properly.

The community in general is really excited about Firefox OS.

The response was incredible.

Things were quiet.

It was a nice morning,

and all of a sudden, things exploded.

We had hundreds of press requests, thousands of articles...

...went into "firefighting mode." It was pretty exciting.

I think one of the most interesting turning points for the Firefox OS journey was,

the GSMA had a board meeting,

and I got a call about three days before, and they said,

"We want you to come and present to us."

And it was the senior executives or CEOs from 20 different operators.

The meeting was in Rio.

And about halfway down on the flight, it just hit me.

I said, "This is pretty much a seminal moment."

"If we impress upon them that we're real

and that this is meaningful and that we have momentum,

I think we can get the buy-in of these 20 people in one meeting."

The whole room was excited.

A half-hour presentation turned into an hour-and-a-half discussion,

but I think the rest of it is...

What I love in the world is work weeks.

These top secret places where the engineers would go off and they would play.

That was the week before MWC 2012.

And we're flying into Europe, and I'm like,

"Wow, Europe for the first time!"

"I can't wait to see Paris! This is so magical!"

I've never seen this stuff before.

And we pull into the Holiday Inn,

and I think I left the Holiday Inn once in seven days.

What the reality was, was that you would get on a plane

and you'd fly to some place that sounded fairly exotic.

You'd get off the plane and you'd go to the hotel,

and then you would start writing code.

What it was, was 20 hour days knocking this out.

I'm basically the designated attendee

of all the work weeks from Taipei.

And jet lag is the problem.

We made the home screen on a Friday.

I left the home screen for last.

It's kind of like the cover of the book.

You design that once you know everything else...

...you kind of put the cover on it. You design the cover.

We went to Mobile Congress 2012 with a message and a promise for the future.

The message was, the web is the platform.

And the promise was that Mozilla would make that real.

That we would build a product that could bring the web to life on mobile.

And people were excited!

We were in a room at one point with Brendan Eich and Chris Beard,

talking about if we were even going to have the B2G demo on the booth.

At the very last minute,

we installed a demo space on the opening day of the show.

We were on the front page of the show daily.

Our little demo in the corner of the booth

ended up being the star of the show.

The code was supposed to be ready by the end of September 2012.

The crazy part wasn't even MWC 2013, that was crazy, but...

The crazy part was the year.

That was like, the starting gun of the race.

And since then it's just been a full-blown blast of energy and effort

building a plane and flight, getting a team put together,

and actually creating a full-blown mobile operating system in a year.

July to September 2012, we landed tons of code

on the front-end side, on the platform side.

Some of us had no concept of vacation...

...just to work on this project and make it happen.

At the end of September the code was frozen.

We started to have tons of meetings all together with partners

to determine what needs to land.

It was amazing.

The engineering crew at Mozilla are just

the most phenomenal, dedicated engineers

that you could want to work with.

They move mountains.

It's a very great opportunity

to work with engineers from other countries.

Different people have different accents,

have different thoughts, have different creativities.

Honestly, it's kind of like a blur.

There's no real...

....there's no easy narrative to that particular year.

It was just a really long, long, long march

with a lot of talking, a lot of specs, a lot of bugs

leading up to December,

leading up, really, to Berlin.

So when we arrived in Berlin,

we had something like 200 or so authentic bugs,

almost evenly distributed

between the front-end team and the platform team.

So we decided to put a big projector in the middle of the room

and we did a little competition.

On the left side was the front-end team

and on the right side was the platform team.

This week was hosted by Deutsche Telekom.

Telefónica joined as well.

They're kind of competitors,

but they work together in order to improve Firefox OS.

I was lucky enough to be the last one to close the bug on Gaia,

which is unlucky and lucky at the same time,

because when I pushed the code to the main repository,

I had four persons behind me.

There were all the managers and everybody looking at him like,

"What's going on?! Are you going to finish it?!"

Anthony had Andreas and a couple of other guys, doing review over his shoulder

while he typed in the last patch to get that last bug knocked out.

So that was a bit stressful.

And I got us the zero bugs.

"Zero bugs!"

In 2012, we came to Mobile World Congress with Boot 2 Gecko and a promise.

In 2013, we came with Firefox OS and the assurance

that we can bring the mission of Mozilla into the mobile environment.

When people came back here to Finance,

saying how much space we'd need,

how much money we'd spend,

the first time I looked at it, I was like,

"Are we serious?!"

"Are we really spending this much money?!"

We were definitely the stars of the show.

We had the biggest booth in Hall 8.1

People would come by from all over.

We were the definitely the hottest thing.

It was worth every single penny.

Everyday when people would come into the break room,

they would say, "Look! We've made the cover again!"

The night before the show we had a press conference.

And at the press conference, we were expecting about 250 people.

And it ended up that we had over 700 press, media and analysts show up.

We had 18 CEOs on stage.

We had 80,000 press results on Google News.

We were trending on Twitter with the Oscars,

which was pretty cool.

It was like a PR dream.

I love to give demos of everything we're doing and show it off.

And, man, we were running right down to the wire.

There were probably two hours or an hour until showtime.

Something that a lot of people didn't expect

with all the game physics it has and different things.

And it works really great in HTML5.

This is called "Cut the Rope."

People were very impressed.

It was the most exciting this I've ever participated in.

If I was walking around in the hall

and I had my Firefox shirt on,

people would come up to me.

It was amazing. It was totally overwhelming.

It was very different from the rest,

this hybrid group of both volunteers and paid staff.

We definitely would not have made the impression that we did.

People were blown away.

But it was still not delivery. It was just a promise.

And now, this summer, we're actually shipping these things.

To deliver, I want what you said you were going to deliver.

That's awesome, and that's what Mozilla's all about.

Following Mobile World Congress,

we came back and there were still bugs.

And bugs mean file...code getting checked in.

Deciding with partners what should absolutely be fixed for the B1 release.

Then at some point, the carriers send the bill to what's called IOT.

Certification testing, which is really important,

because there are certain things that have to happen with devices

where they're certified.

After the IOT period is complete,

the OEM takes the bill and then they run with it.

Yeah, it's been a ride, hasn't it?

Here we are...it's the second country.

It's launched in Poland, and we've got an entire staff dressed in Firefox OS colors.

It's great.

Community really drove this.

Mozillians all over the world,

they took the leadership role in making these events happen,

and making them locally relevant.

Our volunteers help make it all possible.

I'm always amazed at the commitment of Mozillians.

No single person or set of people make Mozilla what it is.

It's all of us.

Releasing a mobile phone, it's not a one-man effort.

It's not a one-organization effort.

It's multiple companies and organizations coming together with their different skillsets.

And we did it!

Here we are at launch... we pulled it off.

A few years ago, this was a dream.

So it's great to actually see it come to fruition with everyone's help.

This first launch of Firefox OS devices is just the beginning.

We need to move from shipping something,

which is amazing,

to scaling it.

How do we ship devices to all over the world in volume

to really change people's lives?

And how do we differentiate?

At the end of the day, people have to love this stuff

and they want to love Firefox phones.

So we've just begun.

First, I want to say to everyone involved...

...that's all of us,

from the mailing list to phones in stores...103 years.

Unbelievable!

So first off...give a hand to everyone!

(cheering and applause)