Thanks for this Marcos, it makes a lot of sense, and thanks for the offer
of help.

On 11 February 2015 at 01:13, <[email protected]> wrote:

> Thanks for putting these together. I would highly recommend that for any
> feature people want to add to the Web, people follow the DOM team's
> guidelines for adding new things to the Web Platform:
>
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI/DesignGuidelines
>
> It's fine if we want to keep adding things to the FxOS Platform (as long
> as we understand that *that is not the Web Platform*), but if we want to
> add things to the Web Platform, then the above should help us get there.
>

In support of Paul's proposals around "granting permissions to the web" I
would suggest we should consider re-visiting the "hosted", "privileged" and
"certified" levels of "Open Web Apps" on Firefox OS.

One possibility is that we split apps into simply "web apps" which follow
web standards (and some proposed web standards) and "Firefox Apps" which
use non-standard Firefox OS-specifc privileged features which aren't on any
standards track. I think the name "Open Web Apps" may have made sense at
the start of the B2G project but has now outlived its usefulness to the
point that it could be considered misleading. No other vendor implements
the mozApps API, some of the apps are not "web" apps, and there are now web
standard alternatives to some of their features (which is a good thing).

I would suggest we should aim to migrate the vast majority of apps
(including Gaia apps) to being web apps, but there are likely to be some
Firefox Apps which are basically Firefox OS chrome (like the system app) or
Firefox OS addons (like the dialer) and require chrome level type
privileges. Firefox Apps would still use HTML, CSS and JavaScript but would
essentially be a new type of chrome level code for things which don't fit
the security model of the web, would be packaged, and would have to be code
reviewed and cryptographically signed by Mozilla like other Firefox addons.
Web apps on the other hand must by definition always be hosted on the web
and have a more decentralised system of trust.

We should aim to create new Web APIs to allow Firefox OS-specific Firefox
App addons to be replaced by cross-browser web apps wherever possible.

This doesn't mean that we can't create voice calling and messaging web apps
for Firefox OS for example, just that as Marcos says any pieces which
directly call legacy telephony and SMS APIs are unlikely ever to be "the
web".

Ben
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