With the First Firefox OS Phones Out, Mozilla Is Holding 20 Hack Days This Week

Mozilla has been working on Firefox OS for a while now, but its plans are coming together and Firefox OS is beginning to look like a real thing and not just a wild project. It doesn't get any realer than a phone and now we have just that, the first Firefox OS device, well, devices actually, built by Geeksphone.

They should be going on sale soon enough, but you can't order one just yet, at least not directly.

Note though that these are developer phones, they're aimed at developers and for good reason, Firefox OS is not ready for the public.

There will be bugs, strange issues, few apps and so on, everything that comes with the territory when using a pre-release operating system, especially a completely new one.

If you're not a developer or at least a knowledgeable geek, these phones aren't for you. 

If you are a developer and you've been interested or even working on Firefox OS, this is your chance to get to see what it's all about on the first purpose-built device. Firefox OS already runs on several Android phones.

With the first phone available, Mozilla is also ready to court the developer community and is running over 20 hack day events worldwide this week, most of them this Saturday.

It will be the first chance for most people to see the up and coming mobile operating system in the flesh. It should also get developers up to speed on working for Firefox OS.

Since Firefox OS relies entirely on web apps, or rather apps built with web technologies, i.e. HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, developers with web experience will feel most at home. It's also a chance for them to get started with mobile app development without having to switch to a whole new programming language and new tools.