Now that Rockstar Bidco (a 32 person shell company, a specially created patent troll sock puppet company created by Microsoft, Apple and Blackberry) has sued ol' Google and is seeking a "cease and desist order" on all current Android OS shipments, do you think that having Mozilla Foundation's Firefox OS out there with NO entanglements with Google AT ALL, using only open source Linux code is a pretty durn good idea?
Are you surprised that the open source community has some extra strings for their bows, knowing just how nasty Apple and Microsoft really really are?
That nobody saw this coming?
Lawsuits like this generally take about 2-3 years to totally settle out, unless they get tossed out immediately by the sitting judge. So, this next 2-3 years is a critical period as the smart phone market will grow abruptly to QUADRUPLE OR BETTER IN SIZE during this short short period of time.
You got 3 players out there that WILL NOT BE AFFECTED by the Google/Rockstar Bidco Lawsuit. These are Firefox, Sailfish and Tisen. You got players already positioned to custom fork out their own Android flavors based out of NON-USA based companies and countries.
Samsung is one (but they are named in the Google/Rockstar Bidco Lawsuit as co-offenders already).
You will hear more about the pure Linux phones as open source swings additional effort over to make them the very next latest greatest & best phone/tablet OS out there. This will happen ASAP if Android really does get tripped up by the Rockstar Bidco sock puppet in court.
Expect to get yourself some negative feedback, you Rockstar Bidco creating jerks. Microsoft has "no-sue" agreements in place with Samsung and others and having a 32 person shell company sue somebody for you, Microsoft, is a very thin legal line to hide behind.
Samsung should sue Microsoft for breach of contract, to recover all the money paid to Microsoft in that no-sue agreement.