(disclosure: I'm an employee of Mozilla working on localization technologies for Firefox OS)

> That's no different than making a suggestion to Google about Android, or to Apple about iOS.

I believe you are wrong. There is a substantial difference between being able to send a suggestion to Google or Apple, or even being able to write a patch against an open source subset of Android codebase released months after the phone release, and being able to fork Gaia repo, patch it, and submit a pull request.

I've been helping volunteers go through their first patches for weeks now and it works great! They have helped me clean up the code base for Firefox 2.1 in many ways.

They now submitted their first patches and are skilled to start working on more complex problems and suggest features.

You are right, that that doesn't mean that anyone can submit any random feature and get his/her PR merged. That would result in chaos. But they can suggest features, work with module/app owners, and write the new features for the platform. They can participate in decision making process, weekly calls, daily meetings and day-to-day IRC conversations because it's all open and in public.

In the end, if things go wrong, they can fork the platform and start working on a fork. You may respond - hey, Android has it with CyanogenMod!
If that was your first thought, please read about struggles CM has with Google or read arstechnica article of how someone tried to use Android without Google services.

Android sources are only partially open and are released many months after product release. Firefox OS sources are available for hacking from day 0 of work, many months before the product is ready. (for example: if you fork github gaia repo, you'll have the code that will land as Firefox OS 2.1. Current stable version is 1.3).

> The recent tendency of Mozilla to force totally unwanted changes (like Australis) upon Firefox users

Did you read the studies and feedback analysis or are you extrapolating your own sentiment onto majority of users?

> "Openness" means that non-Mozilla parties can actively influence the development and future of Firefox OS.

That's exactly what is going on with the project right now. Many external contributors, both individual volunteers, and companies, are involved in the development process of Firefox OS.

> Likewise, the claim that Firefox OS "doesn't limit your freedom" is suspect, too. How can that claim be made when developers are pretty much forced into using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to build apps?

That's a fallacy. Freedom in question is referring to the freedom of the user to choose how he wants to use his device, not to programming languages that are supported on the platform. It's like saying "roads does not give me freedom if I have to drive my car on them and can't use them with my submarine of choice".

> A standard that exists but isn't widely implemented probably shouldn't be considered a standard.

You are right. I believe that it's just an oversimplification.

But the sole fact that all API's created in the process are on the standardization path is a major push toward empowering web technologies to be fully capable of handling more advanced applications and systems and does set a precedence.
We will soon live in the world where HTML+DOM+JS will be enough to write operating systems and apps that will work on multiple platforms. That's the opposite of vendor lock in that major platforms are leveraging.