Mozilla is looking to move into the mobile operating system market, if the company's new Boot to Gecko project is anything to go by.
Aside from being (typically) bizarrely named, Mozilla's Boot to Gecko project (B2G) is an attempt to develop an OS with standards-based web technologies for smartphones and other mobile devices.
The browser creator wants to build a non-proprietary OS; an operating system that isn't locked to any specific mobile device.
Gekkonidae
"Mozilla believes that the web can displace proprietary, single-vendor stacks for application development," notes Mozilla's Andreas Gal.
"To make open web technologies a better basis for future applications on mobile and desktop alike, we need to keep pushing the envelope of the web to include - and in places exceed - the capabilities of the competing stacks in question.
"We want to… find the gaps that keep web developers from being able to build apps that are - in every way - the equals of native apps built for the iPhone, Android, and WP7."
Lofty intentions
Mozilla's Boot to Gecko has one simple aim: "to pursue the goal of building a complete, standalone operating system for the open web."
Mozilla will publish B2G's source code as it is developed, in a typically open source move from the Firefox developer.
Mozilla's plan is to take code from the lower levels of Google's Android OS and then to build a custom user interface and application stack based around Firefox's HTML rendering engine, Gecko.
It's early days for the project and the details are, as yet, a bit fuzzy, but stay tuned to hear a lot more from Mozilla about Boot to Gecko and its laudable intentions in the coming months.
Via Arstechnica and Mozilla development platform mailing list (groups.google.com)
