Firefox is planning a mobile operating system, according to the Mozilla Developer Group, and it’s looking like it could be even more open source than Android. That’s right, more customisation, and more power to you.
It’s known as Boot to Gecko, or B2G. So how’s it better than Android? We can think of a few ways…
1 Pure web-based
Like Google’s Chrome OS, Boot to Gecko will be purely web-based, meaning lightning start-up times and minimal storage on the physical device. Instead, everything will be cloud-based, so you’ll never lose anything because of a crash, and you’ll be able to access all your toys from wherever you are.
It’s the first purely web-based mobile OS to be mentioned, though launch is still a way off.
2 Android +
It’ll be partially based on Android, just using the kernel and the drivers to make sure it’ll boot, so it seems Mozilla is recognising the strength of Android, that it works on many different platforms, while combining it with the web-based operatability of Chrome OS. So expect the same slick performance and customisation, but bursting with cool new features.
3 A new world of apps
Now this is where it gets really interesting. B2G aims to take the main functions of your phone (calls, texts, camera, USB, Bluetooth, NFC, etc) and create web APIs to handle them. Then, and this seems a way off yet but still is pretty exciting, there’ll be a way for web pages and applications to access those components as and when.
4 And cross-platform apps
From here, the developers hope to make apps that run straight on the web rather than just on certain devices, so you can say goodbye to iPhone or Android apps, and hello to a proper technological free for all.
5 A new birth of mobiles
The possibilities are pretty endless for this. Zuckerberg and co. could get on board and make a true Facebook phone, or any company could come up with effectively their own take on the OS.
6 Incremental development
Instead of just releasing the final product, Mozilla will publish source code as it’s developed, allowing people to chip in and help develop it, making it far more open than Android. So if you’ve got any suggestions, and you know your programming, you can chip in and let them know. Now that’s open source.
7 All for the fans
Boot to Gecko will use Firefox’s Gecko engine, which is the second most popular layout engine on the web, one above WebKit (used by Safari and Google Chrome), and it’s usable on various operating systems including Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. So it’s already massive, and making it even more open source will only swell its popularity.
