Boot To Gecko OS Coming To Tablets, Smartphones
by Mike Lata
July 28, 2011
Despite Apple's and Google's dominance in tablet and smartphone operating systems, Mozilla may become a contender. It will do so, however, with a very different strategy.
According to eWeek, Mozilla has teamed up with Gecko in the hope of creating an open source OS for tablets and smartphones. The OS will be called Boot to Gecko (B2G).
"Specifically, Mozilla will market Boot to Gecko toward smartphones and tablets, and incorporate both Android and Mozilla’s Gecko browser layout engine as part of its foundation. The emphasis is on crafting an open-source environment, and B2G source code will be released in real time. (Considering the intellectual-property lawsuits currently filed against Android, Mozilla’s pledge to use as little of Android as possible could become a serious headache-saver,)" according to eWeek.
Will Mozilla truly find success among today's manufacturers with such an open source operating system? It will be interesting to see if this OS has something that makes it appealing when compared with iOS and Android. We imagine it could be the ability for users to freely tinker with their devices and customize them. The ability to run custom code and apps could also be there from the get go, unlike with a non-jailbroken iOS device.
Mozilla is also betting on the Web environment over proprietary software and app development.
'"Mozilla believes that the Web can displace proprietary, single-vendor stacks for application development,' Mozilla engineer Andreas Gal wrote in a July 25 blog posting. '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,'" according to eWeek.
