Mozilla Working on Mobile OS Using an Android-Core to Beat Android, iOS, & Others

[dgstorm]

This sounds like something out of a comic book or an anime, but Mozilla is working on their own mobile OS to compete with Android, iOS, etc. The kicker is that their mobile OS, called Boot to Gecko (B2G), will utilize a foundation built using the Android OS mixed with HTML-5 apps, effectively using a version of Android to defeat Android. Their intention is to create an OS that will “displace proprietary, single-vendor stacks for application development”. Basically they want to create an OS that developers won't have to code separate apps for. In other words developers for iOS, Android and other platforms and instead can create a single web-app that will work across multiple platforms. Here's a quote from the SlashGear article,

Those web-apps will be, Mozilla reckons, “in every way … the equals of native apps built for the iPhone, Android, and WP7.” Founded on a slim core of Android, B2G will have its own suite of web APIs – for phone, SMS, camera, USB, Bluetooth, NFC and other components – used for ”exposing device and OS capabilities to content” and a companion privilege model to make sure said-apps don’t gobble up your data.

Mozilla plans on releasing the source code for the project on a real-time basis to help develop it. Of course, Mozilla isn't the first company to develop in this direction. Google themselves created Chrome OS and Chromebooks with similar intent, ironically almost competing with themselves, but not directly. Furthermore, there are even rumors that Facebook is developing its own HTML5 app system, called Project Spartan, that is designed to supplant both Google and Apple. This sure is a "bizarro" world when competitors start using their own open-source code against each other. What do you guys think?

Source: SlashGear

 

[DroidXDoes4G]

Whatever. I doubt it'll beat Android.

You will never beat anything by copying it.

 

[Sweettooth]

Not necessarily true. Copying ideas and adding to them is, in my opinion, how technology is able to advance as fast and as far as it has and will. You don't reinvent the wheel unless something flat out doesn't work; you take what works and make it better. When your competitor has exhausted themselves or sits back to marvel at their accomplishments, use that time to unveil what they missed, and re-brand their product with your ideas included. This is part of the reason Google has advanced so rapidly, but why they also may be succeeded some day - they've taken good ideas and made them better, and have also brought good ideas to the table themselves, ideas someone else will eventually copy and make better, and then take credit for them.

 

[Limbwalker]

It will be interesting to see what they come up with . . . dancedroid

 

[riko540]

This should prove interesting.

 

[moset]

I agree with Sweettooth. Look what devs have done with the 'EOL' Droid. We are stronger together than any are alone.

Sent from my Droid using DroidForums

 

[moset]

This its after all the information age.

Sent from my Droid using DroidForums

 

[xsylus]

Using an OS to attempt to create something different reminds me a lot of the client version of Novell which ran on top of Windows. While I don't know if Mozilla's concept will fly I do wish that Android itself was better. I've had glitches from Android 2.0 all the way up to 2.3.4. The OS never seems to be 100% stable. To me it seems that Mozilla is setting themselves up for serious problems since they're building this on a less than firm foundation.

 

[Viktorr]

It looks like Mozilla is trying to become the "Blizzard" of the OS market (namely World of Warcraft). Blizzard took what was successful in MMO gaming at the time (along with recruiting people from the games they wanted to usurp) and created WoW, along with their own twists, and became the leader of the market, still to this day years from release.

Now Mozilla is looking to follow in their footsteps in the OS market. They already possess a familiar and successful browser IP. If they can
expand upon that into the OS marketplace, especially for smart phones, then they can potentially see the the same kind of exponential success like WoW did.

Unfortunately, this will also bring about exponential dangers to the users. Sometimes it really doesn't pay to be famous and popular. History will back me up on that front.