Mozilla Creates New Smartphone OS, Built Atop Android Kernel

From DailyTech: If "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", Google Inc. must have at least one fan of its Chrome Operating System (OS) project, as the Mozilla Foundation has announced plans for an operating system that seems eerily reminiscent to the new Google concoction.

Mozilla's new OS is going to be called "Boot to Gecko", or "B2G" for short. Gecko is the name of the layout engine found in Mozilla's popular Firefox browser. The new OS is geared towards handsets -- though open source netbooks and budget laptops, like those of Chrome OS, may eventually be in the works as well.

The browser maker is even going to use the Android kernel and device drivers as the base of the operating system, although it intends to "use as little of Android as possible."

Mozilla research engineer Andreas Gal provides more details, revealing that the goal is to make an HTML5-driven web environment, in which web apps provide comparable functionality to traditional apps. To that end Mozilla will be making available a set of B2G APIs -- including telephony, messaging, camera, and communications (USB, NFC and Bluetooth) -- which will allow developers to (presumably) easily create a B2G web app.

Mozilla seems quite ambitious to these ends. Mr. Gal says that the goal of the project is to "[B]uild a complete, standalone operating system for the open web [and] break the stranglehold of proprietary technologies over the mobile device world."

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