Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla OS Looking Grown Up On Its Own Developer Phone
An anonymous reader writes "It's no secret that Mozilla has been working on a mobile OS. Previously codenamed Boot2Gecko, the project focused on a purely HTML5 based system that worked in many ways like current mobile devices. As the project grew into Mozilla OS, the company has laid out a partnership with ZTE that will have real world devices in certain markets early next year. Testing for this OS had previously consisted of a compiled ROM that would be flashed over a handful of Android devices. Now, Mozilla has moved into full fledged product evaluation mode with their own custom developer phone."
I suppose there will be a degree of negativity about boot to gecko, along the lines of "they've already lost" and "they should focus on fixing the browser".
Personally, I wish them every success. Firefox has been great, and the idea of a phone OS built by a non-profit whose only agenda revolves around standards, privacy, user control, openness and general sanity will be a refreshing change from the likes of Apple, Google, and Microsoft. It actually seems to be happening, too, unlike so many other projects we hear about.
(But if you want some negativity - given that they're primarily funded by Google, and presumably don't have a massive patent war chest, they'll probably be sunk if they ever get anywhere. Time to donate!)
i have been running this on my laptop for curiousity value.
it works very well, and writing new applications for it is very very easy because its just all web development with html, jsand css.
makes it very quick and easy.
also webgl works. Unlike Iphone and android.
i actually think that this will be big, but take time for people to appreciate it.
for companies and startups its hell getting android and iphone apps out, but with this is easy peasy.
the main thing will be that cordova (phone gap) support it, so that people can write in web technologies and still deploy to android, iphone and firefox os easily