Mozilla, the group behind the Firefox browser, announced plans to create “a compete, standalone operating system for the mobile web,” which is intended to displace proprietary, single-vendor stacks for app development. Called Boot to Gecko (B2G), the intention of the effort is to “find the gaps that keep web developers from being able to build apps that are – in every way – the equals of native apps built for the iPhone, Android and WP7.” The work will be done “in the open,” source code will be released “in real-time,” necessary additions will be taken to “an appropriate standards group,” and changes that come out of the practice will be tracked. Mozilla said that “we aren’t trying to have these native-grade apps just run on Firefox, we’re trying to have them run on the web.”

Much of the work that will be needed has already been identified by the initiative. It will include the creation of new web APIs to expose device and OS capabilities (telephony, SMS, camera, USB, Bluetooth, NFC); the definition of a privilege model, so that these capabilities are safely exposed to pages and applications; and the creation of apps to “prove out and prioritise the power of the system.”

In an online discussion, it was said that initially B2G will use Android to provide low-level functions, including the kernel and device drivers from the Google-backed platform. This is because of the fact that Android has gained significant support among the device vendor ecosystem, and is proven in its ability to support these types of tasks. However, the role of Android would be confined to these low level features, with B2G providing the development environment on top of this.