Open-source software development initiative Mozilla is poised to announce partners for its forthcoming web-based mobile operating system, dubbed Boot to Gecko. "B2G is partnering up," Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich revealed via Twitter. "More at [Mobile World Congress]," the annual industry event kicking off Feb. 27 in Barcelona. Additional details are unknown.
Mozilla first announced Boot to Gecko in mid-2011. In a post to the mozilla.dev.platform wiki page, Mozilla researcher Andreas Gal explained that the initiative will "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 [Windows Phone]." Mozilla vice president of technical strategy Mike Shaver stated the organization will integrate elements of Google's Android mobile OS in Boot to Gecko, but added "We intend to use as little of Android as possible, in fact. Really, we want to use the kernel + drivers, plus libc and ancillary stuff. It's not likely that we'll use the Android Java-wrapped graphics APIs, for example."
Boot to Gecko is scheduled for release later this year. Mozilla also plans to build an open marketplace for applications that run across mobile phones, tablets and the desktop, enabling developers to distribute and monetize without the restrictions enforced by ecosystems like Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market. In Mozilla's 2012 roadmap principal product manager Ragavan Srinivasan cites a series of challenges the current app ecosystem poses for developers, including increased investment in building, maintaining, distributing and marketing apps optimized for each native platform; loss of control over customer relationships, update frequencies and technologies; and fragmentation of the consumer base. "Mozilla believes that the web is *the* platform and the entire web should be your marketplace," Srinivasan writes.
Mozilla will build a cross-platform web runtime, dubbed Apps/WebRT, that leverages existing web rendering engines Gecko and WebKit as a base--from there, Mozilla will add native OS integration for installing, launching and managing apps, enhanced by additional capabilities like device APIs, permissioning models and the like. "By basing WebRT off existing web rendering engines, we also automatically get all the awesome work (such as performance improvements) for 'free,'" Srinivasan explains.
Mozilla also will build monetization tools into WebRT and the accompanying marketplace, promising a one-click payment experience. "Using our payment solution, developers will be able to enable 1-click experiences for common transactions such as buying a premium app, in-app payments, subscriptions and more," Srinivasan writes. "Users will have the ability to choose from a variety of payment methods as the year progresses."
