Last July, Mozilla acknowledged that it was planning to build a mobile operating system. Today, the non-profit development organization that created the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email system provided an initial view of what that foundation, named Boot2Gecko (BTG), will look like. Mozilla is promising to demo it at the upcoming Mobile World Congress later this month.
Mozilla is basing the product's architecture on standards-based components, especially HTML5 and JavaScript. The user interface, Gaia, will be incorporated into Firefox as well.
Mozilla has launched an initiative to create open APIs to add functionality to the OS. These would include taking pictures, dialing the phone, showing the device's battery status, SMS messaging, and accessing the user's address book. The developer is hoping to standardize these APIs so that they could theoretically be used natively on other browsers loaded onto smartphones.
Mozilla is promising to deliver Boot2Gecko as a finished product by the and of the spring of this year, although it will need customers.
