
Boot to Gecko: building a complete, standalone operating system for the open web - robin_reala
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.platform/browse_thread/thread/7668a9d46a43e482
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dreamdu5t
Remember: Mozilla was the first major browser to offer cross-OS support for
Windows, Linux, and MacOS — as free software no less.

They're looking to the future, not what is possible but what should or could
be possible.

I'd much rather have Mozilla working on an "OS for the web" than Google,
despite whatever problems Mozilla may have.

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sayhello
I'm curious, what problems do they have?

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rkwz
Funding.

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rpearl
[Citation needed]

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rkwz
_> >I'd much rather have Mozilla working on an "OS for the web" than Google,
despite whatever problems Mozilla may have._

In this context, one of the problems that Mozilla has compared to Google is
money.

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dreamdu5t
They've got 100 million. That's enough to do amazing things.

Honestly, for all the money Google has, Google+ isn't very impressive.

Interestingly, about half of that 100 million comes from Google to secure
their spot as the homepage and default search.

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pseudonimble
$100 million is nothing. People regularly win that much on the lottery. It's
enough to do amazing things, but not enough to competitively do amazing
things.

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MatthewPhillips
Also: <https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G>

My first reaction: Great, I'll look again in 2 years when something like this
can reasonably be ready. In the meantime I hope the Chrome Phone rumors are
true.

My second reaction: So they're going to use Android which brings a lot of non-
web baggage that they'll have to strip out. The plus side is that it might
mean they can push something out in a year or less.

EDIT: They're not using the Android Java APIs[1] so they will have to rewrite
the browser layer, they can't reuse the Firefox Android app. Using Android
just for the drivers is a good decision, without a doubt, but this is going to
take a while.

[1][https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.dev.platform/d...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.dev.platform/dmip1GpD5II/KYD4ejBMZJMJ)

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shaver
Firefox on Android uses very little in the way of the Java APIs, it's
virtually all NDK code. That said, it will certainly require some meaningful
adaptation.

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Astrohacker
We are clearly moving towards a world of more web-based applications, but I'm
disturbed by this because it means all my data is stored unencrypted on other
people's computers. We're slowly placing our lives in the hands of the
essentially anonymous individuals who control the apps we use.

Here's an alternative that we could in principle choose: Apps can be delivered
over the web, but data is stored locally. If it is backed up remotely, then it
is encrypted first. If our app communicates with other users, then it does so
P2P instead of through a central service. These steps would ensure the company
whose app we use only knows that we are using the app, and not what our data
is or who else we are interacting with. Unfortunately, this technology is not
very easy with the present state of JS/HTML. I'm not even sure if it is in
principle possible for a JS app to create a TCP server. Some quick Googling
reveals it may only be possible if you use Flash.

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dangoor
Actually, getting the code from the server (and caching it) and storing data
locally is already a solved problem. Take a look at IndexedDB, which is
already supported by Firefox 4.

The idea here is to think of apps as being built on web technologies but don't
think of them as being delivered like and acting entirely like today's most
common webapps.

Beyond B2G, Mozilla is exploring what it means to be a "web technology-based
app" and interesting things are already coming of the project and even more
interesting things are yet to come.

<https://apps.mozillalabs.com/>

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devongovett
This is a complete waste of time and development effort in my opinion. Why
would anyone ever want an OS that does nothing but show a web browser? Don't
get me wrong, I love web apps and build them myself, but isn't the point of
web applications to be fundamentally cross platform? Also, the web platform
isn't ready to be the only platform available for applications. I have yet to
see a decent web based word processor, something that most users will want to
use. The formatting options available in the web based word processors that
I've seen have been very limited, and pale in comparison to even Pages on the
iPad.

In summary, the web platform isn't ready for all types of applications yet and
because of that combined with the fact that people looking for cheap and
simple computers aren't even buying traditional hardware anymore - they're
buying tablets. So, Mozilla, why waste your time with this project and instead
use those development resources to make Firefox and the web platform better on
all of the existing operating systems. Let Chrome OS see whether anyone
actually wants something a browser OS.

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shaver
"Also, the web platform isn't ready to be the only platform available for
applications."

That's the whole point. The web wasn't quite ready to subsume PDF, until
people went and tried to do it, found the pieces that were missing, and got
them added.

We expect and hope that we're going to hit a ton of things that don't work
today, and that we'll have to make them work and get a standardized API and so
forth. I think that's a better way to proceed than to make speculative sky-
APIs on standards mailing lists.

We are exactly targetting mobile devices (handsets and tablets), because we
agree with your assessment of where things are headed, and because that's
where the app action mostly is today. (We want to solve the app-store-for-web
problem too, but that's another project.)

This isn't just about the web apps you have today. It's about having your
contacts manager, camera, gallery, dialer, SMS app, GPS-integrated maps,
launcher etc. be hackable using web tech. That work will help on desktop as
well, since many of those pieces are on desktop/laptop machines -- if you
write OS-specific code to get to them, and you're allowed by the OS to
interpose your version of it.

Maybe you're right, maybe it's a fool's errand. We think it will help the web
grow in powerful ways, and make important internet technology be accessible to
more user-focused customization, so we're going to try it. That's basically
what we do.

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devongovett
I definitely agree with you that improving and expanding what the web platform
can do is an important mission and I'm glad Mozilla is taking this up. Whether
building an entire operating system in order to accomplish this is necessary
is yet to be seen.

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MatthewPhillips
I think it is necessary for the same reason it was necessary for Google to
create Chrome to get the other browser vendors to get serious about Javascript
performance. Today Javascript is no longer a blocker.

If Mozilla can force other mobile OS vendors to get serious about exposing
lower level APIs to the web through (open standard) javascript, it will mean a
major win for all smartphone users.

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BrendanEich
Chronology: Chrome came out in early September 2008. Mozilla's TraceMonkey was
under development from April of that year. True, we started on a JIT
customized for JavaScript (i.e., not Tamarin) later than we should have, but
we did not start because Chrome with V8 was known publicly and already in the
market.

I believe Apple's SquirrelFishExtreme work was also going on in the summer of
2008, on a webkit.org svn branch.

Your general point is good: healthy competition helps the web evolve. We got
the world we wanted in launching Firefox in 2004. The battle's far from over,
what with all the lock-in on mobile devices and in social network sites.

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RexRollman
So they are going to reimplement ChromeOS with Gecko? Or are we talking about
something else?

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MatthewPhillips
Looks like they are going to fork Android and have it boot straight to
Firefox[1].

EDIT: Correction, they're using Android for the drivers only.[2] It will not
boot to the java APIs, so it won't be the Android Firefox app.

[1] <https://market.android.com/details?id=org.mozilla.firefox>
[2][https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.dev.platform/d...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.dev.platform/dmip1GpD5II/KYD4ejBMZJMJ)

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tedmielczarek
The "Android Firefox app" is just Gecko, a bunch of C++ code rendering to an
Android widget. That's like calling the Windows version the "Windows Firefox
app".

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dave1010uk
The "new web APIs" look like the W3C's Device APIs: <http://www.w3.org/TR/dap-
api-reqs/>

Are Mozilla working with the W3C or doing their own thing?

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tedmielczarek
There are people at Mozilla following and interacting with the Device APIs WG,
as with most W3C standards groups, but there will also probably be some
measure of invention, as standards groups are a poor place to invent.
Historically Mozilla has both implemented standards as well as shipped
prototype implementations to test ideas that have not yet been standardized.

