Firefox OS

Firefox OS (project name: Boot to Gecko, also known as B2G) is a Linux kernel-based open-source operating system for smartphones and tablet computers and is set to be used on smart TVs. It is being developed by Mozilla, the non-profit organization best known for the Firefox web browser.

Firefox OS is designed to provide a complete community-based alternative system for mobile devices, using open standards and approaches such as HTML5 applications, JavaScript, a robust privilege model, open web APIs to communicate directly with cellphone hardware, and application marketplace. As such, it competes with commercially developed operating systems such as Apple's iOS, Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows Phone and Jolla's Sailfish OS as well as other community-based open source systems such as Ubuntu Touch.

Firefox OS was publicly demonstrated in February 2012, on Android-compatible smartphones. In January 2013, at CES 2013, ZTE confirmed they would be shipping a smartphone with Firefox OS, and on July 2, 2013, Telefónica launched the first commercial Firefox OS based phone, ZTE Open, in Spain which was quickly followed by GeeksPhone's Peak+.

Commencement of project

On July 25, 2011, Andreas Gal, Director of Research at Mozilla Corporation, announced the "Boot to Gecko" Project (B2G) on the mozilla.dev.platform mailing list. The project proposal was to "pursue the goal of building a complete, standalone operating system for the open web" in order 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 Windows Phone 7." The announcement identified these work areas: new web APIs to expose device and OS capabilities such as telephone and camera, a privilege model to safely expose these to web pages, applications to prove these capabilities, and low-level code to boot on an Android-compatible device.