View source for Booting to the Web

Mozilla believes that the web can displace proprietary, single-vendor stacks for application development.  To make open web technologies a better basis for future applications on mobile and desktop alike, we need to keep pushing the envelope of the web to include --- and in places exceed --- the capabilities of the competing stacks in question.

We also need a hill to take, in order to scope and focus our efforts.  Recently we saw the [http://github.com/andreasgal/pdf.js/ pdf.js] project expose small gaps that needed filling in order for "HTML5" to be a superset of PDF.  We want to take a bigger step now, and 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.

To that end, we started a project we’re calling [http://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G Boot to Gecko] (B2G) to pursue the goal of building a complete, standalone operating system for the open web.  It requires work in a number of areas.

* '''New web APIs''': build prototype APIs for exposing device and OS capabilities to content (Telephony, SMS, Camera, USB, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.)
* '''Privilege model''': making sure that these new capabilities are safely exposed to pages and applications
* '''Booting''': prototype a low-level substrate for mobile devices (phones and tablets)
* '''Applications''': choose and port or build apps to prove out and prioritize the power of the system.

We will do this work in the open, we will release the [http://github.com/andreasgal/B2G source] in real-time, we will take all successful additions to an appropriate standards group, and we will track changes that come out of that process.  We aren't trying to have these native-grade apps just run on Firefox, we're trying to have them run on the web.

brendan, cjones, gal, shaver

== Post-announcement changes ==

* The post was originally posted on <code>mozilla.dev.platform</code> USENET group. [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/dmip1GpD5II/CzJSSUMq5HsJ Google Groups archive].
* The product of B2G project was later branded as [https://mozilla.org/firefoxos Firefox OS].
* The main build system have since re-written and hosted in [https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/B2G mozilla-b2g/B2G].