Anyone remember Palm and webOS? The fundamentals of that operating system were way ahead of their time. What Palm did was essentially create a Linux based operating system, make all the APIs that you’d need for calling, texting, etc., and then they decided to build the webOS user interface in HTML and JavaScript. That’s right, webOS was nothing more than a glorified web page. Mozilla wants to do the same thing with Boot to Gecko, Gecko being what they call their rendering engine. Whereas Palm wanted to keep webOS to themselves and try to build an ecosystem around it, Mozilla wants to give open source nerds and operators a platform that’ll compete against Android. Apple is number one, Android is number two, Microsoft is going to spend as much money as it takes to make Windows Phone number three, so … what exactly is Mozilla trying to do here? Compete for fourth place?
Anyway, today’s news comes from the Brazilian site ZTop, who say that the first Boot to Gecko devices will come out in early 2013. Their source? Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs made the announcement in São Paulo. Who will make the devices? That hasn’t been confirmed. Who will sell the devices? That hasn’t been confirmed either, but since Telefónica is backing the project, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
Look, we like the concept of Boot to Gecko, but productizing an open source platform without it being backed by a large organization is incredibly challenging. Hell, Samsung has their own Linux based OS called Bada, yet when was the last time you heard about a new Bada device coming out? And Samsung is the world’s largest phone vendor, so put two and two together. People don’t care about open source, they care about getting a cheap device that’ll give them access to the web and to their email.
Android does that already.