Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system [LWN.net]

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 26, 2011 7:39 UTC (Tue) by Zenith (guest, #24899) [Link] (1 responses)

My first reaction was "is it April 1st already?".

If they can do this in parallel with getting Firefox development up a few gears, then no problem, but I would hate to see them loose focus from plain Firefox.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 26, 2011 8:52 UTC (Tue) by Hausvib6 (guest, #70606) [Link]

I think Firefox development will be inline with this project. With the current Firefox development pace, it won't be a surprise that Firefox itself becoming an OS. To prevent this from hapenning, Mozilla has taken a step in the right direction by starting B2G project so Firefox will always be a web browser yet the energy and desire to create an OS can be redirected into B2G.

Furthermore, by leveraging web technologies as for application development Mozilla will enable lots of people to start developing various useful and pretty applications for themselves and other people. History has taught us the wonderful results when anyone can create something with HTML/JS/CSS: Geocities, MySpace, Friendster, not to mention countless other sites with blinking GIF animations and marquees. As B2G is a project of Mozilla, we can be sure that the spirit of freedom and openness will be carried over to this future B2G application developers. We'll have countless new FLOSSs and finally end the hegemony of closed and/or proprietary softwares.

Bravo, Mozilla, bravo.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 26, 2011 8:22 UTC (Tue) by bjartur (guest, #67801) [Link]

HTML seems to be the solution to every problem, and every problem a nail.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 26, 2011 8:57 UTC (Tue) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link] (4 responses)

In couple of cases I know small-to-medium-sized companies found it is cheaper and faster to develop a web application (in PHP AFAIK) with a web server running on the local PC than to create a custom GUI.

One of those companies even uses rather old PC that just boots from a Linux CD and not worry that much that the person who run the application can install mallware. For such companies booting into a browser makes a perfect sense.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 26, 2011 9:11 UTC (Tue) by eduperez (guest, #11232) [Link] (3 responses)

A single-application OS running a pre-configured browser on the client, and EyeOS (or similar) in the server makes much sense for lots of environments.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 26, 2011 16:04 UTC (Tue) by maderik (guest, #28840) [Link] (2 responses)

Yes, it's called re-inventing the IBM 3270.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 26, 2011 19:15 UTC (Tue) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link]

ROFL! LM*O (etc. etc...)

I'm going to remember this one forever!

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 27, 2011 5:17 UTC (Wed) by nas (subscriber, #17) [Link]

That's a good analogy. HTML 5 + Javascript in modern browers kick the crap out of what could be done on a IBM 3270 but the basic idea is somewhat similar. For certain systems, maybe most even, it's still a valid model.

Loss of focus..

Posted Jul 26, 2011 8:58 UTC (Tue) by renox (guest, #23785) [Link]

IMHO, they should focus on Electrolysis instead.

What happened to their Open Web App Store?

Posted Jul 26, 2011 9:39 UTC (Tue) by christian_couder (subscriber, #56350) [Link] (1 responses)

I wonder what happened to the Open Web App Store they proposed:

http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/05/20/an-open-web-app-s...

What happened to their Open Web App Store?

Posted Jul 26, 2011 15:11 UTC (Tue) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]

Our people are still working on it, and I've been hearing for some time that the next step is about to go public, including reverting the wrongdoing of keeping a lot of that work under wraps - it's not Mozilla style not to do all those discussions in the open, and that will be corrected.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 26, 2011 9:58 UTC (Tue) by przemoc (guest, #67594) [Link]

> The associated repository contains only a README file thus far.

But even this sole README.md file is under heavy development, making the project looks really promising.

Mobo Manufacturer's included instant Web feature a few years back?

Posted Jul 26, 2011 10:07 UTC (Tue) by roblucid (guest, #48964) [Link] (8 responses)

Instant On Web surfing was a Mobo feature few years back, improvements to boot times likely has made the feature un-hot.

If you read the post, it's about discovering what's missing in Web standards, so for example devices & OS features can be exposed to applications. So the aim seems to be at fulfilling applications writer's real needs in an experimental way, rather than produce a rival "product" to Google's Chrome OS.

Rather open standards based Web, than vendor locked down phone "apps".

Mobo Manufacturer's included instant Web feature a few years back?

Posted Jul 26, 2011 15:15 UTC (Tue) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link] (7 responses)

Exactly, this is mostly a project to explore what web standards are needed for all that and making sure they're done in the open. This is not Mozilla trying to push ChromeOS or Android out of the market - that would indeed be a loss of focus.
Still, it might turn out to be a product that gain momentum on its own. In a world where Windows 8 threatens to have its own style of HTML apps on the desktop and ChromeOS its own, WebOS another, and others possible in the same direction of fracturing web app access to native device/machine features, we need a player that cares to have common and open standards for that instead. Mozilla has the right motive for that, and might just be the player we (in terms of a community valuing openness) need there.

Mobo Manufacturer's included instant Web feature a few years back?

Posted Jul 26, 2011 16:38 UTC (Tue) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link] (4 responses)

we need a player that cares to have common and open standards for that instead

Well. Consider this firest.

Mobo Manufacturer's included instant Web feature a few years back?

Posted Jul 26, 2011 16:40 UTC (Tue) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]

obviously, first*

Mobo Manufacturer's included instant Web feature a few years back?

Posted Jul 26, 2011 17:13 UTC (Tue) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link] (2 responses)

Sure, I know it. But the fact is that there are no web standards for those things yet, and the W3C working groups have just been set up, so it's the best time to make the right standards from the beginning.

Mobo Manufacturer's included instant Web feature a few years back?

Posted Jul 27, 2011 16:49 UTC (Wed) by roblucid (guest, #48964) [Link] (1 responses)

It's obviously better to have a standard comittee of paper pushers, tabling motions.
Then when real world intervenes, you can have so many revisions and enhancements to the standard, keep the meetings going for years & years :)
Actually implementing something to see the real problems.. how crude!

Mobo Manufacturer's included instant Web feature a few years back?

Posted Jul 27, 2011 18:49 UTC (Wed) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]

I agree, how can Mozilla be so on the wrong path and try implementing stuff and discussing the new standards and implementation problems with other stakeholders (in WHATWG, W3C, etc.) at the same time, when a bunch of people without programming knowledge could gather behind their desks for a few months or years and present some well-thought-out and multiple-times-revised clean spec off a traditional standard committee...

Will Mozilla jumping in really simplify the situation?

Posted Jul 26, 2011 16:42 UTC (Tue) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link] (1 responses)

http://xkcd.com/927/

Will Mozilla jumping in really simplify the situation?

Posted Jul 26, 2011 17:15 UTC (Tue) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]

Tell me the 14 competing open standards for access to device features from web apps, and then I start believing that this is relevant to that situation.

But when it was posted, it gave me a good laugh as well, there's enough such things out there. WebP, anyone?

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 26, 2011 17:30 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link] (7 responses)

not ridiculous at all. in ten years it will be rare to see an app NOT in a web browser. yes including video games, and not just low-rez 2d crud. i'm glad mozilla is doing some foundational exploratory work here. its an experiment. if it fails, so what? they'll have learned something.

people bitch about open source being derivative, and then bitch about experimentation....

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 26, 2011 18:25 UTC (Tue) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link] (3 responses)

> in ten years it will be rare to see an app NOT in a web browser.

We've already passed that point; soon it will be rare to see an app that's not embedded in Facebook. My prediction: in ten years, we'll be trying to work out how to make applications that will run on a plugin API for FARMVILLE.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 30, 2011 17:54 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (2 responses)

At that time, at least I will have a clean conscience. I've never set foot in either Facebook or Twitter. And I wonder why other people do. How do these silly fads get started?

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Aug 1, 2011 23:02 UTC (Mon) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] (1 responses)

"silly fads" like Facebook serve an important role, at least for people who aren't grouchy anti-social cave-dwelling misfits.

Email, IRC, forums, IM, and the various other "greybeard nerd" Internet communication facilities have never helped me find and connect to an old friend from school I hadn't seen in 12 years and then become good friends again, but Facebook certainly has. Those old systems don't help me organize an outing to the bar with three different sets of friends (and thus lead to them all meeting each other and making new friends), but Facebook certainly does. Those old systems have never hooked me up with an old flame or a new classmate and gotten me in a happy relationship (read: got me laid), but Facebook certainly has.

Those "silly fads" are the very definition of technology working to make life better. But the crusty old Linux/UNIX nerds oh so often fall into the trap of being enslaved by their computer, thinking it's the humans job to spend countless hours fiddling with kernels and configs and code and other broken crap to make the computer run better, when the computer is supposed to be working hard to make your life better.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Aug 1, 2011 23:28 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

A longer version of your point, well worth reading: http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html

And I totally agree.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 27, 2011 16:44 UTC (Wed) by roblucid (guest, #48964) [Link] (2 responses)

This blog page shows SuSE's YaST GTK software manager & disk partitioner operating within FireFox. Bit of a cheat but gives a visual flavour of what browser apps might be like.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 27, 2011 18:10 UTC (Wed) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link] (1 responses)

> This blog page

Did you forget a link?

> a visual flavour of what browser apps might be like.

Your favourite command-line programs can already be "browser apps" using Anyterm. Bastet demo:

http://demos.anyterm.org/bastet/anyterm.html

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 31, 2011 1:19 UTC (Sun) by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497) [Link]

This blog post contains a screencast of YaST running with a browser-based GTK+ backend: http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2011-07-27.html

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 26, 2011 19:11 UTC (Tue) by aaron (guest, #282) [Link] (1 responses)

Mozilla-on-a-stick sounds nice. Might have to go make one with Tiny Core Linux.
Mozilla-that-runs-in-more-than-one-thread sounds even nicer. I don't know the codebase well enough to do that yet.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 27, 2011 15:46 UTC (Wed) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]

"Mozilla-that-runs-in-more-than-one-thread sounds even nicer."

In mobile Firefox ("Fennec"), website processes already run in a different process than the main UI. For now, it's one process for all tabs, but that will be relatively easy to split to multiple ones in the future.

The focus is now to rework all the UI code in desktop Firefox (which has much more of that UI than Fennec) to support that process separation.

And of course, B2G will profit from all that as well.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 27, 2011 15:14 UTC (Wed) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link]

Why?

(They want to be a "me too" to ChromeOS? There needs to be a lower rung on that ladder?)

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 28, 2011 5:24 UTC (Thu) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]

It would be hilarious if they used ChromeOS as the upstream for this, and just replaced Chrome with Firefox.

Mozilla to develop a stand-alone operating system

Posted Jul 30, 2011 17:40 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

I would suggest that they move to a 3-tier system: HURD->emacs->firefox.

This would be a lot like MacOS. HURD could provide the microkernel. emacs would be a great userspace environment. And firefox could be automatically launched in full-screen mode. It's a match made in heaven, really.