Mozilla wants to do a Chrome OS

Blog post reveals plan to take on Google with a web-based OS called Boot to Gecko.

Chrome OS has been in the news recently after Samsung began rolling out netbooks based on the platform. This was considered the biggest challenge to the 30 year reign of Windows on PCs.

The proposed Mozilla OS would be skewed more towards phones and tablets.

Its blog admits the project is in its infancy, but says: "We want 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 WP7."

It outlines the areas of focus as:

* New web 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 an Android-compatible device
* Applications: choose and port or build apps to prove out and prioritise the power of the system