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Comment by av500 | Hacker News Reader

So Mozilla's fully open "Boot to Gecko" will power the carriers walled garden "fully closed" wet dreams?

Yep, possibly -- though, obviously, users aren't likely to go for a phone that's _worse_ than iOS or Android, so I don't think carriers would screw things up too badly.

The main thing is B2G is COMPETITION!

Much in the same way that Firefox rocked the IE boat, B2G should hopefully offer a sound alternative to iOS/Android.

There's a lot of inaccuracies in the article and that's one of them. There's also this:

> Basically, B2G is just a cut-down version of Linux that automatically loads Firefox; basically, it’s like Chrome OS, but lower tech.

How is it "lower tech"?

Heya; I wrote the story.

I agonized about leaving in that 'lower tech' bit. Basically, B2G is built on the Android kernel. Chrome OS has a ton of security features that aren't present in Android. By 'lower tech', I mean that B2G won't have Chrome OS's verified boot, double sandbox, and other tweaks like that.

(Though I suppose B2G could have those eventually!)

It's odd that you would equate different design goals with being "lower tech". By the same criteria Android is a lower tech than Chrome OS.

Chrome OS was about building (a desktop computer) around the web as it exists today whereas B2G is about building (a mobile phone) around the web as it will (hopefully) exist in the future.

Hehe, well, I'm fairly sure that B2G and Chrome OS share more similarities than you grant them. They are both an attempt to build a cloud-based, web app-based thin client. The Chromebooks have 3G connectivity, don't forget -- and I'm sure there will be a B2G tablet, too (a Chrome OS tablet has been rumoured for a long time, as well).

I don't think you can compare Android to B2G. But yeah, perhaps I should say 'simplified' rather than 'low tech' :)

You seem to be implying that Chrome OS and B2G are really close, except B2G is missing a couple of things that Chrome has and is therefore "lower tech" or "simplified" but they simply have different design goals. Here's a list of APIs that B2G ships with that Chrome has no equivalent: https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI

I should note that the browser on Boot2Gecko is really not related to Firefox on Linux at all, outside of using the same Gecko renderer underneath. B2G -- unlike Firefox -- doesn't require X, doesn't support extensions, and the browser chrome and all that is actually just a web app itself. So sure, it shares a renderer, but it's like saying that ChromeOS is powered by Safari.

(Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla on Boot2Gecko.)

Thanks; have clarified the Gecko/Firefox difference.

> So Mozilla's fully open "Boot to Gecko" will power the carriers walled garden "fully closed" wet dreams?

This has always been and will always be a factor with open source. Open source means that anyone can use the code for any purpose.

North Korea can use Linux, for example, but that doesn't make Linux evil.

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