As Michel Bauwens reported on this blog in April this year, Google has steered the development of the Android operating system into a direction that is less and less open, to the point where

Android should no longer be considered open source

Enter Mozilla, the creators of the open source Firefox browser.

Mozilla announced in a forum post this week that it is working on a project known as ‘Boot to Gecko,’ which will use its Gecko rendering engine as a platform for HTML5-based apps “that are – in every way – the equals of native apps built for the iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone 7.” Boot to Gecko will use the Android kernel and drivers to boot the device. Mozilla aims to “use as little of Android as possible.”

Its goal is to create “a complete, standalone operating system for the open web,” which will work on both mobile and desktop devices. Early work will focus on creating web APIs to support mobile features such as telephony, SMS, Camera, USB, Bluetooth and NFC, the firm said.

See the complete article with links at http://www.dailywireless.org/2011/07/26/mozilla-open-source-competition-for-android/