Firefox OS (formerly Boot to Gecko, B2G) is
an open source operating system in
development by Mozilla that aims to support
HTML5 apps written using "open Web"
technologies rather than platform-specific
native APIs. The idea is essentially to have all
user-accessible software running on the phone
be a Web app that uses advanced HTML5
techniques and device APIs to access the
phone's hardware directly via JavaScript.[2] It
initially targets Android-compatible
smartphones.
History
Announcement
On July 25, 2011, Dr. Andreas Gal, Director of
Research at Mozilla Corporation, announced on
the mozilla.dev.platform mailing list a
project to "pursue the goal of building a
complete, standalone operating system for the
open web" in order 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."[3] The announcement identified these
work areas: new Web APIs to expose device
and OS capabilities such as telephony and
camera, a privilege model to safely expose
these to web pages, applications to prove
these capabilities, and low-level code to boot
an Android-compatible device.
This led to much blog coverage.[4][5]
According to Ars Technica, "Mozilla says that
B2G is motivated by a desire to demonstrate
that the standards-based open Web has the
potential to be a competitive alternative to the
existing single-vendor application development
stacks offered by the dominant mobile
operating systems."[6]
Demonstration and Telefónica
At Mobile World Congress 2012, Mozilla and
Telefónica announced that the Spanish
telecommunications provider intended to
deliver "open Web devices" in 2012 based on
HTML5 and these APIs.[7] Mozilla also
announced support for the project from
Adobe and Qualcomm, and that Deutsche
Telekom’s Innovation Labs will join the project.
[8] Mozilla demonstrated a "sneak preview" of
the software and apps running on Samsung
Galaxy S II phones (completely replacing their
normal Android operating system).[9][10] As
the user interface is entirely written in HTML5
browser code, a Mozilla employee later put it
on a web page, where some of it runs in up-
to-date browsers.
Open web technologies
stack
The initial development work involves the
following software layers[citation needed]
Linux kernel (with some modifications
made by AOSP and vendors)[11]
a hardware abstraction layer, codenamed
"Gonk"
Mozilla's multi-platform Gecko Web
browser engine to render HTML and CSS
and run JavaScript
platform-independent JavaScript APIs for
device features (telephony, SMS, camera,
Bluetooth, USB, NFC, etc.) of varying
degrees of standardization[12]
platform-independent system applications
(lock screen, phone dialing & phone
messaging, a view of installed applications,
etc.) written in HTML5; the user interface of
these is codenamed "Gaia"[13]
platform-independent HTML5 web
applications
Terminology
Gaia
The user interface of b2g. Everything drawn to
screen after b2g starts up is some part of Gaia.
Gaia implements a lock screen, home screen,
telephone dialer, text-messaging application,
camera app, ... and many more. Gaia is
written entirely in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Its only interface to the underlying operating
system is through Open Web APIs, which are
implemented by Gecko. Gaia works well when
run on top of b2g; however, since it only uses
standard web APIs, it works on other OSes
and in other web browsers (albeit with
degraded functionality). Third-party
applications can be installed alongside Gaia.[11]
Gecko
The "application runtime" of b2g. At a high
level, Gecko implements the open standards
for HTML, CSS, and JS and makes those
interfaces run well on all the OSes that Gecko
supports. This means that Gecko consists of,
among other things, a networking stack,
graphics stack, layout engine, virtual machine
(for JS), and porting layers.[11]
Gonk
The lower-level "operating system" of b2g.
Gonk consists of a linux kernel and userspace
hardware abstraction layer (HAL). The kernel
and several userspace libraries are common
open-source projects: linux, libusb, bluez, etc.
Some other parts of the HAL are shared with
the android project: GPS, camera, among
others. Gonk is basically an extremely simple
linux distribution and is therefore a porting
target of Gecko; there is a port of Gecko to
Gonk, just like there is a port of Gecko to OS X,
and a port of Gecko to Android. Since the b2g
project has full control over Gonk, the
developers can expose interfaces to Gecko that
aren't possible to expose on other OSes. For
example, Gecko has direct access to the full
telephony stack and display framebuffer on
Gonk, but doesn't have this access on any
other OS.

Could you have not broken the line at each point?
(Or have spent some time in "unwrapping" the lines rather than just pasting)

Just having problems with my phone.

Couldn't you just paste URL to the article on Wikipedia from which you copied it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS
Saved you the trouble to copy/paste and make a new line each time.

Anyway.
Another OS for a phone, can't see it take off better the rest.
Haven't we got enough OS'es already for phones?

Especially when it's nothing new. The design is just stolen from iOS and Android.

Oh God i hate copy-paste...

I really don't see the point in creating yet another mobile OS. We've got iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7, so do we really need another? Besides, the design looks like they took iOS and Android and threw them together into a blender. The result: another iOS ripoff with some Android elements in it.

Sure, I don't want a phone OS, I need something like the Chrome OS on netbooks. Mozilla should invent that. Anyway, if Android is so popular, I doubt anybody would like to use it.

There is already a well established open source mobile OS which is Android. Apple would sue over this if it became popular, it copies iOS more than Android. If its easy to port you may see some unofficial ROMs to flash on Android devices but I don't see it ever getting past that.