Which future for Webian OS?

[Justin]

I heard that the mozilla chromeless project was stopped and dead. So
what about Webian project, which is based on it??

Thanks

[Ben Francis]

Hi Justin,

Thanks for asking. The Mozilla Chromeless experiment isn't officially finished, but there hasn't been any active development on it for a couple of months. Chromeless was a great experimental platform on which to build a prototype of Webian Shell which anyone could test out on their existing desktop environment, but the goals of Webian have always been much wider than that.

I've now quit my day job and am working full time on realising those goals, working closely with Mozilla to take lessons learnt from Chromeless, Webian Shell and other projects to build new functionality right into the core Mozilla platform.

This includes:

• WebAPIs - A set of new progamming interfaces to give web apps all the power of native mobile and desktop apps
• B2G - A prototype mobile OS to create a bootable platform on which a new breed of web apps can be developed
• Gaia - A collection of web apps which demonstrate the power of the new APIs and help to find areas they can be improved
  

Once the WebAPIs have developed a little further, B2G will be able to focus on the mobile space, while Webian builds off the same core platform to make an OS initially targetted at nettop and netbook devices.

I hope this explains that while Chromeless and the Webian Shell prototype may have served their purpose and the respective web sites seem a little quiet at the moment, there's lots of even more exciting work going on behind the scenes to make Webian a cutting-edge platform for web apps which pushes the open web forward into new areas.

Discussion is still ongoing about Webian on this list, on GetSatisfaction and Clinked and you can find out more about Mozilla's work on the B2G wiki so there's plenty to get involved in!

Ben

--
Ben Francis
http://tola.me.uk