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The importance of being open

Having a browser on the phone with the full power of the web isn't just about making sites work properly for users; Sullivan thinks it will deal with many of the issues for application developers, from multiple platforms to locked-down application stores. "Our vision for developers is to make the web a first-class platform for creating great mobile apps. We're trying to address the fragmentation of operating systems. With the iPhone and Android, LiMo, Symbian, Windows Mobile? Imagine yourself a start-up looking at seven, eight, nine platforms? The porting and QA alone is nuts. Our answer is 'Go to the web'." Both Fennec and the platforms need to mature before the mobile browser reaches that stage, he admits. "There are still steps to go through technically before you can do all that: offline storage, access to the GPS, all that stuff. You can create OK apps now, but you can't do everything you can natively, and that will take time."

App stores and approval processes may make users comfortable, but they also limit what apps make it onto phones and Sullivan believes that means users losing out. "To have to go out and have to go all over the world to get placement, it's no way to run a business; you're funding expensive sales people. The URL is the distribution mechanism." It's a practical and a philosophical point. "When you think about what openness means, everybody has their own definition of it. The way I think about it is, you don't need permission. If I want to build an app, I don't need permission. If I want to distribute an app, I don't need permission. If I want to charge, or not charge, I don't need permission. I think the app stores and general approval processes stifle a lot of innovation. The one guy or gal who thinks they can crank out some code - all those barriers get in the way. We think the web should be an answer."

Those barriers are getting in the way of Fennec itself. Not only do Apple's restrictions mean it will not be on the iPhone, but there's a problem with Android too: "At the moment the public interface for writing Android apps is Java and we are C and C++. We can bolt onto the side, but I can't necessarily see how we would get to market. If you want to be in the store you have to be JavaScript."

The Windows Mobile version has just reached the first milestone which, he explains with some amusement, "means all the code is finally in the source control, you can get it and it barely compiles." A more functional Windows Mobile version will come in the second half of the year, he expects the Symbian version late in the year and a LiMo version is also planned.

Because many of the first volunteers were from Nokia and because of the relative simplicity of porting to Maemo, a modified version of Debian, the version for Nokia's N-series Internet tablets is furthest along, with the beta due in the next few weeks. The Fennec project is unusual for Mozilla, says Sullivan, because so many of the people involved so far, work for OEMs and in the mobile industry, rather than being independent coders. "They bring a lot of expertise. If you work for Samsung or Nokia or ARM or Ti, you know the issues and they want to see it work for the whole ecosystem. I think now we're getting to Windows Mobile milestones where more people can get their hands on it, more people will get involved. In the next couple of years the Fennec community will be just as vibrant as anything else we have." from being able to twitter from the URL bar, to a whole gesturing system, which may not have mainstream success, but epitomises the Fennec project to Sullivan. "The idea is anyone can change the browser; Fennec will be the first one where you can change the browser. That will get the point across about openness at every level."

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