Goanna is an
open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
browser engine that was
forked from
Mozilla's
Gecko
Geckos are small, mostly carnivorous lizards that have a wide distribution, found on every continent except Antarctica. Belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, geckos are found in warm climates throughout the world. They range from .
Geckos ar ...
. It is used in the
Pale Moon and
Basilisk browsers. It underlies the ''Interlink'' mail client,
Hyperbola's IceWeasel, and other
UXP-based
applications. It was also unofficially ported to
Windows XP for the
K-Meleon
K-Meleon is a free and open-source, lightweight web browser for Microsoft Windows. Unlike cross-platform browsers, it uses the native Windows API to create its user interface. K-Meleon can use the secure Goanna layout engine based on Mozilla's ...
browser and Mypal.
Goanna as an independent fork of Gecko was first released in January 2016.
The project's founder and lead
developer, M. C. Straver,
had both technical and trademark motives to do this in the context of
Pale Moon's increasing divergence from
Firefox. There are two significant aspects of Goanna's divergence: It does not have any of the
Rust language components that were added to Gecko during Mozilla's
Quantum project
In physics, a quantum (plural quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity (physical property) involved in an interaction. The fundamental notion that a physical property can be "quantized" is referred to as "the hypothesis of quantizati ...
, and applications that use Goanna always run in single-
process mode, whereas Firefox became a multi-process application.
References
{{Free-software-stub
Gecko-based software
Software that uses Cairo (graphics)
Cross-platform software
Free layout engines
Free software programmed in C++
Software forks