HP goes open source with WebOS

Brian Ambrozy 9 Dec, 2011 at 2:10pm ET Article published in Tech

In a somewhat unexpected, yet fully understandable move today, HP announced that they are contributing WebOS to Open Source.

According to the press release,

HP plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS.

This can, of course, be read many different ways, but really this represents the best graceful exit for HP. They save face by contributing a really good product to the open source community, and are no longer obligated to keep developing it.

From the press release,

HP will engage the open source community to help define the charter of the open source project under a set of operating principles:

The goal of the project is to accelerate the open development of the webOS platform

HP will be an active participant and investor in the project

Good, transparent and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation

Software will be provided as a pure open source project

HP also will contribute ENYO, the application framework for webOS, to the community in the near future along with a plan for the remaining components of the user space.

Does this mean we’ll see WebOS as a viable smartphone OS on non-Palm phones? It’s certainly a possibility.

Comments

9 Dec 2011 ~ 2:11pm Garg Well that's awesome. WebOS - Android mashup, here we come.
9 Dec 2011 ~ 2:49pm Linc Gruber's take was spot-on: "I think this is just the difference between putting your dog down and letting it free on a distant mountain road."

I'm puzzled why their press release references "the open source community" as if that's a coherent entity. I highly doubt there's anyone out there to take on the amount of work required to get this moving again.
9 Dec 2011 ~ 3:04pm PirateNinja Maybe HTC will further the development.

/me hides
9 Dec 2011 ~ 3:58pm djmeph Lincoln, the "underground" developer community for WebOS is quite large, and have had a great influence on the development of the OS up until now. They will be ecstatic about this. I would say that the necessary community to make this project work is already in place, and the gate has just been opened.
9 Dec 2011 ~ 4:12pm Linc

djmeph wrote:

Lincoln, the "underground" developer community for WebOS is quite large, and have had a great influence on the development of the OS up until now.

There is a massive, gaping chasm between app development and OS development. All the iOS (by far the most popular platform for devs) devs in the world combined would not band together to build iOS6 if Apple ditched it and open sourced, and iOS has the advantage of A) Not being last into the race and B) not having been on hiatus the last year or more.
9 Dec 2011 ~ 4:27pm djmeph I was referring to OS development as well. The homebrew community has had much more influence over the development of the OS than you think. Things like COMPCACHE and advanced clock management were adopted because they were developed by homebrewers.
9 Dec 2011 ~ 4:58pm Bandrik Well that's an awesome surprise. Blessing in disguise that HP "dropped the ball" with WebOS, as we now have it as open source? We will see.
10 Dec 2011 ~ 8:01am Shorty Didn't see that happening. I was expecting them to keep it a little longer first and attempt to make it a lightweight OS for devices. I have to agree with Matt, I don't think this will move much now.
10 Dec 2011 ~ 12:33pm Cliff_Forster It's the best move HP could have made. It's good PR, they had a dead asset, one that was never going to yield a return for them. They could kill it altogether and gotten nothing from it, they maybe, possibly could have sold it for pennies on the dollar, but then run the risk that someone else could succeed where they failed and make them appear even less competent (if that's possible), but if you make it open source, and it flops, at least there is that nice PR that goes with it, if it succeeds, you can at least take a little credit down the road and possibly find a way to leverage it to make a little money off of it later.

It's the only move that made sense.
10 Dec 2011 ~ 1:09pm CrazyJoe Hmmm... I was considering trying to get the Touchpad on Sunday... This will probably push me over the edge... As djmeph said the WebOS homebrew community is pretty large so this could be a great thing for WebOS...
10 Dec 2011 ~ 4:03pm Snarkasm And it's worth noting that they've said they're going to work on new hardware for webOS as well. It's not like they're just putting it out to pasture. They're just allowing a larger pool of devs to contribute towards something they'll use commercially for free.
10 Dec 2011 ~ 4:09pm Thrax I think the Android community is going to go fucking ballistic with ports. WebOS is a *NIX OS just like Android, which means shared libs and drivers.
11 Dec 2011 ~ 2:18pm djmeph

Thrax wrote:

I think the Android community is going to go fucking ballistic with ports. WebOS is a *NIX OS just like Android, which means shared libs and drivers.

Yes, someone had already developed an Android emulator that worked with apps from an early version of Android, but it had disappeared at some point. I would like to see more of this kind of thing popping up.
11 Dec 2011 ~ 10:22pm CrazyJoe So I managed to pick up the 32GB for $150 in the eBay sale. I am looking forward to my first tablet. I loved WebOS on my old Palm Pre...
11 Dec 2011 ~ 11:09pm jared Had there been some 16gb models left for $99 I might of snagged one just to play with, but I wasn't going to pay $150 since that is approaching Kindle Fire/Nook Color territory.
12 Dec 2011 ~ 5:43am CrazyJoe Yes, but the Touchpad is superior to the Fire/Nook in just about every way.
12 Dec 2011 ~ 8:19am Bandrik There's more to a device than just its hardware specs, or even a list of functionality. User experience is a big part of it too. Not knocking the Touchpad and the slick WebOS, but rather pointing out that some may just prefer the more streamlined Fire/Nooks.
12 Dec 2011 ~ 8:23am MiracleManS

Bandrik wrote:

There's more to a device than just its hardware specs, or even a list of functionality. User experience is a big part of it too. Not knocking the Touchpad and the slick WebOS, but rather pointing out that some may just prefer the more streamlined Fire/Nooks.

Especially when some of us aren't really big fans of the 9-10 inch tablets.
12 Dec 2011 ~ 10:18am CrazyJoe

Bandrik wrote:

There's more to a device than just its hardware specs, or even a list of functionality. User experience is a big part of it too. Not knocking the Touchpad and the slick WebOS, but rather pointing out that some may just prefer the more streamlined Fire/Nooks.

Oh, I definitely agree with this. As far as a small form factor and an eReader goes the Nook/Kindle can't be beat. Some people prefer the smaller tablets and/or eReaders, but as far as 10 inch tablets, it's hard to beat the pricepoint of $150 for a dual core tablet with 32GB of storage. Granted WebOS doesn't have nearly the amount of apps that Android has, but I'll only be using it for Couch Surfing the internet and playing the occasional game of Angry Birds, so for that it is a fantastic price.
12 Dec 2011 ~ 12:36pm djmeph Honestly, how long will it be before those touchpads are running Android?
12 Dec 2011 ~ 12:54pm Thrax Touchpads are already running Android.
12 Dec 2011 ~ 1:30pm CrazyJoe Yep, I'll probably install the Dual Boot option so I can enjoy WebOS but still have Android to play Netflix and a few other apps that don't run on WebOS.
12 Dec 2011 ~ 2:08pm djmeph

Thrax wrote:

Touchpads are already running Android.

This excites me.
12 Dec 2011 ~ 9:41pm drasnor Devs should be able to port Android or WebOS to any device whose kernel sources are available.
12 Dec 2011 ~ 10:10pm Thrax The problem for all such ports is always the bootloader. There is no standard solution for bootloaders in the Android world, so each device has its own unique way of bootstrapping the OS.
15 Dec 2011 ~ 7:45pm CrazyJoe I am typing this on my new HP Touchpad. I'm loving it so far, I cannot wait to see what the WebOS Community can come up with now that it is open source.
16 Dec 2011 ~ 12:28pm djmeph neato, are you coming to ICNY?
18 Dec 2011 ~ 9:58pm CrazyJoe Nope. Sorry, I'll be staying down here.