AfterDawn: Tech news

WebOS goes open source

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 09 Dec 2011 3:09 User comments (4)

WebOS goes open source HP has said today that it will be donating its webOS software to the open source community, just 20 months after purchasing Palm and webOS for $1.2 billion.
The company says it will remain active in the development and support of the operating system and hope that adding community support will certainly help the software survive for new generations of hardware.

Says the press release:

webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable. By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.


The underlying code of webOS will be available now with an open source license and devs, HP, hardware manufacturers and partners can start tweaking.



Concluding, new CEO Meg Whitman posted some bullet points:

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.


Check updates here: http://developer.palm.com/blog/.

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4 user comments

19.12.2011 15:34

Some potential here, but only time will tell. I hope this bring allot of programs.

29.12.2011 17:52

Sounds great to me, this should be help the touchpad to get more apps now.

39.12.2011 20:56

At least WebOS didn't get killed off like Unix did. HP made a smart and courageous decision.

410.12.2011 01:50

Originally posted by biglo30:
Sounds great to me, this should be help the touchpad to get more apps now.
You already have android, what more could you want???

Originally posted by ivymike:
At least WebOS didn't get killed off like Unix did. HP made a smart and courageous decision.
There really isn't anything of value here. They are just trying to make this a semi-viable OS so they can make a little bit of money on devices that use it. It isn't as good as Android and making it open source isn't going to fix that.

I support open source, and I am not trying to complain or anything...but as far as I am concerned, this is like making Windows 3.1 open source...a nice touch, but nothing of any real value.

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