News - HP to make webOS Open Source

[HEXUS]

Will contribution to the Open Source community help the homeless OS flourish?

Read more.

[crossy]

HP unleashes the cretivity of the Open Source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices

Typo: should be "creativity"!

From what I've seen of webOS, it actually looks quite good - in which case this is great news. Actually there's parts of the OS that I'd argue work better than the Android-Gingerbread that I've got on my tablet.

Be interesting to see if the open source community embrace it with open arms, or regard it with suspicion and stick with Android. That I guess depends on what license get's slapped on the OS by HP, and how "hands off" they are - if it's merely "developer support" then great, if it's Oracle-style meddling then not so good.

From HP's point of view I can't see any problem in doing the Windows 8 tablet for "business" and a lower-cost webOS "consumer" one that uses the same hardware. And yes, I realise that Microsoft probably won't like that. Plus there's still the option to use it for "smart" printers.

(Disclaimer time: yes - I do work for HP. But no, I'm not in the webOS bit, and the views expressed are my own. Heck, I don't even own a TouchPad myself!)

[kingpotnoodle]

"HP unleashes the cretivity of the Open Source"

Did you have the word "cretins" on your mind as you wrote this.

Android is the only semi open source OS to really light the mobile world up, I can't see WebOS being more than another footnote, especially if everyone else now steals the good ideas it did have.

[Scribe]

Hoho, bad spell check! We've become too reliant on it being infallible. Funny thing is it's not a real word but it didn't highlight all the same *sigh*.

I think the OS has real potential, it is designed well, however Android has saturated the market a little and it still needs to find some hardware to run on.

[crossy]

I think the OS has real potential, it is designed well, however Android has saturated the market a little and it still needs to find some hardware to run on.

There's been reports coming from the US press that although the Pre line is dead, the TouchPad may live on, for one example see http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/9/26...urce-interview.

Then again, remember that webOS - like Maemo/Meego/Tizen - has Linux at it's core, so I would assume that there will be quite a lot of hardware that it'll run on. Heck, I'd love to see a dual-OS laptop with Windows8 and fast-boot webOS.

And there's always printers too ...