HP To Release webOS to Open Source; Plans New Windows and webOS Tablets

HP announced on Friday that it will contribute it’s webOS software to the open source community, affirming that the company still plans to continue active development and support of webOS. However, HP maintains that combining the webOS platform with the development power of the open source community enhances the opportunity to significantly improve applications and web services for the next generation of devices.

webOS, a mobile operating system based on a Linux kernel, and initially developed by Palm and introduced in January 2009 on the Palm Pre as the successor to Palm OS. It was later acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.2 billion, and last February 9 HP announced it would make WebOS the universal platform for all of its devices, announcing a month later ambitious plans to develop a version of webOS by the end of 2011 that would run within the Microsoft Windows operating system, to be installed on all HP desktop and notebook computers by 2012.

However the sales flop of the the HP TouchPad tablet computer released in July (at least before HP dropped the price of backlogged TouchPad inventory to $99), quickly discontinued, appears to have derailed HP’s webOS ambitions. However, in an interview with TechCrunch’s Leena Rao interview last Friday, HP CEO Meg Whitman and board member Marc Andreessen declar3ed that there’s still a future for webOS-powered tablets, although Ms. Whitman said this may not happen in 2012, but more likely in 2013, adding that for 2012, she’s planning a Windows 8 tablet, commenting: “We’ll continue to invest in the existing tablet ecosystem” and in the near term “will bet heavily with Windows,” which makes the webOS future on HP devices still appear a bit murky, so we’ll have to see.

However, in an internal email to HP employees posted by TechCrunch’s Matt Burns, Ms. Whitman declares that webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected, and scalable, and says that ny providing webOS to the open source community and other hardware vendors HP has the potential to fundamentally change the landscape, with HP engineers, partners, other developers and hardware manufacturers continuing to contribute to development of webOS to make it the foundation of a new generation of devices, applications and services, and summarizing: “We strongly believe that the best days for webOS are still ahead.”

HP notes that webOS offers a number of benefits to the entire ecosystem of web applications. For developers, applications can be easily built using standard web technologies. In addition, its single integrated stack offers multiplatform portability. For device manufacturers, it provides a single web-centric platform to run across multiple devices. As a result, the end user benefits from a fast, immersive user experience.

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

HP says it will make the underlying code of webOS available under an open source license. Developers, partners, HP engineers and other hardware manufacturers can deliver ongoing enhancements and new versions into the marketplace, and HP pledges to 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 pledges to be an active participant and investor in the project, offering 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.

Developers and customers are invited to provide input and suggestions at:
http://developer.palm.com/blog/