BREAKING NEWS: HP to Open-Source webOS

 

 

HP has been alluding for months that webOS would be going away, but now it seems that could have been just a smokescreen. In a press-release today HP stated the following:

HP today announced it will contribute the webOS software to the open source community.

HP plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS. By combining the innovative webOS platform with the development power of the open source community, there is the opportunity to significantly improve applications and web services for the next generation of devices.

This is amazing news and bodes well for the entire webOS development community, and ultimately all those who have webOS devices as it would seem they’ll live on for years to come.

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.

As an aside, this may actually help the effort to bring Android to the HP TouchPad, but we’ll have to wait and see on that.