HP today announced it will contribute the webOS software to the open source community. HP’s press release follows, verbatim:
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.
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,” said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. “By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”
HP 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.
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.
Source: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
Now to get Adobe to Open Source friggin’ FreeHand.
Oh please please please!
I would be happy if they simply took the elements of Freehand that are superior and bring them to Illustrator. One simple thing fine tuning wheel for grad angles instead of numerical input and hope for the best. Surely anyone can see the superiority of the FH system.
I totally agree with you.
Michael Robson, I noticed that your complaint about MDN’s advertising was deleted. Perhaps we should think of it as a sign of MDN’s success that it’s able to attract more sponsors than Carter has pills. Web analytics has proven (at least in its through its marketing approach to sites like this) that blinking, strobing, floating, provocative, in-your-face ads generate bucks. Compare it to broadcast TV, with its blaring, max-volume screamer ads. That still makes money.
It could even be that MDN is making money. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Are you talking about Carter’s little farter starters.
I’m with Michael Robson-MDN is a great site but advertising on mdn is horrific and ironic that for all our mutual disdain for and MDN’s rants against flash this page is dripping with it. I’d be happy to shell our a few bucks for the ad free mdn.
All of those ads are paying for our Mac-loving enjoyment. If you don’t contribute money to the site or buy Apple products using MDN’s link, then those ads are keeping MDN going.
I love ads but HATE FLASH ADS. I block all Flash ads and MDN this is unfortunately losing potential revenue with many of us.
You libtards wouldn’t be happy if MDN was making a profit. You zombie-marxists think profits are evil! Screw you.
Web OS sucks.
Creative, offensive,and derisive name calling is insubstantial, immature, and basically worthless.
Get back to us in ten years when your mentality might just be at the level of a 20 year old.
At which time said name-calling will have been elevated to the status of an art, loaded for bear with a fat lexicon, a clutch of obscure literary put downs, a few hand-crafted double entendres and a zombie in a pear tree.
Notice how rude and crude conservatives are? Raised in a pigsty.
Way to go — lump all conservatives into one sweeping category. Broad generalizations such as yours are unfounded in both fact and logic. As though there has never been a rude or arrogant liberal in human history? Please, spare me your absurd sanctimony which is obviously borne of an inability to tolerate political views which diverge from your own.
conservatives are dumb because they think the environment is all fine and global warming doesn’t exist
democrats are dumb because they think they can fix it
AH! MDN’s ads are so annoying!!! AAHHH!!
Wait, no they’re not, because I installed AdBlock and never see them.
Don’t blame MDN if you’re so technically inept that you can’t install a simple, free browser extension.
——RM
Alternative to Android. I expect Amazon to transition to WebOS for their future tablets, instead of continuing to do highly customized versions of old Android releases.
I’m gleefully looking forward to watching as the hardcore open-source types start migrating to webOS, to get away from Android’s “not really open” nature. The effect on Google should be rather interesting, as they’ll no longer have the automatic echo chamber of the open source crowd.
If webOS’s open source license is genuinely open, then the open-source supporters will no longer have to rationalize sticking with Android, and will no longer need to back Google as the “least evil” option from their point of view.
This is a great opportunity for OEM’s if HP lets any manufacturer use WebOS, like Android.
In-spite of the statements the CEO’s made, the Google-Motorola and MS-Nokia deals must have bothered them.
I agree, any (Android) competition is good.
Except at this point, WebOS needs a mercy killing not “freedom.”
This is HP’s backup plan incase Windows 8 tablets fail. They will continue to develop webOS, ready to deploy new devices in 2013 if Microsoft can’t rescue the industry from the big bad iPad next year.
Now that it is open source, Microsoft can restart their copy machines
I think its great news.
I love to see open source grow.
Should be interesting to see where webOS goes.
Open source? Think of the chaos that would ensue if cars, instead of being built in consistent ways by factors, were just given to you as a collection of parts in boxes for you to assemble.
A tiny percentage would be works of art, the vast majority would end up as “basket cases’ never to see the light of day in any useable form.
Go ahead, feel free.
Not a very precise analogy, since most users of open source resources do not actually do the “assembly.”
In the case of WebOS, a hardware maker would take WebOS, customize it as needed, and use it in their hardware product. We (the end users) would buy the fully functional hardware product (if its any good).
factories, not factors.
that was sort of an “open source” reply, did not put all the pieces into the final assembly. 🙂
Btw, if anyone wants to know.. Hp is selling the touchpad at $99 again this Sunday. On their eBay store.
I may actually pick one up this time..
I love Apple products and own many. I browse MDN articles daily. The fact that you published a story and your own take is “what else should we ignore today?” is lame. Why publish it at all? Like the general population can’t find the same story left and right on the web… With a more intelligent comment. I agree that Apple products are better but your I am holier than thou attitude is too much. Tone it down and have some class.
It’s all about the page views.
This is such a stupid idea. Isn’t HP just admitting that it doesn’t have the engineering talent to pull this off? Now what? Do they just try to make PC’s and hope for the best? I don’t see how open sourcing WebOS does HP any good. If anything, it gives Asian manufacturers another free OS that they can use to steal somebody’s lunch.
the decision is not about engineering talent as much as it’s about resources and reward. Potential profits fall below the CRSP threshold on a LEMN curve, whereas the investment of resources could balloon way above that, so it’s hard for them to justify the risk.
If Android OEMs start losing in court does WebOS as Open Source give them enough to switch.
What part of MAC daily news is this? And who besides HP employees – who will lose their jobs after Meg Witless crashes yet another company – cares what Witless says?
What is HP’s strategy? Set off an explosion. Hope they can shatter the iPad monopoly and hope some of the pieces fall in HP’s lap? Not much of a strategy. It doesn’t aim for greatness.
Yes, but frankly is is far more likely to shatter (and further fragment) the android market. If it is litigation free it would be extremely attractive to the electronics firms now suffering with android mess.
Actually I would love to see them open source BeOS (I assume Be source/patents/copyrights traveled the ladder of successive acquisitions from Be to Palm to HP)
It would actually make a nice sub $200 net-book OS (even in the state it was in a dozen years ago) Would run quickly with no stalling even on minimal hardware, could be a godsend for 3rd world students.
> Actually I would love to see them open source BeOS
Support Haiku…
http://haiku-os.org/
“Haiku is a new open-source operating system that specifically targets personal computing. Inspired by the BeOS…”
I actually installed and ran it (a year or so ago, though little has changed). Unfortunately it is a pale shadow of the original, efficiency wise (ability to run quickly on minimal hardware)
It’s still “alpha” (there was a new release a few months ago). And if you take the original BeOS and update it to add all the modern capabilities and requirements, it would probably get bogged down to… I recall earlier Linux distros were lean and ran quite fast on minimal hardware, but the most recent ones (such as Ubuntu) are now much weightier.
I’ve been playing with it as a VMware Fusion VM.
ken1w:
“I recall earlier Linux distros were lean and ran quite fast on minimal hardware,”
Then you recall wrong. Even in minimalist trim the UI (like GNU/Linux) on early linux systems ran like a pig (and consumed CPU resources like one too, even when just idling! )
While BeOS screamed on the same hardware. Don’t get me wrong there were major flaws in BeOS (cough-fragile base class-cough;-) but it was in a class of it’s own GUI efficiency wise. (and was also unique File system wise) Unfortunately HiKu seems (to me), more similar to current Linux distros, efficiency wise, than to the original BeOS.
Ladies and gentlemen, Android is dead.
There’s no reason for hardware manufacturers to stick with a mobile OS that’s encumbered by patent litigation as well as royalty demands from Microsoft. It’s also increasingly bad PR to be associated with Google, as it finds itself increasingly embroiled in privacy scandles and just keeps on making things even worse by shoving its foot in its mouth at every possible opportunity. Prepare to watch the rats jump ship to webOS.
Google will try to stop it, of course, most likely by paying manufacturers a subsidy to stick with Android and shun webOS. But that isn’t maintanable, is illegal as far as I know, and does nothing to help with the patent litigation.
Game over, Eric. You can consider it karma.
Android was already on fire, though this is like throwing a bucket of gasoline onto the flames
This could play out many ways i guess.
If Webos gets big MS will just try the same shady tactics since their claim of 234 patent infringements deal with linux and both android and webos are built on linux.
IF webos is truly unencumbered then it gives google a place to pull workaround code from in case they lose any infinfringement cases.
I suspect we’ll see a bunch of lawsuits once webos hits a certain mass from the usual suspects.
Either way i can’t wait for the full source to become available
I think that was likely just typical MS chest puffing. If MS could have nuked Linux they would have. (In the enterprise/server market it has been a thorn (perhaps more like 8″ Bowie knife) in their side for years.)
So, no buyers HP, eh?