webos webOS being open sourced, says HP

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

webOS being open sourced, says HP

HP has decided the fate of webOS today, and it's an open one: the platform will be contributed to the open source community. The company says that it will be an "active participant and investor in the project."

Developing...

Source: The Verge

[MightyJordan]

Just read about it. Good move from HP. :)

[George P Global Moderator]

It's the only move they could make actually, not like anyone would want to buy it off of them.

[ArialBlue]

So who will continue to develop it?

[.Neo]

I wonder what will come of this.

[+Warwagon MVC]

[Yogurth]

So who will continue to develop it?

EVERYONE! :)

[ArialBlue]

EVERYONE! :)

Communist!!

[RadishTM Veteran]

Major props to Meg for keeping webOS alive, love the OS (Y)

[Stetson]

If I understand correctly this actually makes WebOS more "open" than Android. It sounds like WebOS will become a true open source project that people can contribute to. Android just releases a source dump after every major release.

Hopefully HP will still make hardware that runs WebOS, but if not at least other companies will have the ability WebOS devices.

[I am Reid]

So who will continue to develop it?

Webos has a pretty significant group of developers in WebOS internals, and the "hacking" community has not only been supported by HP and palm but encouraged. Palm made it very easy for people to install new kernels for OC'ing and made no attempts to prevent people from doing so.

[wellofsouls]

It's a better move than just killing it off, for sure, and possibly the best move at current situation, but unless HP or some other organization can provide a significant number of professional developers to devote their time in developing WebOS, open-sourcing will at most just hold it onto the edge with a niche fanbase using it.

Just look at Maemo and MeeGo.

[Growled Member]

It seems like a good move on the surface but only time will tell if it is or not.

[Rudy]

It's the only move they could make actually, not like anyone would want to buy it off of them.

No, they could have kept it and not done anything with it. There was nothing forcing them to open source it

[George P Global Moderator]

No, they could have kept it and not done anything with it. There was nothing forcing them to open source it

Trying to make up for all the money wasted by getting free development put into it is the goal. They'll still use it where ever they can but now don't have to put much if any real R&D into it.