HP aims to revive webOS as open source software

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 11 December 2011 12:05

IT Industry - Strategy

HP has announced it will contribute the former Palm smartphone operating system, webOS, software to the open source community.

The move follows the HP's announcement in August that it would cease making its webOS based touchpad and all webOS based smartphones.

In a statement HP said: "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."

HP says it 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.

According to HP president and CEO, Meg Whitman, "webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable. 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 engage the open source community to help define the charter of the open source project under a set of operating principles:

- to accelerate the open development of the webOS platform;

- HP will be an active participant and investor in the project;

- it will ensure good, transparent and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation;

- software will be provided as a pure open source project;

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

webOS has had a chequered history. It was the creation of PalmSource, the spun-off software arm of Palm created when Palm was a lead player in the 'personal digital assistant' market - well before the emergence of smartphones - and was designed to replace the original Palm OS.

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