HP Making webOS Open Source

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Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 9, 2011 @07:30AM from the had-it-in-the-palm-of-their-hand dept.

Several readers sent word of HP's announcement that the company will be contributing webOS to the open source community. According to HP's press release, they will continue to be active in webOS's development, and one of their goals will be to avoid fragmentation. ENYO, the application framework for webOS, will also go open source in the near future.

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Re:A few billion to acquire it, then open source i by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-09 07:43 · Score: 5, Informative

The current CEO is not the same person who purchased Palm (that'd be Hurd), and they're not even the person who fumbled the ball (that'd be Apotheker). Meg Whitman seems to be actually trying to sort out the mess left by the last two, and if that includes cutting the loses on WebOS then so be it.
Re:best of both worlds? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-09 07:47 · Score: 4, Informative

Two points:
1. They still employ the software side of the WebOS team. The only people who were laid off were the hardware guys.
2. They've already said they're looking at Windows 7 or Windows 8 for their next tablet.
Re:Thanks but no thanks by Kenshin · 2011-12-09 08:12 · Score: 4, Informative

webOS isn't HP's baby. They just adopted it when they bought Palm.

--
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Re:Does this mean.... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-12-09 08:39 · Score: 4, Informative

Android likely has an unassailable lead in application availability; but I know that WebOS's superior windowing/'card/swipe' gesture system made me feel like I was kicking a puppy by comparing a XOOM to a TouchPad...

I'm not sure that it would matter quite as much at phone-screen sizes; but the comparison at 10 inches was pretty stark.
Re:Meego is already there. by markdavis · 2011-12-09 08:48 · Score: 4, Informative

And WebOS was/is also "rooted" on all devices. You just clicked on developer mode. Done.
It had been that day from day one.