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HP Cuts Staff As WebOS Transitions To Opensource
alphadogg writes "Hewlett-Packard has cut 275 jobs in its webOS group, as part of its strategy to turn the operating system over to the open-source community, according to IDG News Service. HP said last year that it would stop making devices that use the operating system which was developed by Palm for phones and tablets, and later decided to release the software under the Apache License 2.0. As webOS continues the transition to open-source software, HP no longer needs many of the engineering and other related positions that it required before, the company said in a statement. 'This creates a smaller and more nimble team that is well-equipped to deliver an open source webOS and sustain HP's commitment to the software over the long term,' it added."
Further proof that Open Source kills engineering jobs and depresses wages.
Cursed by poor marketing, weak launch hardware and a limited budget from Palm, Webos never really had a fair shot at the market. HP bought them at a time when they were transitioning to a new CEO who wanted to move them in a services direction, and so they never got the love they needed from HP.
Hopefully open sourcing it will give it new life. It would be nice to have a REAL open source platform, and not the pseudo open source with have with Android, where it's really only open to the handset makers and carriers and users have to resort to ugly hacks to make it work.
I wouldn't mind buying a used Android handset or even an iphone 4S and wiping and re-imaging with Webos. That would be awesome! Finally a good quality OS on good hardware. Kickass.
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I lost my shit at "Hewlett-Packard [..] as part of its strategy"
HP and strategy? If you think HP has anything even remotely resembling "a strategy", you're smoking something too strong to be healthy.
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It's a myth that you simply dump something out as "Open Source" and it will magically be supported by some group of volunteers. Most, if not virtually all, open source projects have paid people at companies doing much of the development. Often companies dedicated to that product although those using it contribute as well.
As best I can tell no one else is really using WebOS and HP just said they're not going to provide development effort for it.
I suspect there'll be enough "volunteers" to act as free support bitches and keep WebOS technically alive but for all practical purposes this means it's never going to be on anything but life support.
There are a number of update commitments that have not been met yet, among them the Touch to Share functionality between the Veer and the Touchpad. HP needs to honor that commitment made to the userbase. Additionally skype is among the added functionality that was promised in the as yet undelivered update.
Great, the next step is to change it back to Palm OS. :0)
The purpose of existence is to make money.
If there were actually a demand, HP wouldn't have had to axe it - they would have either exploited it themselves, or found a sucker^Wbuyer.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
It is bad news to
all employees of HP doing the WebOS.
We did this months ago, the only reason I remember is because I was really pissed off at the news.
There was an article on Slashdot a few months ago stating that several members of HP's WebOS team felt that WebOS was a dead end since it was based on web technology that didn't have enough horsepower to keep up with Android or the various tablet OSes.
HP is doing the cool thing by turning it over to people who may want it, instead of locking it in a drawer, but how smart would it be to continue developing it as an open source project if the paid full time professionals who developed it think it is a dead end technically?
The article states that many of the positions which are being cut are hardware related (and they are being moved to new positions within HP not being fired). HP still has quite a few folks who are paid to develop WebOS. Put it this way. How many successful OSS projects have over 300 full-time developers? That many people is massive overkill even if you split WebOS into 4 major projects, and a handful of smaller projects.
Yeah.... I purchased a brand new 32GB HP TouchPad just recently, as one of Micro Center's special offers. (Basically, they're selling off the last of their inventory of them for $149.95 each if you add it to a purchase of some other new HP computer. My day job wanted me to pick up a new HP desktop PC for them anyway, so I paid the extra and got the TouchPad for myself.)
My impressions of it were:
1. Upon initial unboxing? OMG, HP tried like mad to make this thing copy-cat an Apple product! Same predominantly snow-white box with a lid that lifts off to reveal the contents in a minimalistic type of packaging. Same clear plastic you peel off before using the product. Same type of instruction pamphlet found inside a little cardboard envelope with a cute slogan printed on the front of it. Even the same idea of a uniquely shaped AC wall charger (as opposed to a typical power "brick" like 99% of other consumer electronics products include).
2. When I started giving the unit an actual try, I quickly realized webOS is a really competent operating system for a tablet like this. The "cards" concept works pretty well, and everything has a polished, quality look to it (including such things as the rippling effect when you tap anyplace on the screen). It absolutely needed the latest OS update to be downloaded/installed, to make it work 100% properly though. (I had a Kensington tablet case with integrated bluetooth keyboard, and I couldn't even make the non-HP branded keyboard pair properly until I did the update.) But after that, it "just worked", as the Apple faithful would say.
3. The Touchstone dock/charger is really a "must have" accessory to round out the product. The fact they included inductive charging capabilities in the hardware itself AND designed it intelligently enough so it detects when it's sitting on the stand, and can swtich modes (to a photo frame, a clock, etc.) is VERY slick, and makes you aware it's not just an iPad wannabe after all.
I really believe HP made a MASSIVE mistake by letting webOS go and canceling the TouchPad project. IMO, this was the ONLY real potential competitor to Apple's iPad, and another version or two of the hardware - combined with regular webOS improvements, could have been HP's shining star of a product to carry the whole company. It seems like it was JUST starting to gain the momentum needed when HP pulled the rug out from under it. Horrible timing ....
I don't get all the people rushing to hack these to run Android, quite frankly? webOS is far more enjoyable to work with for a tablet than any of the Android tablets I've seen. Android feels like it was "made for a phone, but shoehorned onto a tablet".
when i see that 275 more have been let go, that means there was even more on this project. With that kind of staff i feel like they did a horrible job developing webos. when i look at developers like the guys at CyanogenMod or other developers like that. that are putting out great software with only donations, it makes me wonder.........
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HP makes lots of PCs and servers with Windows and much other Microsoft software. It remains competitive (as far as it does so) because MS gives discounts to Loyal OEMs. Loyalty is regarded as using MS products wherever this can be done. Given the number of PCs sold this discount must be hundreds of millions.
When HP developed the TouchPad and WebOS the only Microsoft product on ARM was WinCE and its derivatives such as WP7 which were inappropriate for tablets. Thus using Linux was not an issue. Then Microsoft announced Windows On ARM (WOA), a product for ARM based tablets and PCs. If HP continued to use Linux for devices that could be made to run WOA then MS may reduce or remove the 'discount'. The cost of this would exceed any potential profit from WebOS devices, even if they became successful.
This is a rerun of Netbooks where these small cheap devices running Linux could not possibly use Vista so MS revived XP just for this market to stop Linux being sold.
It probably doesn't matter to MS if no one makes WOA tablets, or if they do then no one buys them. The main reason for WOA is to stop OEMs making Linux based machines, or indeed anything other than Windows.
HP's problem lies in it's total commitment to complete and utter bloat. Writing a statement of work for a job (professional services) that is worth less than $8000.00 U.S. takes a team of no less than 20 people and over 10 revisions...meanwhile the customer waits...and waits...and waits! If there were ever anything even mildly efficient about HP, it was long ago washed away by the total commitment to fucking up anything they touch.
You've got that backwards. The project was scheduled to be killed, which would have resulted in all the engineers on the project getting fired (or moved to other projects where they would displace other engineers, who would then get fired). As it is, they're keeping a skeleton staff. So open source saved jobs.
Furthermore, the fact that this project is going to continue in some form opens up the potential for many many more jobs at many other companies--if it's successful, people are going to be porting apps to it like mad. (Admittedly, that's a big if.)
I was amazed that HP had the sense to open source web OS. But now I see where they really don't get it.
Successful, large, open source projects typically have one major sponsor who actually does quite a lot of work on it. Open sourcing it merely gives people more reason to use it and work on it with them.
Nobody's going to take the ball and run with this if HP, or somebody else, doesn't make it a major responsibility for themselves to do so.
To dam bad, they almost figured it out (and even then the odds would be against them)
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No rush to run Android, but there is a point. I got my daughter a Touchpad and she loved it instantly... but couldn't find all the Apps she wanted. She has never used an Android phone, so in her mind, Android did everything she couldn't with WebOS. We put Android on it, and it should be noted that it doesn't replace WebOS, it just gives you a dual boot option. She was excited, it was wonderful... for a couple days, then she was using mostly WebOS again. I ended up putting ICS on it and she was again thrilled... but today when I pried it from her clutching hands, she was using WebOS again.
It seems that there are some things that just don't have good options in WebOS, chiefly among them, video players. With Android, you get more video players and pretty good ones. Most anything you can do easily in WebOS is easy enough with Android, but look and feel are better with WebOS for someone who doesn't have a bias and battery life is longer (though that is likely a side effect of the hardware and designing choices of each.)
I don't have the invested time using either one that she does, so I don't have the same motivations and preferences. I do have an Android phone, so WebOS doesn't immediately seem easier to me. Open Sourcing it though and having looked a little bit at how it was designed makes me hope that it retains enough momentum that I can dual boot it if I ever cave into getting a tablet myself. It does seem likely that I'll get some experience with an iPad soon and I'm wondering if anybody has put a dual boot WebOS system on one.... anyone?
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
"I don't get all the people rushing to hack these to run Android, quite frankly? webOS is far more enjoyable to work with for a tablet than any of the Android tablets I've seen. Android feels like it was "made for a phone, but shoehorned onto a tablet"."
I couldn't agree more... I bought mine for relatively cheap during the firesale with the thought that I'd probably just stick Android on it and it would be a cheap way to get better hardware than most of the cheap 'droid slabs that are kicking around, a few days into using WebOS though that idea just dissolved - it's so much slicker than and Android tablet I'd ever used before and I find that it suits my way of thinking much better than iOS as well. The lack of apps hasn't been a problem for me as so far it's only taken one WebOS update and three 3rd-party apps for me to get all the functionality I need.
WebOS certainly isn't perfect and neither is the hardware but then nothing is and since it's managed to go from an impulse buy to an essential daily device for me I'd say I can't really complain.