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LG Acquires WebOS Source Code and Patents From HP
An anonymous reader writes "LG is set to breathe new life into the webOS platform after the company announced today that it has acquired the software and its intellectual property from HP. The news comes after HP abandoned webOS device and software development in August 2011, then open-sourced the platform so that developers might be able to salvage something from the software that was widely acclaimed, despite the lack of smartphone and tablet sales which it powered. LG now claims complete ownership of the webOS source code, its documentation and webOS websites. It has obtained HP licenses, as well as the patents that Palm transferred to its owner when it was acquired in 2010."
HP must be breathing a sigh of relief. I hope LG didn't pay much, because they'll now need to hoard every penny they find.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
How can they open source the code, then flog it to somebody else who claims "complete ownership"? What license did they release the open source branch under?
Next week HP will be announcing their acquisition of LG, in order to secure ownership of WebOS which they will see as a vital part of their future growth plans.
LG is still alive somewhere
...its thriving after ditching windows phone, and the Nexus 4 I believe has been [too] sold out since launch.
The rumor I heard was that they were going to use it in their TVs.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Yeah, LG just acquired all those patents from HP/Palm...
But what did it get? If you imagine each of those patents to be a pie, did LG get the whole pie on each one it got?
Hell no.
First, HP undoubtedly retained a license to practice under each of the patents, to make, use, sell, have made, have customers use, yada, yada, yada.
Next, LG took those patents under whatever licenses and cross-licenses HP (and Palm) had entered into with other companies.
So while LG acquired a bunch of patents, each of those patents has a chunk or two taken out of it. LG undoubtedly didn't get the whole pie.
Open webOS is released under Apache License Version 2.0 (http://apache.org/licenses/)
The Apache licence grants you the right to make and distribute copies, but does not require you to distribute the source code with a binary distribution.
So LG can fork the code and that code will probably not be made available, only the binaries. They own the forked code completely. It will live a separate life from Open webOS.
Also, the licence says:
"If You institute patent litigation against any entity( ...) alleging that the Work( ...) constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed."
So if LG uses the patents used in webUS against anyone, say Apple, then LG loses the right to use those patents? So LG can't use those patents? That's what is seems to say, but maybe I don't get legal speak.
Rick
assignment != equality != identity
Indeed webOS can benefit a lot from running Android apps. (A whole ecosystem to leverage). And it shouldn't be that much difficult: webOS is almost a complete classical linux stack under the hood (save for the interface) and others, such as Canonical with their iterations of "running Android Apps on Ubuntu" or "running Android and Ubuntu alongside", have proven that Android Apps on a any generic Linux isn't impossible.
Best part?
It's ALREADY happening.
for example: openmobile do have an Android Compatibility Layer.
LG could indeed re-use webOS (specially: they've got the openWebOS community working for them), license openmobile's ACL, and voilÃ, they have a google-free alternative to android, which can also run the same apps and benefit from the same ecosystem, but on the other hand, doesn't depend on google, and offers something different (in order to distiguish themselves from the hundreds of other android smartphone makers. just like HTC is distinguishing themselves with their HTC Sense interface)
Also don't forget that the "other" hot thing currently is HTML5 based applications (Windows 8 is betting a lot on that as a smartphone OS, but Firefox and Chrome have also be showcasing webapps a lot) and webOS has been using web-standards-based applications from DAY 1.
So if the HTML5/Javascript start to gain any traction, webOS is already a first class citizen and a very attractive platform to bet on, being able to tap into 2 different echo-systems (both android and HTML5 apps).
(And given the efforts that Google has invested into ChromeOS and Chromebooks, you can bet that they'll try to push this ecosystem too)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I was impressed with WebOS. It seems very well thought out and smooth. I was less impressed with the selection of WebOS Apps available though. About half of them seemed to be designed for a phone rather than a tablet so all you saw was this tiny window instead of a full screen program. Cyanogenmod (the Linux OS you are referring to) runs really well although you have to jump through a few hoops to get it to work with Google Play. Once that is working, all the Android Apps are available to you. The issue with the camera appears to have been fixed.
One: I don't think they ever fully open sourced every last bit.
Well actually, the "last bit" *IS* the only thing to opensource in webOS.
Unlike Android, but like most other Linux based OSes (Meamo/Meego/Tizen, OpenMoko's FSO, QTopia, etc.) webOS is pretty much a standard Linux stack under the hood, saved for their peculiar stack-of-cards-based user interface, and their account info snychronising system Synergy.
the "last bit" was the only thing setting appart webOS from, say, Ubuntu.
So when webOSt was open sourced into openWebOS, this last bit is what actually got opensourced.
Well, mostly. If you want to nit-pick, webOS uses an unusual closed source stack for Bluetooth. But Linux has a very nice BlueZ stack which work already. I think that replacing the proprietary stack with BlueZ was on openwebos roadmap, although I don't remember how far they got with this point.
Any way, the final openWebOS version 1.0 has been out for a while and with it (roughly) everything you need to make your own webOS device is available as you can see with the various ports to the Google Nexus family of devices.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In theory you're correct:
LG can't control the GPLed copies which are already "in the wild", those will remain GPLed and can still be distributed under this license. LG only decide what they do with their own copy and all future development they do on this.
In practice, there's something to take into account:
Unlike Android, and like any other Linux-based smartphone OS (Meego/Maemo/Tizen, openmoko's FSo and SHR, QTopia, etc.) webOS is pretty much as standart GNU/Linux stack under the hood.
The only proprietary bits is the stack-of-cards-based UI, and Synergy.
Evertything else is the same GPLed components that you already have in your Ubuntu.
So in practice LG doesn't have control over much of the code. Neither they, nor HP, nor Palm own it.
They only have full control over Luna, Enyo and Synergy.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]