HP Says It Will Keep And Share webOS

[Michael Essany]

The longstanding mystery of what HP will do with webOS has finally been resolved in the least eventful manner possible.

On Friday, HP detailed it's long term plans for webOS. The cornerstone of the plan? HP is keeping it in order to "contribute the webOS software to the open source community." It's another way of saying "sharing is caring."

As we all know, however, HP would have probably outlined a different long-term plan if the company had actually succeeded in finding an interested buyer.

"HP plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS," HP detailed in a press release. "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."

Despite announcing its plans to share webOS, HP didn't take this opportunity to offer up any specifics with regard to how webOS will, in fact, be shared and under what conditions.

HP will engage the open source community to help define the charter of the open source project under a set of operating principles:

The goal of the project is to accelerate the open development of the webOS platform
HP will be an active participant and investor in the project
Good, transparent and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation
Software will be provided as a pure open source project

HP's new president and CEO Meg Whitman would only say that “by contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”

Source: HP

[Striknine]

That's great news. Can't wait to get a device that will run this OS.

[iPod]

Need. A. Download. Now. Imagine running some tricked out webos on a computer

[Atari800]

One big problem that could come is, yes, fragmentation. Since hp is not making the hardware, the open source community could possibly make versions for specific tablet types. Then the development of quality apps is another issue.

[Jupit3r]

One big problem that could come is, yes, fragmentation. Since hp is not making the hardware, the open source community could possibly make versions for specific tablet types. Then the development of quality apps is another issue.

Not necessarily.. HP could demand that the manufactures follow certain specifications in order to maintain a stable ecosystem..

None the less I personally think this is good. WebOS isn't bad (not saying its great either..). It's another competitor to challenge Apple to be even greater.

[ericmac017]

I got a Touchpad during their firesale and I really like the UI. It's multitasking is far better than iOS. But as we all know, Apple is superior when it comes to hardware. I'm glad that WebOS will remain under HP to support the open source community. Looking forward to see what comes of this