The twisting saga of HP and webOS took a new turn today, and one that should please fans of open software development. HP announced that they are contributing the code for webOS to the open source community.
The future of webOS, and in fact all of HP’s consumer computing assets, seemed in question a few months back when the TouchPad was discontinued after about a month on the market and statements were made that indicated HP was getting out of the consumer computing business. With a change of CEOs (as former eBay head Meg Whitman replaced Leo Apotheker) things seem to have leveled out a bit and webOS may even have a future again, inside and outside of the company. In addition to making the code available HP has indicated that they will continue to devote company resources to its development.
“webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable,” Whitman said. “By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”
The company laid out the following set of principles for the continued development project:
HP also plans to contribute ENYO, the application framework for webOS, to the open source project. Developers interested in taking part in the discussion to shape this new life for webOS can check out HP’s developer blog.
Will you be joining in and seeing what you can make with webOS? Let us know in the comments.
