As expected, Hewlett-Packard today finally revealed webOS’ fate. It will contribute the webOS software to the open source community.
“webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable,” said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. “By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”
Developers, partners, HP engineers and other hardware manufacturers will all have access to the webOS under an open source license. The
application framework for webOS, Enyo, will also be open sourced in the near future. It’s not clear if HP will not open source anything due to intellectual property reasons.
HP did not announce plans for new webOS devices but did promise to “continue to be active in the development and support of webOS.” In an FAQ posted along with the announcement, it does leave the door open though, saying that it will “explore the viability of putting webOS on devices, just as we do for other leading operating systems.” It also suggests that you could see webOS on devices from other manufacturers.