HP places webOS in open source process

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HP places webOS in open source process

Likely to mean oblivion for the former Palm platform, despite vague promises of support from its current owner

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 12 December, 2011

For the second time this year, a promising cloud-oriented mobile OS has been placed into open source, effectively removed from contention in the increasingly big-budget platform wars. First it was the Intel/Nokia system MeeGo, now merged with another Linux-based OS, LiMO, to form Tizen. Now Hewlett-Packard's webOS is to go the same way, likely into commercial oblivion.

The OS was the main reason why HP acquired Palm, and enjoyed a brief spell as a hugely strategic platform for the firm - it was to give HP differentiation and control of its own destiny in mobile and post-PC devices; be embedded in every gadget which might connect to HP's cloud services; and be licensed to third parties, even such glittering names as Amazon.

But none of this materialized - former CEO Leo Apotheker got cold feet about his cloud vision and was subsequently ousted and new chief Meg Whitman would do no more than promise a detailed review of webOS's future. That has led to the decision to contribute the system to the open source community along with its companion application framework, ENYO. It will be available under an open source licence to anyone, and HP says it will be an "active participant and investor" in the process, without offering any details of how that might work.

In its statement, it said it would "engage the open source community to help define the charter of the project", whose "operating principles" would include speeding up development and creating a "transparent" governance model to avoid fragmentation.

However, with several Linux-based open source choices already available to device makers and developers which resist the mass market charms of Android, it is unclear how far webOS will really progress. Several OEMs were linked with webOS, on the basis that they might seek a platform they could control and which would counterbalance Google's power. But most have found other options - Samsung has its own bada, Amazon is using an increasingly differentiated Android strand, and so on. webOS does not even have a device base - since HP has already cancelled the Pre and TouchPad lines - nor an installed base in a specific segment, as MeeGo does in automotive.