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HP to open-source webOS

[Posted December 9, 2011 by corbet]

HP has announced that it will contribute webOS to the open source community. "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." Details beyond that are scarce at the moment.
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thank you hp

Posted Dec 9, 2011 20:51 UTC (Fri) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link]

someone will do something with it

HP to open-source webOS

Posted Dec 9, 2011 21:23 UTC (Fri) by bjbvax (guest, #81441) [Link]

I wonder if they will include the driver source for the existing hardware (like PRE3 and Touchpad) in the code release.

Without the drivers it will be tough to use this to update the existing devices.

Might also give the people porting Android some help on the driver side.

HP to open-source webOS

Posted Dec 9, 2011 21:37 UTC (Fri) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]

I think I saw somewhere that they intend to keep the related patents.

Does anyone know what license they intent to use?

HP to open-source webOS

Posted Dec 10, 2011 0:12 UTC (Sat) by savs (guest, #4957) [Link] (7 responses)

Some background on the reasons why HP had to do this, and why it might work: WebOS Open Source. I agree license will be critical.

HP to open-source webOS

Posted Dec 10, 2011 6:04 UTC (Sat) by wesmo (guest, #50706) [Link] (6 responses)

An interview with Meg Whitman further details HP's plans http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/9/2624209/meg-whitman-mar...

HP to open-source webOS

Posted Dec 10, 2011 12:53 UTC (Sat) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (5 responses)

So, apparently HP will keep 600 employees in a webOS foundation and keep developing it, with roadmaps and everything. But what's in it for them, when they've ceased all hardware development? I don't get it.

It's going to be very interesting to see how this develops, and obviously how it affects Tizen/Meego. Mobile Linux apart from Android has been somewhat of a disappointment so far but I think there should be room for a third player in the smartphone space and anything could still happen.

HP to open-source webOS

Posted Dec 10, 2011 13:14 UTC (Sat) by andreasb (guest, #80258) [Link] (1 responses)

As you can read in the interview, HP might create new WebOS hardware again:

> In the near term what I would imagine — and this could change, in full disclosure — is I would think tablets, I do not believe we will be in the smartphone business again.

HP to open-source webOS

Posted Dec 10, 2011 14:34 UTC (Sat) by danielpf (guest, #4723) [Link]

HP is interested by printers in particular.

HP to open-source webOS

Posted Dec 10, 2011 14:06 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> But what's in it for them, when they've ceased all hardware development? I don't get it.

Is most of the WebOS codebase that tightly linked to specific hardware?

HP to open-source webOS

Posted Dec 10, 2011 16:55 UTC (Sat) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link]

> It's going to be very interesting to see how this develops, and obviously how it affects Tizen/Meego

And B2G. We will have three fully open mobile OSes, each using the web platform as a basis, either partly (WebOS) or entirely (B2G) or somewhere in the middle (Tizen), and all are of course Linux-based.

HP to open-source webOS

Posted Dec 11, 2011 10:30 UTC (Sun) by kragilkragil2 (guest, #76172) [Link]

Well, despite what peoples first thought might be it could make good business sense _IF_ they get any traction.

Ways to monetize:

- build hardware again
- have the biggest/best app store (30% cut)
- protect OEMs from Apple and MS (for a small per device fee)
- make a deal with Amazon/whoever for content(%cut for books, mp3s, movies etc)
- some things I haven't thought of yet

And sure the OEMs could try to do all these things themselves .. but I doubt they want to. They will gladly buy the package as long as it's less expensive than what they have to pay for Android and Windows Mobile.
My guess also is that they will choose LGPL and not Apache.

It might work and provide revenue for a long time or they could have gone the Access(BeOS) route, which would have only entailed sunk cost. Which one would you have chosen?

webOS security

Posted Dec 10, 2011 15:38 UTC (Sat) by niklam (guest, #64765) [Link] (2 responses)

I've seen it said in the press that webOS's reliance on javascript and HTML5 for its apps makes it inherently less secure than other mobile platforms.

Given that the other platforms also seem to be pretty web-oriented, is there much truth to this?

webOS security

Posted Dec 11, 2011 10:17 UTC (Sun) by juliank (guest, #45896) [Link] (1 responses)

It probably makes it more secure, as you have some amount of sandboxing.

webOS security

Posted Dec 12, 2011 7:47 UTC (Mon) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]

That sandboxing is not unique to webos. For instance, android would run application code sandboxed in the dalvik environment (typically), and this is sandboxed another time by the security model where each application has its own unix uid. You could also write parts of the application in html5, which switches the dalvik sandbox to the browser's sandbox.


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