Hewlett Packard has finally decided what it wants to do with the webOS platform it acquired from Palm, following its decision to end production of the TouchPad and Pre devices based thereon: it’s releasing the platform under an open source licence.
“webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable,” claimed Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer, during the announcement. “By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”
HP has indicated that it wishes to ‘engage’ the open source community in order to develop a charter for the handling of webOS, in order to encourage its continued improvement and further adoption in embedded and mobile markets.
For now, only the underlying operating system code will be provided. HP has, however, indicated that the ENYO application framework, plus additional user-space code, will be provided at a later date.
