The Cell Phone Junkie

HP Friday announced plans to open source the webOS operating system.  According to HP CEO Meg Whitman:

“HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”

HP did not announce new webOS devices, but are committing to the development of the platform through open source developers.  HP will make the code of webOS available as part of an open source license.  HP will “engage the open source community to help define the charter of the open source project under a set of operating principles“, listing the following:

• 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

HP will also contribute the Enyo application framework to the open source community soon.

On the hardware side, The Verge sat down with Meg Whitman and and Marc Andreessen, who had this to say about future development:

Will HP be creating any new webOS hardware?

Meg: The answer to that is yes but what I can’t tell you is whether that will be in 2012 or not. But we will use webOS in new hardware, but it’s just going to take us a little longer to reorganize the team in a quite different direction than we’ve been taking it in the past.

Are we talking printers? Or tablets and phones?

Meg: 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.

But tablets are a real possibility?

Meg: Yes.

When pressed about smartphones, Whitman commented “I do not believe we will be in the smartphone business again.”

Press Release:

HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

HP to enable creativity of the community to accelerate the next-generation web-centric platform

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 9, 2011 – HP today announced it will contribute the webOS software to the open source community.

HP plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS. By combining the innovative webOS platform with the development power of the open source community, there is the opportunity to significantly improve applications and web services for the next generation of devices.

webOS offers a number of benefits to the entire ecosystem of web applications. For developers, applications can be easily built using standard web technologies. In addition, its single integrated stack offers multiplatform portability. For device manufacturers, it provides a single web-centric platform to run across multiple devices. As a result, the end user benefits from a fast, immersive user experience.

“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.”

HP will make the underlying code of webOS available under an open source license. Developers, partners, HP engineers and other hardware manufacturers can deliver ongoing enhancements and new versions into the marketplace.

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

HP also will contribute ENYO, the application framework for webOS, to the community in the near future along with a plan for the remaining components of the user space.

Beginning today, developers and customers are invited to provide input and suggestions at http://developer.palm.com/blog/.

Source: PreCentral