HP To Fully Open Source WebOS By September 2012

These are strange, strange days that we're living in. HP buys Palm, then basically kills it when they murdered webOS. But then, due to consumer outcries (or just guilt?), webOS is brought back into the fold, but not in a shipping product. No, HP is actually going to invest time and resources to open source webOS. Yes, really. The company this week began executing its plan to deliver an open webOS by committing to a schedule for making the platform's source code available under an open source license. HP's planning to have it all wrapped up by September.

HP also announced it is releasing version 2.0 of webOS's innovative developer tool, Enyo. Enyo 2.0 enables developers to write a single application that works across mobile devices and desktop web browsers, from the webOS, iOS and Android platforms to the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers – and more. The source code for Enyo is available today, giving the open source community immediate access to the acclaimed application framework for webOS. By contributing webOS to the open source community, HP unleashes the creativity of hardware and software developers to build a new generation of applications and devices. The webOS code will be made available under the Apache License, Version 2.0, beginning with the source code for Enyo.


What'll happen then? It's anyone's guess. With webOS on the open source market, it could be ported into just about anything, and perhaps hackers and existing companies will find a use for it in a way that HP has not. Either way, we're glad HP is doing this; it sure beats burying one of the best mobile operating systems of the past decade without so much as a funeral.