HP Retains webOS As Open Source

WebOS is the operating system that was launched and then rapidly abandoned by HP. The company surprised us all on Friday by announcing that webOS would be conserved and opened to developers.

The webOS operating system was full of promise and in 2010, HP bought Palm, hoping to benefit from its success. When webOS was launched HP talked it up a great deal and plans were made to roll the OS out across all HP devices. What's more, we liked it very much when we tested the HP TouchPad tablet, though we felt the tablet wasn't up to the standards set by the OS.
In August HP announced it was abandoning webOS as well as potentially some or all of its PC activity.

Just when we believed the operating system had been well and truly consigned to history, HP has announced that webOS is becoming an open source OS. HP wants to continue to support its OS and participate in its development at the same time as opening up the source code to developers. Moreover, HP seems to believe that webOS could benefit from improvements introduced by the developer community, adding value to future product generations. Are we to expect new HP tablets running on webOS?

This is what first came to mind and, though not hugely expansive, Meg Whitman, HP CEO, and Marc Andreessen, member of the executive committee, confirmed this in an interview with The Verge. It looks as if HP will be bringing out one or several new tablets, though probably not any smartphones. No dates have yet been given and they may come in 2012 or later. HP is in the midst of restructuring and according to Meg Whitman, a team will be specifically assigned to webOS.

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