HP: WebOS is being opensourced

[lothar]

how would it make any difference.

if they used webOS they'd still be infinging on the same "patents" given they are not HP and dont have that IP just becuase webOS is open source unless HP contributes all of palm's IP to some free patent for everyone consortium.


webOS is dead. HP will give it to developers who of course will not do enough with it for it to be a real platform as there just aren't enough resources unless some other big company takes over the project and really supports it (and why woudl they, you have android for free already and you would risk way less. i mean if HP couldnt make webOS work, its probably a huge financial risk for anyone else to try). but in making the announcement about open sourcing webOS and not just killing it completely (its worthless they know it) they are just putting out good PR so the geek community won't hate them.

I find it disappointing how naive the geek community seems to be sometimes when companies do things for PR reasons. this announcement was a funeral. they will not put any resources into it and just let the OSS community have the code which is a nice gesture but in the end webOS as its own entity just died today. hopefuilly some of the code or ideas will live on in other products etc. but the odds of this starting some sort of revival are very small.

Isn't HP still trying to put WebOS into their printers?
When they tried selling WebOS a few months ago, part of the condition was that whoever buys it will still give HP a free license to use on their printers.
https://www.google.com/search?q=hp+...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

 

[Mopetar]

By 2013, Touchpad owners are all going to be running Ice Cream Sandwich CM9, and never give WebOS another look.

I highly doubt it. The last time I looked CM accounted for something under 1% of all Android devices based on the most recent numbers Google released. As Android continues to gain market share and the smart phone market in general grows, it's going to drop even more.

I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of people on this forum ran custom ROMs or had jailbroken iPhones, but that doesn't reflect the overall market. The only reason to expect that the Touchpad will see a higher rate of custom ROM installations is if the tech geeks bought up most of the devices, which probably isn't a bad assumption given the limited quantity and that they are the type of people to hear about that kind of deal.