HP releases WebOS into the Public Domain

I have been very interested in Palm’s WebOS, which HP purchased a little over a year ago. The operating system is quite intuitive, supports unique task-switching and notification and is very easy for software developers to work with.

HP brought out a phone and a tablet, neither of which sold very well in the crowded mobile market. HP ended up having a run on the tablet when they reduced the price to below their production cost. HP subsequently announced plans to depart from the mobile market. Since then, there have been numerous rumors about the fate of WebOS. It was suggested that Amazon might buy it for features they wanted to add to the Kindle. Facebook was also said to be considering purchasing it, although the reasoning behind such a move remained unclear to me.

In a move that has preserved many jobs, HP has released the operating system into the public domain. HP WebOS developers are working to replace portions of the operating system that were licensed from other vendors with open source code. HP will continue to support WebOS once the code has been released. HP will not be producing any hardware platforms for the OS to run on. Hopefully, other vendors will do so.

It remains to be seen if this change will simply slow the demise of WebOS or if developers and hardware vendors will adapt it. One issue is that WebOS is somewhat old at this point. It will need some work to add features to compete with iOS, Android or Windows Phone. On the positive side, WebOS already supports high resolution displays and dual-core processors, and is is  already cloud-connected.

One significant risk is that, as open source software, different groups can add incompatible features to a version of the OS. This has happened with Android and makes developing applications more challenging, as the developer has to add additional code to support different OS versions.

For the time being, WebOS will continue to be available. It remains to be seen whether it thrives or simply withers. HP has a blog where information about WebOS can be found, http://developer.palm.com/blog/.. I am hopeful that WebOS will survive.