The company will make the underlying webOS code available in open source soon

Dec 10, 2011 09:47 GMT  ·  By

webOS, the highly appealing mobile operating system that Palm made official back in 2009, is becoming open source, HP has just announced.

The platform was doomed almost from the start, as Palm did not have the necessary resources to support its development, and appeared to have been sent to the graveyard earlier this year, when HP announced that it killed off all smartphones and tablets powered by it.

However, the leading computer maker seems to have found the solution for reviving the mobile OS by making it open source.

“This morning, HP announced that webOS will be going open source with the resources of HP behind it,” a recent post on Palm’s Developer Blog reads.

“The Developer Relations team is very excited by this announcement and what it means for the future of webOS, and for you, our developer community.”

Through this move, HP hopes not only to expand the cloud-connected, scalable platform and to further enhance it, but also to be able to continue developing it for a long time.

“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,” HP said.

Of course, they did not commit to the release of new webOS hardware. In fact, they stressed that there will be no HP smartphones powered by the platform. However, other vendors might pick it up once it becomes open source, and we could see new handsets hitting shelves soon.

webOS is just what its name suggests: a mobile operating system built on web technologies. This means that there are a wide range of developers that could easily come up with applications for it.

Also, it supports multiplatform portability, and provides device manufacturers with the possibility to easily load it on multiple devices.

“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 plans on making the underlying code of webOS available as open source soon, so that developers, partners, and other manufacturers could benefit from access to it. The move is also expected to result in faster development of the platform. The company also announced that it planned on contributing ENYO, the application framework for webOS, to the community soon.