Sunnyvale-based mobile phone maker Palm recently announced the launch of its open source portal, which is meant to offer developers a helpful hand in their attempts to deliver applications for the newly released webOS platform available with the company's Palm Pre handset. According to Palm, the new portal should accelerate “innovation through collaboration with the global community of open source developers.”

Those who would like to join the open source community should know that the manufacturer plans to include enforcing open source compliance policy, processes and license obligations; the establishment of an internal team to oversee open source compliance; as well as establishing open source internal training to continue to raise awareness and reinforce open source compliance within Palm.

At the same time, the phone maker says that the compliance program it has established includes using a series of commercial and Palm-developed tools that are meant to help with the compliance activities. They should feature a compliance project management tool, an open source software inventory tool, a code scanning tool, and a linkage analysis tool.

Accessing the new Palm open source portal will also enable developers to:
- Learn how to contact the open source team
- Download the various open source components we are making available along with our modifications
- Download a copy of the latest open source license file that includes a listing of open source software used, along with their respective licenses and notices.

The progress on the company's open source activities will be detailed in future articles published on the Palm Developer Network Blog. At the same time, the phone maker also announced that more information on the compliance practices would be offered in a future article on the blog. For what it's worth, Palm's move was somehow expected, due to the fact that the webOS uses open source software, and it is rather good news that the company plans to work closely with developers for applications for its platform.