HP WebOS To Be Open Source, Likely Run on HP Tablets

Hewlett-Packard has announced that it will contribute its WebOS mobile operating system to the open-source developer community and likely release tablets running the platform sometime in the future.

The announcement follows speculation that HP would try to sell the OS, which it purchased from Palm in April 2010 for $1.2 billion, and an August statement from then-CEO Leo Apotheker that HP was evaluating how to "best extract value of out of WebOS." (CP: HP to cut WebOS, mobile business losses, hightail it to safer (enterprise) ground). In September, Meg Whitman replaced Apotheker, and in November Whitman said she would take a few more weeks to decide what to do with WebOS, wanting to make "the right decision, not the fast decision."

“WebOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable,” Whitman said in a Dec. 9 statement. “By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”

HP said the charter of its "open source project" will be defined by four operating principles: that the project will accelerate the platform's open development; that HP will be an investor and "active participant" in the project; that the software will be provided as a "pure, open source project," and that (they're looking at you, Android) "good, transparent and inclusive governance" will be enforced to avoid fragmentation.

Some employees in the HP WebOS division may be let go, but a core group will be kept in place. Whitman told The Verge that an exact organizational structure has yet to be determined, but that HP had looked at Mozilla, Hadoop and Red Hat for inspiration and is still thinking it through.

Whitman also told The Verge: "We will use webOS in new hardware, but it's just going to take us a little longer to reorganize the team in a quite different direction than we've been taking it in the past." Tablets, she added, will likely be said hardware. "I do not believe we will be in the smartphone business again."

In an interview with All Things D, she suggested 2013 was a more realistic possibility for such hardware.

"In 2012, as you know, we’re bringing two Windows 8 tablets to the market, we’re excited about that, we’re going to be working with [Microsoft] constructively, but there may be an opportunity in 2013 to think of a different device, maybe come back to tablets," she said. "[But] ... in all likelihood, not in 2012. The 2012 road map is already done."

In August, HP CFO Catherine Lesjak, during an earnings call, described the decision to purchase WebOS from Palm.

"Our intention was to solidify WebOS as the clear number two platform for tablets," she said. "But with such a young ecosystem and poorly received hardware, we were unable to achieve our target."

As a new open-source competitor to Google's Android, on strict instructions to avoid fragmentation — as has happened to Android, to considerable criticism — could WebOS eventually hit its intended target?