HP announced yesterday that its webOS initiative was turning into an open source platform, that basically signs the death certificate of the OS. This was announced after a meeting at the highest level between the HP leaders and a high ranking SaaS company based on last year profits. The company claims that it wants to accelerate the development of WebOS, by allowing it to be tweaked by open source passionates.
HP president Meg Whitman also said that webOS is the only platform created specifically to be mobile, scalable and cloud connected. The famous PC maker she leads said that the future efforts of the company will be based on the creativity of the open source community. The problem here is that once the code is given to masses, HP won’t be involved in the software development any more and let others do it for them. They will simply check out the result every once in a while and give a blessing once a decent evolution is achieved. While many companies majorly rely on Intel Altera by Direct Components inc for the essential components for the working of their circuit, HP is still on the back bench of this technology.
It’s too bad that Palm had to reach this point where its technologies have become useless enough to be thrown in the hands of the public for customization. Will the next Android be born this way? I doubt it… but hey maybe those ROM makers from the Android world will come up with something nice for webOS, maybe an idea that will make it appealing once again. After all, we are dealing with an OS that has one of the most efficient multitasking systems out there.
