HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source
HP to enable creativity of the community to accelerate the next-generation web-centric platform — HP today announced it will contribute the webOS software to the open source community. — HP plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS.
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes a six-month limbo for webOS. After acquiring it with Palm, HP spent mid-2011 weighing whether to sell or license the platform — CEO Leo Apotheker floated licensing webOS in June, and Bloomberg reported active license talks weeks later — before killing the TouchPad hardware in August and leaving the software's fate hanging through an autumn of all-hands meetings and developer giveaways like the $150 TouchPad offer. Meg Whitman promised a decision within two weeks on November 30; today's open-source contribution is that decision.
The shape of the answer matters: rather than selling webOS outright or shelving it, HP keeps ownership while handing the code to the community, and syndicated coverage the same day (TechCrunch, Bits, ZDNet) shows the story landing widely — with Whitman signaling HP still intends to ship webOS-powered tablets in 2013.
First-order effects
- webOS developers, who had been left guessing since the August TouchPad cancellation, gain visibility into the platform's future and can now build against code they can inspect rather than a product line whose survival was uncertain.
- HP retains strategic control without carrying the full cost: it stays 'active in development and support' per its own announcement, but shifts much of the engineering burden to outside contributors.
Second-order effects
- Any prospective webOS licensee — the path HP explored in mid-2011 — now faces a different calculus: the platform is free to adopt, which undercuts any paid-licensing deal and makes ecosystem scale, not exclusivity, the draw.
- Rival mobile platforms face a new variable: an open-source, HP-backed OS gives device makers an alternative bargaining chip in platform negotiations, even if community traction takes years to matter.
Third-order effects
- The move extends the pattern of stranded mobile platforms being released to communities as a managed wind-down or low-cost option — a template other hardware vendors watching HP's outcome may follow when owned OSes outlive their devices.
- If HP does ship webOS tablets in 2013 on top of an open-source base, the industry gets a test case for whether community-developed operating systems can sustain consumer hardware — evidence that would inform how vendors treat every future orphaned platform.
The trend: Mobile OS economics are pushing hardware makers from owning proprietary platforms toward open-sourcing them as a way to cut costs while preserving optionality.