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surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Hi fellow sufferers!

Today HP announced: WebOS is going open source!

Personally I like this kind of news. But what will happen now to WebOS in the future?
In my opinion the Operation System was not the problem why it failed to date. The problem was for me mostly the lack of proper mobile hardware.

What do you think?

And where are now the differences compared to our Mer/Nemo project? We are able to develop for WebOS in Qt, too. Or not?

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

WebOS doesn't use Qt, it uses JS+CSS+HTML.

I would like to see WebOS ported to the N900 though, just to make the people over at Precentral cringe, I guess.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

I remember something (maybe I'm wrong here) about Flash for the N900 and WebOS' flash. I don't really know if it's even possible.

Anyway, good news for open source communities.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpala16 (Post 1135680)

I remember something (maybe I'm wrong here) about Flash for the N900 and WebOS' flash. I don't really know if it's even possible.

Anyway, good news for open source communities.

libflashplayer.so is not open source no matter what the platform.

Although, if you're talking about making ~~Preenv~~ Mojo/Enyo native to Maemo (think of it like this: installing libmojo just like you'd install Qt libraries), then that would be something to talk about.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Lets just hope that HP are willing to approach manufactures and offer them the opportunity to build devices for WebOS, and not just leave it to slowly die like so many other open source initiatives.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Quote:

Originally Posted by MINKIN2 (Post 1135696)

Lets just hope that HP are willing to approach manufactures and offer them the opportunity to build devices for WebOS, and not just leave it to slowly die like so many other open source initiatives.

I fear this will end up to be the outcome.

Still negativity aside it's great to see one of the best looking mobile OS's ever being turned open source. Though what i did read about this, there still seems to be some confusion on what parts will exactly be open source.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

@OP: Include the press release.

On a side note, can we send HP a cake with the Maemo.org logo on it, with the caption "WE WERE HERE FIRST, *****ES!"

Quote:

“webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable”

Quote:

HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

HP to enable creativity of the community to accelerate the next-generation web-centric platform

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 9, 2011 – 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. 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.

webOS offers a number of benefits to the entire ecosystem of web applications. For developers, applications can be easily built using standard web technologies. In addition, its single integrated stack offers multiplatform portability. For device manufacturers, it provides a single web-centric platform to run across multiple devices. As a result, the end user benefits from a fast, immersive user experience.

“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 will make the underlying code of webOS available under an open source license. Developers, partners, HP engineers and other hardware manufacturers can deliver ongoing enhancements and new versions into the marketplace.

HP will engage the open source community to help define the charter of the open source project under a set of operating principles:

The goal of the project is to accelerate the open development of the webOS platform

HP will be an active participant and investor in the project

Good, transparent and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation

Software will be provided as a pure open source project

HP also will contribute ENYO, the application framework for webOS, to the community in the near future along with a plan for the remaining components of the user space.

Beginning today, developers and customers are invited to provide input and suggestions at http://developer.palm.com/blog/.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations, including execution of growth strategies, transformation initiatives and restructuring plans; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; any statements regarding anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include macroeconomic and geopolitical trends and events; the competitive pressures faced by HP’s businesses; the development and transition of new products and services (and the enhancement of existing products and services) to meet customer needs and respond to emerging technological trends; the execution and performance of contracts by HP and its customers, suppliers and partners; the protection of HP’s intellectual property assets, including intellectual property licensed from third parties; integration and other risks associated with business combination and investment transactions; the hiring and retention of key employees; expectations and assumptions relating to the execution and timing of growth strategies, transformation initiatives and restructuring plans; the resolution of pending investigations, claims and disputes; and other risks that are described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2011 and HP’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2010. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

© 2011 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Maybe Nokia will take a hint and release the full source for Maemo.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Yeah, right. It was a very classy move from HP. I don't expect Nokia to even consider matching it.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hurrian (Post 1135674)

WebOS doesn't use Qt, it uses JS+CSS+HTML.

Ah, okay. Then I remembered this detail wrongly. But in this case, who would need Tizen? :confused:

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

port to n900!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Quote:

Originally Posted by N900L (Post 1135830)

port to n900!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No way i'm gonna switch if Maemo is clearly more complete & all i want the other way around (having Maemo on better hardware).

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Quote:

Originally Posted by lma (Post 1135724)

Yeah, right. It was a very classy move from HP. I don't expect Nokia to even consider matching it.

do you know what will be open sourced and what not?

at least I didn't found any specific info about it. and IMO one should have learned a lesson from maemo, open source and closed blobs required for running the OS in real hardware.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Quote:

Originally Posted by ossipena (Post 1135836)

do you know what will be open sourced and what not?

Not in any great detail, no. Enyo has specifically been announced in the press release, "along with a plan for the remaining components of the user space".

Personally I would be very very interested in seeing the service side code opened, so I can finally use the "cloud"y features of the OS on my terms.

Quote:

and IMO one should have learned a lesson from maemo, open source and closed blobs required for running the OS in real hardware.

Obviously things like GL drivers and such to which HP don't own the rights won't be opened. It does look like they want people to run this on real hardware (as opposed to emulators on a PC) though: they're having a new touchpad sale to give out all remaining stock, and they just released WebOS 2.2 for the Pre 2, something they have very explicitly said wouldn't happen before.

There's a lot of information missing right now, but I remain cautiously optimistic ;-)

Edit: some more info here. Read the whole thing, sounds like they really mean it.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Quote:

Are we talking printers? Or tablets and phones?

Meg: In the near term what I would imagine — and this could change, in full disclosure — is I would think tablets, I do not believe we will be in the smartphone business again.

Link to the Source

So, in this case my interest is below zero. I need a pocketable device with 3G. For a tablet I'm able to use MeeGo, Tizen, Ubuntu, Android or buy a iPad. Why would I need a additional operating system for a tablet? I use it for surfing the web and a browser is included in every model at the market.

Steve Jobs was really smart. During the announcement of the iPhone he was very modest and said even only 1% marketshare would be enought to make profit. And 1% was a doable target. If it is more it would be fine.

1% marketshare for a open source WebOS device with decent Hardware like a N9 in a N900 package sounds for me very doable. But perhaps I should had studied business economics to understand the big plan behind such decisions.

Let's move on... noting to see here. :(

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Quote:

Originally Posted by N900L (Post 1135830)

port to n900!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeahh, pleaseeeeee!!!

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Quote:

Originally Posted by don_falcone (Post 1135835)

No way i'm gonna switch if Maemo is clearly more complete & all i want the other way around (having Maemo on better hardware).

Is there any chance maemo could be booted on Pre 3? This would have better specs AND hw keyboard.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

I'm loving webOS right. About to drop android for it.

Sent from my myTouch_4G_Slide using Tapatalk

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Quote:

Originally Posted by helex (Post 1135933)

You're missing the whole point. It doesn't matter that HP isn't going to use it for phones. GREAT. There hardware wasn't fantastic anyway. It sounds like the whole thing is going open source... that makes it ALL OF OURS. The community will finally have a fully open mobile OS that will be developed in the open in the open source spirit, unlike Android. Think of what this will mean... imagine, in the future, users no longer being locked in to running a particular OS on a particular phone on a particular carrier. They can pick their hardware, then load the open source WebOS onto it! No ads, no Carrier IQ spyware, no carrier bloatware, no lockdowns, no restrictions, and just like Bryan Lunduke, formerly of The Linux Action Show, and an N900 owner, lamented on one of his last programs, no dependency on a company (like Nokia or HP) for the OS living or dying - just like Linux!

This is incredible, amazing, wonderful, joyous news! Back when Nokia announced the switch to WP7 I suggested WebOS was the remaining viable Linux-based solution... things looked grim when Apotheker punted with the tablet so it could fail and he could try to convert the company to a services firm, but Whitman has turned things around! Nothing to see there? It's the dream of Maemo/Moblin/MeeGo/Tizen finally going to realized in WebOS! It's going to be the world's first and only non-corporate-controlled mobile OS that's also real Linux. I don't know how much more amazing you need news to be before you declare there's something to see.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

There are still a few possibler roadblocks:

Device drivers
Even if they release source of the whole OS, it is unlikely they will release source for all of the device drivers as its often provided by third party hardware vendors. Even if they did the very unlikely and did release the driver source code, it would cover just the current WebOS devices - porting to other devices would still be hindered by missing drivers.

GUI Toolkit compatibility
WebOS uses Mojo and Enyo for most of the apps - both is html & javascript based and will be likely opensourced. there is also SDL (even with PyGame support !). Other than that there is currently no support for other toolkits like Qt, GTK, Clutter, EFL, which might be putting off some developers that don't want to learn yet another technology usable only on a single platform.

Still, this this one can be probably solved by the community once the source is released, but might be hampered a bit by the fact that WebOS works directly with the framebuffer, without running an Xserver.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

It will be _very_ interesting if the community (which one is insignificant, but i suppose it won't come from a certain site) will pull off to run "it" on just one other ARM device - fully.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Quote:

Originally Posted by MartinK (Post 1143235)

Since it's using a Linux kernel, don't we already have most of the drivers necessary? Shouldn't it be able to run on anything that can already run Android?

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

The most interesting part of WebOS is and will be Enyo, the Html5+JS+CSS UI framework.

Seeing that thing change the ui layout from 1 pane to 3 pane simply by having the size of the browser window change is more impressive than anything cooked up by Apple or Google so far (tho Android Fragments UI lib may be close).

Basically, it can potentially go from phone/pmp/pda/tablet to desktop with simply a change of output. And adapt to the new screen area as it happens.

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

Quote:

Originally Posted by tso (Post 1144063)

The most interesting part of WebOS is and will be Enyo, the Html5+JS+CSS UI framework.

...at the same time, being a part that make it most miserably limited, unfortunately. UI of OS being a big browser - it can bring epic headache, if You're trying to port/write something advanced. HTML and java (brrrr!) lovers may say whatever they want, it is *not*˛real framework.

Even still, sucking some useful parts from it, or even porting - if we could find enough knowledgeable and interested (which, in case of Big Bad HTML5 browser "desktop enviroment", sounds almost like oxy*****) people - it to N900 would be indeed interesting.

Cruel joke - maybe someone is willing to run Mr. Big Browser (Enyo) under chroot enviroment? :)

/Estel

Re: surprisingly: WebOS is going open source

No way..., LG is picking up open-webOS for their TV's :D
http://www.webosnation.com/gram-work...os-tv#comments

This is good news for our spiritual lost OS cousin