HP has finally made a decision about the fate of WebOS and it seems that decision does not involve killing off the OS all together. The company held an all hands meeting on Friday morning and during that meeting it was announced that WebOS would live as an open source project.
HP put out a press release following the all hands meeting addressing the future of WebOS. That release read:
"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 also noted in the release that they would continue to develop for WebOS as well, saying they would develop "Good, transparent and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation." That may have been a bit of a stab at the fragmentation of Android devices in the market today.
In addition to being committed to the WebOS platform, HP CEO Meg Witman said in an interview with The Verge that the company was going to continue to invest in tablet hardware as well. That means the TouchPad was not HP's last tablet, though Witman indicated that smartphones were unlikely.
Overall this could be very good or very bad news for WebOS as a platform. Seeing the OS go open source could mean fragmentation slowly kills the platform despite what HP has to say on the subject. The plus side to this is that HP is claiming they will maintain a stake in tablet hardware, which indicates they are going to try their best to keep the software competitive and hopefully not let fragmentation completely destroy the software.
What do you think about HP's decision to share WebOS as an open source project?
