HP Open-Sources webOS & Enyo App Framework

Hewlett-Packard announced today what it will do with webOS, after announcing in August major changes would come to webOS and it would sell its PC business (later they changed their mind). HP hasn't changed their mind about webOS, but what they are going to do with it is quite good: Hewlett-Packard is open-sourcing webOS and its Enyo application framework.

It just hit the wire a few minutes ago that HP's contributing webOS and its Enyo application framework to the open-source community.

Additionally, "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."

HP will put out webOS out "under an open source license", but which license is not stated in the press release. The purpose of open-sourcing this mobile OS is to accelerate its development while HP will continue developing and investing in the project. There is said to be "Good, transparent and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation" and that it will be a "pure open source project." Evidently HP couldn't find a good corporate suitor for this mobile platform they acquired from Palm.

This is great news for the open-source community. It will be interesting to see what happens and how this impacts other open mobile platforms. Personally I am quite fond of the webOS platform and use it with an HP TouchPad. The Phoronix Test Suite has also been supported by webOS for automated testing/benchmarking going back to the Palm days. If webOS manages to flourish as an open project, Mark's plans for Ubuntu on phones and other devices just became more challenging with those goals not set to materialize for another two years.