Ask HN: Should HP Open Source webOS | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should HP Open Source webOS

7 pointsoseibonsu8 comments

webOS is pretty nifty. It would be sad for it to die off completely and to lose all of its innovative features. Wouldn't everyone, including HP be better off if it was open sourced?

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Only if HP can't sell the Palm assets to someone first. That should be priority number one. If the new buyer wants to open source it let them go through the trouble of due diligence.

If webOS can't be sold, which would be surprising in this environment, then HP could donate the source to Apache or Eclipse and maybe get a write off out of it.

The obvious answer is Yes (I don't think many will answer No to this question) But who will do the support and continue development of the WebOS in case it open sourced. Also based on Java open sourcing, I can suppose that WebOS might use a lot of proprietary components and so opensourcing it will require a lot of resources.

Maybe. What I think is more likely is that someone clones the most impressive parts of Enyo (the WebOS 3 JavaScript framework) into a new web/mobile development framework that isn't tied to WebOS at all.

I'm not sure what developers would do with just the open source WebOS application code if there's no hardware - the existing WebKit doesn't seem to be optimized that well (see Enyo perf in iPad 2/Mobile Safari vs Enyo Perf on the Touchpad).

An open operating system without any sort of central authority is pointless. That's a 100% guaranteed way to kill the platform.

They should skunkworks it. Instead of punting, they should round up the HP employees who built it, form a LLC, retain an ownership stake, but give the group full autonomy to continue on in whatever fashion they think they can survive with.

This sums it up "So HP’s CEO Mr. Leo Apotheke Apotheker, if you don’t want to use WebOS in the mobile world, set it free. Let the open source community see if the old Palm OS is as good and has as much promise as so many of us thought it did"

I wonder how many people would sign a petition to support the open sourcing of WebOS.

If I where one of the purchasers of the doomed products that they terminated a little over a month after releasing I would file a class action suite on the grounds that they had to have had discussions about ending the product line before it was ever released. If they can find supporting documentation they can prove that material information was withheld that affected the purchasing decision of the consumer. This actually would be a pretty easy case to make. I would also argue that support has been dramatically affected by the fact that it is no longer a strategic offering by the corporation as such I would argue that the only remedy would be the release of webOS as an open source offering so that the implied support and future updates of the device can be restored to what was implied by industry norms. I would make the argument that the only way that I can get the support and updates that are implied in purchasing technology is for the OS to be removed from the hands of company that has shown disregard for it's obligations to do so. While it is out of the norm to be able to force a company to give away a product via a class action, I think if they argued for punitive damages in lieu of open-sourcing it, if the damages where grievous enough, HP may opt for releasing the OS over the monetary damages. IANAL but I think there is a strong case to be made and their hand could be forced on the issue.

Open Sourcing requires a lot more effort than you think. Even the JDK took a while because they included licensed components that had to be replaced.

Secondly, HP has little to gain from the effort of open sourcing it.

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