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It was a long time coming, but finally HP had made up its mind about what to do with WebOS. A bit on the surprising side of things, they had decided to make it open source and set it free in the world. Saying what you want about what the thinking behind this might have been, we are now left with a platform that never really caught on, becoming possibly the most open platform available.

This could, in theory, be a good thing.

Of course there are a number of problems with this as well. One of the more pressing is "just where the heck are we supposed to run this?". Running it in a virtual machine will only get you so far and there is not exactly an abundance of available hardware which run WebOS already. HP has mumbled something about perhaps building some more TouchPads, you know, the tablet computer that was on the market for about two months before being discontinued.

Good thing about having the source code though, is that we can do the necessary changes and make it run on other hardware. Assuming that there is sufficient interest in making WebOS run on a given device or reference platform, crafty individuals can surely make it reality before too long. We have seen this happen in the past, where clever people have managed to make Android run on iPhones, so it's far from unrealistic to see WebOS be subjected to a similar process.

Another interesting question is how this matter will be dealt with in legal terms. There are a large number of patents currently owned by HP, which came with the purchase of Palm, that cover various portions of WebOS and its functions. Since the source code will be available to all, and someone might make a device using some of said source code at its core, what action would HP take? Would they use the legal backing of a large patent portfolio to crush anyone who builds a device, slaps WebOS on it and sells it for profit? Will we only be allowed to use the source code as is, not being allowed to turn it into a functional product that we can sell?

What puzzles me is that HP will apparently still be forking over money towards the development of WebOS. It could be that they still see it as an alternative that they could use in the future, on devices that do not yet exist except in imagination or on the drawing board. Perhaps the thinking was to open source WebOS, get a lot of attention and clever people from all over the world to start contributing to it, and somewhere down the line when there are lots of improvements made take the code-base and start building products around it again. Crazy? Just a little. But not entirely unthinkable, specially considering the track record of HP in the last couple of years.

Attracting developers to WebOS is the real nut to crack. While the open sourcing of it will undoubtedly attract a lot of attention from a lot of programmers, that does not mean that we will have an abundance of apps to run on it, nor that it will get anywhere else than it is today. Both Palm and HP have tried and not really succeeded in getting too many people interested in developing for WebOS. Fortunately the ones who did develop or perhaps even still do, have managed to at least secure the main areas of necessary apps for any platform.

Assuming that some hardware manufacturer takes a great interest in WebOS and starts building devices that will run it from factory, manages to attract some developers to the platform and get the apps that cover 80% of most peoples needs, it's possible that WebOS does have a future. I have a hard time seeing it catch on in the mainstream unless devices come with it as the default operating system and that there are the most necessary apps available for it. Heck, I see it not even catching on in the nerdy niche unless there is some dedicated hardware to run on!

The foundation is solid and there is a lot of clever design in WebOS. It makes me quite sad to see such a great opportunity be squandered and now tossed out the window to a uncertain future, at best. The code-base might very well come to great use in other projects and some great ideas might lead to awesome developments elsewhere, but WebOS as it is in itself is quite doubtful right now. I would really hate to see it get chucked on the pile of forgotten technology in the not too distant future.

Robert Falck

Robert is a freelance tech journalist from Sweden. You can follow his posts here on Bagel Tech and on his site streakmachine.com or you can follow him on twitter @streakmachine.

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Robert Falck

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