[DC LoCo] HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

[Michael Haney]

(NOTE: Repost due to absence of a "reply-to:". Do the courteous thing
and add this please for those who need it for their email clients. No
excuses, please, just do the right thing for those who need it. Thank
you. Thus ends my "polite" rant.)

On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 10:36 AM, Kevin Cole <dc.loco at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 10, 2011 9:42 AM, "Ken Stailey" <kstailey at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> Is it worth supporting HP's efforts?  If it is what would be the best way
>> to do it?
>>
>> It's important to look at the obstacles too in order to understand what
>> must be overcome.
>>
>> http://www.zdnet.com/news/webos-is-doomed-to-fail/6332869
>
> My feeling is that each time a well-known organization -- commercial,
> governmental, educational or other) days "We're releasing X as open source"
> it increases the general public's awareness of open source, regardless of
> the success of the venture -- provided that there remain a few well-known
> success stories. If ALL open source ventures failed then announcing you've
> gone that route is always going to sound like a last ditch effort.
>
> I'm also thinking cross-pollination: Depending upon just how "open", it's
> possible for the best ideas from a newly opened product to better inform
> other projects. There some crosstalk betwixt the *BSD distros and Linux
> distros, no?
>
> And of course there are the "I'm not dead yet. I feel happy" OS projects,
> that like the South, hope to rise again and have loyal supporters. I
> periodically download Haiku. I haven't looked at the GNU Hurd recently but
> wish them well too. (No particular interest in ReactOS though.) I wish IBM
> had released OS/2 as an open source project years ago when they gave up on
> it. Lots of other lesser-known OS's out there too. (Scout and Nemesis come
> to mind.)
>
> So, I don't know how to support webOS but I do celebrate and applaud it at
> least a little.
>

There is a lot that could be done. Its a very mature mobile OS,
perhaps more so than Android and iOS. Its got a lot of potential and
it would be a shame if it was released and nobody did anything with
it. I think WebOS still has a lot to offer. Developing standard apps
for it is easy (XML, CSS, JavaScript), and you can develop binary apps
that use OpenGL ES. I wouldn't be surprised if new FOSS community ROMs
for the Touchpad and other well-known Android tablets are released in
the coming months.

An x86 port would also be nice

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking
of morality by religion." ~ Arthur C. Clarke
"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and
politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place
for it in the endeavor of science. " ~ Carl Sagan

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