HP makes webOS immortal

After several stumbles, HP finally makes the right call and releases webOS to the open-source community—so now what?

So in the end, HP finally made an actual decision—one that will apparently stick this time—and made webOS open-source, which is what I had hoped for all along. Combine this with HP's discontinuation of its own iPAQ line, and it's pretty clear HP wants absolutely nothing to do with phones. Never mind that it just purchased Palm last year (as in 2010) for $1.2 billion.

Nonetheless, open-source webOS is cause for celebration, at least for the enthusiast, developer, and phone hacker crowd. Now the OS can live forever in the world of tweakers, free software fans, and possibly even in actual products. But once the initial euphoria dies down, we're left with an important question: Now what? The path forward is anything but clear.

I'm not even a huge open-source advocate. I'll always cheer for Linux and enjoy trying out the latest distro whenever I can, but I default back to Windows or Mac OS X for day-to-day work (mostly because I have to, with all the software I usually run). On mobile devices, open-source is even more complicated, because the carriers are involved, and because it's more dependent on specific hardware.

Challenges Lie Ahead

Plus, webOS is already old. Age by itself isn't necessarily a problem with an OS. I don't see anyone calling for the immediate extinction of 10-year-old Mac OS X or 40-year-old UNIX, for example, and webOS has already seen two major updates over the past two years. WebOS doesn't look old, either; while it's now familiar, at least to phone geeks and current and former owners, it's still attractive and feels fresh.

Instead, the age problem manifests in more insidious ways, such as in supporting LTE, or newer HTML5 code. As HP's new CEO Meg Whitman said in a statement, webOS is already cloud-connected and scalable. It also already works with higher-resolution screens, dual-core processors, and mobile hotspot modes (none of which Windows Phone 7.5 supports, incidentally). HP has pledged to support it strongly going forward, but as it ages further, it could become an issue. I've also yet to see a single webOS-powered device be truly fast; all of them felt sluggish at least on occasion, if not all the time.

There's also the problem of forked development: When disparate groups of programmers create new, distinct versions of the OS with different feature sets, they're no longer directly compatible with the existing "official" code. This has already happened to Android; it has made it tough for developers to write and QA third-party apps, and it frustrates device owners who can't get new OS features in a timely manner. (On tablets at least, the latter shouldn't be a problem, because the carriers won't necessarily be involved). Besides, Android is doing just fine lately.

A Bright Future, Albeit With Obstacles

As a result, I'm optimistic. I believe this is the best outcome for the platform. It's clearly better than the alternatives, which were axing it altogether but holding the rights to the code, or HP releasing occasional new products that weren't competitive enough, thanks to a lack of resources from within the company. Plus, it guarantees webOS will live on at least in enthusiast circles, if not in brand new products (although as Linux shows time and again, don't ever rule that out, either).

As we saw earlier this year, many people jumped at the opportunity to score inexpensive $99 and $149 TouchPads on closeout, for all sorts of reasons. If developers are ever return to the platform again, they'll need enough incentive for their efforts to pay off. Free open-source contributions only go so far, and you're not going to make money on a $3 app if you hire a six-person development team for six months and only end up selling 200 copies to the most rabid of webOS enthusiasts. Get lots more hardware out there at low prices, with a usable, powerful OS on it, and it won't be a problem.

Still, this is by no means a fait accompli. One look at Nokia's backyard dumpster full of discarded operating systems shows that maintaining an open-source community for mobile devices is difficult, if not impossible. Symbian, Maemo, Moblin, and MeeGo are all essentially dead, at least as far as the U.S. market is concerned. Opinions on webOS's release to the open-source community already range from enthusiasm (like I have) to the feeling that it really does mark the end.

As Phone Scoop's Eric Zeman tweeted, it's the most honorable thing HP could have done. Here's hoping people figure out how to make it into something truly great.

What do you think? Will things be different this time around, or will webOS remain out of the mainstream for good? Let us know in the comments below.