In other words, they couldn't find a buyer willing to pay Dollar One to take it off their hands.

Hopefully people start porting to lots of phones, very quickly. It will be nice to have a decent OS on a fast phone. Palm always had either A or B. I really liked WebOS a ton, but bailed to an Evo 4G when it became apparent the Pre 3 wasn't coming to Sprint, and then wasn't going to happen at all.

As much as I dislike Android and IOS, I couldn't go on with the Pre (1) forever.

SnakeLee: One thing I know about this: every dorky linux nerd I know bought one of those $99 tablets on principle.

Not true. Some of us couldn't get our order in before stock ran out :(

SnakeLee: One thing I know about this: every dorky linux nerd I know bought one of those $99 tablets on principle.

This dorky Windows nerd will be trying to snipe one off of HP's eBay store this Sunday at 6 PM CDT if he can make it happen.

This really was the best possible outcome for the OS. I like it better than Android... the devices weren't as good but the OS itself was way more polished from day one.

Because People in power are Stupid: So crappy software becomes secret weapon against closed source tablet os.

Since OS means Open Source and also Operating System... they should call it: OSOS or OS2

Tomorrow's headline: "Microsoft interested in operating system co-development with HP."

/with a picture of Ballmer going full trollface while shaking hands with Meg Whitman.

Because People in power are Stupid: or OS2

Hm. I think I see what you did there.

Yeah, just like Linux.

xrayspx: Hopefully people start porting to lots of phones, very quickly. It will be nice to have a decent OS on a fast phone.

I have no doubt companies will be smashing down the door to spend lots of money on porting their apps over to a platform with a small user base.

Corvus: xrayspx: Hopefully people start porting to lots of phones, very quickly. It will be nice to have a decent OS on a fast phone.

I have no doubt companies will be smashing down the door to spend lots of money on porting their apps over to a platform with a small user base.



5% market share tops, but approaching 30% developer mind share. It can happen.

And people thought Android is fragmented!

Sadly, once the port of Ice Cream Sandwich is ready, many Touchpads (mine included) will be converted. The WebOS app switcher is tweaky and I like the email and calendar interfaces a lot, but the lack of apps is a hindrance. The hardware (except for the cracking issue) is lovely. If anyone grabs a tablet from the next firesale, I highly suggest getting the accessory pack, too. I love the touchstone charger stand and keyboard. The cover is nice, too.

czetie: In other words, they couldn't find a buyer willing to pay Dollar One to take it off their hands.

This unfortunately.

It's pretty much the same as Adobe giving Flex to Apache. They can now simply go "it's community supported" and wash their hands of it other than one or two random commits every so often.

Sure it could mean that another company will take it on, pump as much cash in to it as Google did Android and it'll become a viable competitor with multiple vendors offering it on their handsets & slates. Frankly though I'd take it that if you've any significant investment in WebOS related skills and haven't done so already: pull the eject lever.

sarah_t_s:
Sure it could mean that another company will take it on, pump as much cash in to it as Google did Android and it'll become a viable competitor with multiple vendors offering it on their handsets & slates.

It would be a very interesting for HTC to do so and get out from under Google's thumb.

ProfessorOhki: SnakeLee: One thing I know about this: every dorky linux nerd I know bought one of those $99 tablets on principle.

Not true. Some of us couldn't get our order in before stock ran out :(

Another firesale December 11. 99 for 16, 149 for 32, but they are refurbs this time.

dlp211: ProfessorOhki: SnakeLee: One thing I know about this: every dorky linux nerd I know bought one of those $99 tablets on principle.

Not true. Some of us couldn't get our order in before stock ran out :(

Another firesale December 11. 99 for 16, 149 for 32, but they are refurbs this time.

SILENCE KNAVE.

just get Android ported and stable on the touchpad.

Me likey. Maybe this means there will eventually be ROMS for Android phones and tablets

sinanju: sarah_t_s:
Sure it could mean that another company will take it on, pump as much cash in to it as Google did Android and it'll become a viable competitor with multiple vendors offering it on their handsets & slates.

It would be a very interesting for HTC to do so and get out from under Google's thumb.

I agree but HTC seem happy to bolt their own UI on to Android and pretty much call it done. I'm not sure if they'd want to have to shoulder development costs of, what would be to them, a brand new OS.

OFC, simply saying "it's open source" tends to imply things in peoples minds and I didn't pick up FTA what, exactly, is being OSS'd, under which license and what is 'missing' from it that'd stop you compiling it (3rd party binary blob drivers as an example). Depending on how restrictive the license is and how broken the source is could put other companies off touching it.

HeartBurnKid: Me likey. Maybe this means there will eventually be ROMS for Android phones and tablets

I know it's asking a lot, but I'm really hoping a Cyanogen sized effort takes hold. I want a "rom" that is available on virtually all devices for WebOS.

Would love to try it on my Incredible and my Nook Color.

Huzzah! WebOS is going to get some world famous UI love from the open source crowd!

/sarcasm
//I'm sure it will make a great server OS when they're done with it.

Quantumbunny:
Would love to try it on my Incredible and my Nook Color.

The things I love about the Touchpad require lots of real estate... especially the calendar. I have CM7 on a Nook and a Nexus One, given the opportunity, I would put WebOS on neither. There just isn't the space for it to look good.

sinanju: Quantumbunny:
Would love to try it on my Incredible and my Nook Color.

The things I love about the Touchpad require lots of real estate... especially the calendar. I have CM7 on a Nook and a Nexus One, given the opportunity, I would put WebOS on neither. There just isn't the space for it to look good.

Really? Like what?

As it was originally designed for the pixi and pre... and tiny little devices, it kind of surprises me to hear you say that.

We really do need two open source competitors, so this is good news.

They really should have done this before Amazon did whatever they did with Android for the Kindle Fire. If Amazon could have used WebOS for free, I think they would have preferred to do that and compete with Google instead of the weird backdoor competition they're doing with Google now.

Quantumbunny:
Really? Like what?

As it was originally designed for the pixi and pre... and tiny little devices, it kind of surprises me to hear you say that.

Well, I mentioned the Calendar (month and agenda views) and I'd put the mail client in there, too. They're beautiful on the Touchpad, but HP took advantage of the new real estate available on the tablet. I've seen they're small-screen counterparts and I don't like them.

We all know how badly open sourcing WebKit worked out.

It's only used by... Well, pretty much everyone except Microsoft.

HTC produces devices with Android and Win Phone, so I'm imagining that they could do great things with an OS that is really free.

Microsoft was able to charge device manufacturers money for using Android because Google's patent portfolio in the smart phone space was fairly non-existent. This isn't the case for the Palm patents HP now owns.

WebOS could end up the only "really" free option.

In an interview with Meg Whitman on The Verge (new window) she had this to say:

Will HP be creating any new webOS hardware?

Meg: The answer to that is yes but what I can't tell you is whether that will be in 2012 or not. But we will use webOS in new hardware, but it's just going to take us a little longer to reorganize the team in a quite different direction than we've been taking it in the past.

Are we talking printers? Or tablets and phones?

Meg: In the near term what I would imagine - and this could change, in full disclosure - is I would think tablets, I do not believe we will be in the smartphone business again.

Perhaps WebOS will rise to its potential. This news is quite exciting.

There's a lot going against WebOS. Will the carriers risk another batch of slow selling WebOS phones without a large company backing it in some way? HP seems to have all but washed their hands of it. Will any of the phone manufacturers spend the money to develop decent hardware for an open sourced version of WebOS to run on? How much shiat will be piled onto it now that there's freedom to change shiat almost at will? How much of the functionality would suffer from deeply rooted versions of Sense, Touchwiz, or Motoblur?

I have a feeling this will be one of those things that pops up on really low spec tablets with resistive screens, shiat processors, and low memory that get sold through HSN, QVC, and Walmart. There will always be a core group of staunch WebOS supporters always looking for a way to port it over to the latest and greatest Android device to have relevant hardware, but it'll eventually be a novelty, like the Microsoft Kin unless a big name decides to take another shot at making WebOS competitive. It doesn't seem to be a property that would be worth sinking money in to develop a phone that has had little interest from buyers.

jonny_q: We really do need two open source competitors, so this is good news.

They really should have done this before Amazon did whatever they did with Android for the Kindle Fire. If Amazon could have used WebOS for free, I think they would have preferred to do that and compete with Google instead of the weird backdoor competition they're doing with Google now.

Honestly, using Android would still have made more sense for the Fire. They used the underlying UI from AOSP, licensed absolutely nothing from Google, and now have a tablet that they can call their own and still (thanks to the Amazon App Store) leverage the large Android developer community.

Corvus: xrayspx: Hopefully people start porting to lots of phones, very quickly. It will be nice to have a decent OS on a fast phone.

I have no doubt companies will be smashing down the door to spend lots of money on porting their apps over to a platform with a small user base.

Why would I expect companies to do this work? Hackers hack.

LesserEvil: I guess you've never tried webOS

FWIW, webOS is much better than Android...

Pretty much... and I say this after having a day 1 release Palm Pre for more than 2 years and an HTC Evo 3D for about 4 months now. Android is ok-- much better than IOS-- but WebOS rocks them all. I'd give your right arm to run WebOS on my Evo.

Marine1: Corvus: xrayspx: Hopefully people start porting to lots of phones, very quickly. It will be nice to have a decent OS on a fast phone.

I have no doubt companies will be smashing down the door to spend lots of money on porting their apps over to a platform with a small user base.

[www.chiphazard.com image 640x659]

5% market share tops, but approaching 30% developer mind share. It can happen.

WTF are you talking about? You have a system for measuring mind share? 30% of what exactly?

xant: You have a system for measuring mind share? 30% of what exactly?

I suppose you could poll developers. Although you'd have to know the exact question being asked:
"Which mobile OS would you prefer to develop for?" is different to "Which mobile OS that uses Microsoft technologies to their fullest would you prefer to develop for?" after all.

I'm not saying that's happened just that you can, in theory, get a metric for 'mindshare' but it's very nebulous at best. But no, I've no idea where he got 30% from or what that 30% is supposed to quantify in which sector.

Marine1: Because People in power are Stupid: So crappy software becomes secret weapon against closed source tablet os.

Since OS means Open Source and also Operating System... they should call it: OSOS or OS2

Tomorrow's headline: "Microsoft interested in operating system co-development with HP."

/with a picture of Ballmer going full trollface while shaking hands with Meg Whitman.

Tomorrow?
http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/232300179/hp-microsoft-forge-four-year- c loud-pact.htm;jsessionid=iOf90y4sg-xALGyGnc0qXw**.ecappj02?cid=nl_crn

/close

BullBearMS: We all know how badly open sourcing WebKit worked out.

WebKit started out its life as open source. In fact, it's a fork of another open source project, KHTML which is used by KDE's Konqueror.

When a project goes from closed to open source, that's often -- but not always -- a sign that it's dead.

Fun Dumpster: Will the carriers risk another batch of slow selling WebOS phones without a large company backing it in some way?

Doubtful. Even with a large company behind it, Meego/Maego was DOA. It would take a miracle to bring WebOS back from the grave at this point.

HeartBurnKid: jonny_q: We really do need two open source competitors, so this is good news.

They really should have done this before Amazon did whatever they did with Android for the Kindle Fire. If Amazon could have used WebOS for free, I think they would have preferred to do that and compete with Google instead of the weird backdoor competition they're doing with Google now.

Honestly, using Android would still have made more sense for the Fire. They used the underlying UI from AOSP, licensed absolutely nothing from Google, and now have a tablet that they can call their own and still (thanks to the Amazon App Store) leverage the large Android developer community.

Google keeps Android close to the vest and will always be the main driver behind it.

WebOS has a chance to be a truely open platform. WebOS is a lot better than the last couple versions of Android.

I love my Touchpad. Well worth the $99.

I hope the Chinese knock-off community embraces it fully.

MrEricSir: BullBearMS: We all know how badly open sourcing WebKit worked out.

WebKit started out its life as open source. In fact, it's a fork of another open source project, KHTML which is used by KDE's Konqueror.

When a project goes from closed to open source, that's often -- but not always -- a sign that it's dead.

Yes, and even KDE has now abandoned KHTML in favor of WebKit.

Free software that is technically proficient along with a large and active open source community wins. WebKit proves this.

If HP uses their own enormous patent portfolio plus the patent portfolio they purchased when they bought Palm to prevent Microsoft and Apple from charging device makers fees in a way Google was unable to do, then WebOS will be the only actual free and open source option.

treesloth: LesserEvil: I guess you've never tried webOS

FWIW, webOS is much better than Android...

Pretty much... and I say this after having a day 1 release Palm Pre for more than 2 years and an HTC Evo 3D for about 4 months now. Android is ok-- much better than IOS-- but WebOS rocks them all. I'd give your right arm to run WebOS on my Evo.

Yeah that's exactly my experience, 1st gen Pre, loved it, then grudgingly to the Evo. I have an iPhone and can't stand it. The Pre was so easy to root though, the OS was very hacker friendly. I haven't even bothered rooting the Evo yet since it seems like such a headache. I want the Konami Code back.

BullBearMS: Free software that is technically proficient along with a large and active open source community wins. WebKit proves this.

But it wasn't just a bunch of hackers sitting around in their parent's basement. You can't discount Apple's involvement in making WebKit a success.

If HP uses their own enormous patent portfolio plus the patent portfolio they purchased when they bought Palm to prevent Microsoft and Apple from charging device makers fees in a way Google was unable to do, then WebOS will be the only actual free and open source option.

Thing is, so far they haven't said that they'll continue supporting WebOS in any meaningful way.

Besides, who would want to license an OS that didn't sell from a company primarily known for their hardware? Makes about as much sense as an HP iPod.

MrEricSir: Thing is, so far they haven't said that they'll continue supporting WebOS in any meaningful way.

You're simply mistaken.

HP has said they will continue development of WebOS and will be releasing future products that use it, although they are not getting back into phones.

BullBearMS: MrEricSir: Thing is, so far they haven't said that they'll continue supporting WebOS in any meaningful way.

You're simply mistaken.

HP has said they will continue development of WebOS and will be releasing future products that use it, although they are not getting back into phones.

True, I hadn't heard that particular part of the announcement -- but I wouldn't put a whole lot of faith in HP doing anything for the long run at this point. Just look at how many snap decisions every one of their many CEOs has made lately.

MrEricSir: I wouldn't put a whole lot of faith in HP doing anything for the long run at this point. Just look at how many snap decisions every one of their many CEOs has made lately.

Once they open source the code for WebOS, that decision, at least, is irrevocable.

They are likely to find, as did Apple with WebKit, that the decision to share development costs with the other major players is a good one.