News HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

[fitz]

In a widely suspected announcement, HP officially announced they are going to set webOS free into the Open Source world.

HP today announced it will contribute the webOS software to the open source community.

HP plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS. By combining the innovative webOS platform with the development power of the open source community, there is the opportunity to significantly improve applications and web services for the next generation of devices.

:source: Full HP Press Release

Soon after this, in an interview, CEO Meg Whitman breathed new life into webOS devices by stating that HP is planning on developing new tablets based off the webOS platform.

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.

:source: Full Interview on TheVerge.com