HP’s TouchPad and Palm phones are dead, but webOS continues to enjoy some kind of existence as open-source technology. Following an initial beta release back at the end of August, Open webOS graduates to a 1.0 release today.
Announced via blog post, the new release offers some changes that the Open webOS team hopes will usher in major new capabilities for developers. As per the Open webOS team:
Our combined efforts with the community and hard work have paid off, and we are now ready to move on to the next phase together. With this release we have affirmed our commitment to meet our goals and create a vibrant open source community.
The team also notes that over 75 Open webOS components have been delivered over the past 9 months, which, thanks to today’s release, means that Open webOS can now be ported to new devices. To show off exactly how this works, Chief Architect Steve Winston has Open webOS up and running on an HP TouchSmart all-in-one PC in the video below.
Winston says that it only took “a couple of days” to port Open webOS to the PC, and it’s meant to demonstrate just how easy it is. It doesn’t look like it’s ruling super smoothly in the video, but it’s a start. Possible uses, according to Winston, includes kiosk applications in businesses like hotels, and since this can work on phones, tablets, PCs and virtually any kind of embedded computing hardware, there’s the possibility that Open webOS could become a one-size fits all solution for kiosk or customer service applications across an organization, on smartphones and tablets for front-line, traveling sales staff, and PCs for back-office management.
Is that a likely outcome at any kind of scale? Meh, probably not, but it does give you a good idea of what exactly the point is behind this whole Open webOS project for those wondering why they don’t just let it die.
To play around with Open webOS, you can grab the source code over on Github.