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HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

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Re: HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

#91

Post by freehunter »

hugoroy wrote: post #87
freehunter wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There certainly is. The source code is free and open, but the license to distribute your changes for money is not. There are many licenses like this, especially when copyrights are involved.

Well, obviously you haven't understood what free software is http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

There are other licenses besides the GPL. And you can even make your own license. It's not at all uncommon for open source projects to have a "not for profit" clause attached to their copyright.

Re: HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

#92

Post by [deleted] »

masklinn wrote: post #79
rbanffy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And support two different software stacks? I don't think many will.

Uh... they already do. HTC has Android and W7P devices. And they released WiMo phones as late as 2010. They even released two BrewMP phones early this year. Samsung also maintains both an Android stack and their in-house bada. Nokia has WP7 and Symbian (which is itself split into three branches/lines: ^1, ^2 and ^3)

[deleted]

Re: HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

#93

Post by rbanffy »

masklinn wrote: post #79
rbanffy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And support two different software stacks? I don't think many will.

Uh... they already do. HTC has Android and W7P devices. And they released WiMo phones as late as 2010. They even released two BrewMP phones early this year. Samsung also maintains both an Android stack and their in-house bada. Nokia has WP7 and Symbian (which is itself split into three branches/lines: ^1, ^2 and ^3)

Microsoft is probably paying for that, even if it's only by reducing their Android extortion fees.

Re: HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

#94

Post by peterb »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #63
peterb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't Google embrace WebOS? Their business is advertising and this will be as good a platform as any.

But they have their own platform which they exercise more control over. They would have to work with individual vendors to get full Google Apps support natively on WebOS devices. Why would they embrace that and do extra work when they can continue to push their own effort?

They would get the same benefit at a lower cost. They want their apps (& advertising and data collection) to be ubiquitous.

Re: HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

#95

Post by siglesias »

w33ble wrote: post #88
siglesias wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is worth the tens of millions, if not hundreds, that they would have received for selling it?

Selling it to who, exactly?

Word on the street was Facebook (http://zd.net/psW2NP) and Amazon (http://bit.ly/uSFTVz) were interested.

Re: HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

#96

Post by hugoroy »

freehunter wrote: post #91
hugoroy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, obviously you haven't understood what free software is http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

There are other licenses besides the GPL. And you can even make your own license. It's not at all uncommon for open source projects to have a "not for profit" clause attached to their copyright.

I did not point you to the definition of copyleft or the definition of GPL, but to the definition of Free Software. If you read the definition of "Open Source" by OSI, or the DFSG by Debian, they're very similar and clear: the (royalty-free) license includes the right to make derivative work and publish/distribute the modifications.

None of the definitions above include "not for profit" clause as valid. If you have not for profit clause or non commercial or alike, it's NOT free software or "open source". (It's "freeware" or "shareware" or whatever.)

If you make your own license with such a clause, no one will consider it free or "open source." You can call it that way, but you'll just look foolish believe me.

Re: HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

#97

Post by shmerl »

megaduck wrote: post #12

This is fantastic news. WebOS has always been full of great ideas, but held back by shaky underpinnings. It's like the inverse of most open-source projects. Great UI, not-so-hot implementation. There's a lot of folks (myself included) that would have been happy to jump in and assist, but couldn't due to the closed-source nature of the platform. The real prize, however, is Enyo. It's a great Javascript framework, and…

If you are interested in assisting an open source mobile project, why not to give a hand to Mer and Nemo Mobile?

http://merproject.org/

http://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Nemo

Re: HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

#98

Post by nailer »

masklinn wrote: post #69
notauser wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they had done this before Nokia bought in to Windows Phone 7 then we might actually have seen a great user interface on Nokia's excellent hardware. Maybe RIM could adopt it instead? They could really use a better UI, plus a platform that actually scales well to tablets. Plus they have a large enough install base that once they get rid of their disastrous programming environment developers might actually start writ…

RIM has already settled on QNX for its next-generation OS (their tablet runs on it), and I think they just don't have the software/UI chops to handle it either way. I can see WebOS being concurrence/counterbalance to Android and W7P (mostly Android) for other phonemakers than Samsung (who already has bada)

QNX is the underlying RTOS. Application UI is done in Adobe AIR, which is a dead platform. JS/HTML5 on top of QNX would capitalize on their strengths (more responsiveness over Android) and patch over their weaknesses.

Re: HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

#99

Post by jpxxx »

mikecane wrote: post #86
mikecane wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google gets Google Search on devices. And HP will get ... oops. A piece is missing here.

I figured out the piece: the webOS App Catalog. Keep it going. Future profit justifies webOS continued development.

I don't think there's remotely enough money in apps to justify future development. This OS will need hundreds of millions of dollars in development to stay competitive and it's not starting with a userbase of any real size.

Re: HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

#100

Post by runjake »

agentgt wrote: post #64

Anybody have a guide on how one might make custom phone using webos? I asked just a while ago on SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8450744/resources-on-how-... (I just know my karma is going to get trashed for cross posting)

Your best bet would be to find an existing (probably Qualcomm MSM) ARM-based Android phone with supported hardware drivers and an unlocked bootloader that you really like, and port WebOS to that. Porting WebOS to such devices has been accomplished to small extents in the past by hackers on xda-developers.com.

Here's one such example reported on today: http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/9/2624350/webos-hacked-toget...

As you likely don't have the fab facilities, any phone you'd build from off the shelf parts would resemble the lunchbox-sized cell phones of the 80s.

I built one several years back with a Gumstix board and a GSM module from (I believe) Sparkfun.com. Though it only did SMS and Data, no voice (wasn't interested).

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