HP: To Save The webOS Dev Community, Open-Source Enyo Now

"...one day your washing machine, stove, or even car infotainment system will run on webOS"[1]<p>If this is truly the direction they're heading then webOS is dead to me anyhow. Any further courting of developers is just salt in the wound.<p>edit: Don't get me wrong, I'm all for open sourcing Enyo and webOS, I just get the complete opposite vibe from HP's actions this week. They've basically said "screw you" both to die hard consumers and developers of the webOS platform.<p>[1] <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/16/hp-looking-to-appliances-autos-to-grow-and-save-webos/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/16/hp-looking-to-appliances-au...</a>

Open souce isn't the only possibility.<p>I think HP should skunkworks it. Round up all the engineers who developed the platform, form an independent LLC, retain an equity stake, and let them proceed with full autonomy.<p>Tablet and smartphone hardware is going to get so dirt cheap in just a few years, that they'll probably be able to outsource all the hardware and run the operation like a scrappy startup.

In case people were wondering what Enyo is, it's HP/Palm's Framework for building WebOS apps (or generally mobile apps using HTML).

Guys... The idiot who killed WebOS came from SAP. If you think Microsoft is evil, they are 10 times worse.<p>&#62; Release Enyo under a liberal open source license (Apache, MIT, etc)<p>Why not GPL? That would ensure no competing platform could grab it and run.

Also, if you're feeling generous, open-source webOS too please? :)

I have to say that I was really impressed by the Netflix and Mail demos in this talk.<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsZX2dJW5Ss" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsZX2dJW5Ss</a><p>Assuming the speed was there, and it will be as hardware improves, WebOS could take over as a cross-platform rapid development environment.<p>If this was open-sourced and made to look platform native on the iPad, I would use it for sure.

Please, please do this HP. WebOS is really impressive in terms of technologies in my opinion. You can build entire Enyo apps in your browser, add a few hooks for WebOS services, and you're done. It's crazy easy, and Enyo makes it equally easy to have one app that works well on mobile, tablet and desktop devices. It's a shame to see HP pull the rug out from under it, but I'm really hoping they open source Enyo or better webOS.

Meh, I would just be fine with them allowing it on other platforms. Don't really care how they license it to make that happen.