How HP and Open Source Can Save WebOS 86
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the save-the-day dept.
from the save-the-day dept.
snydeq writes "If HP wants a future for struggling WebOS, it must invest in the platform, not abandon it, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister. 'It seems HP may only be truly committed to the platform if it can offload the cost of developing and maintaining it. Yet if that's what HP hopes to achieve by opening the WebOS source, it's bound to be disappointed.' Instead, HP should dedicate its own developer resources and 'release as much code as possible under an Apache, BSD, or similarly permissive license. Dual licensing under the GPL might leave HP with more opportunities to monetize the platform, but it won't garner as much interest from hardware makers, who are what WebOS needs most.'"
Time versus money (Score:5, Insightful)
So stop telling companies that open source is some magical answer to outsource the development process. It's not. People have lots of things to do, and apart from some basement dwellers, don't have time. In this world time is often even more important than money, especially if you're good at something. So open source tries to make free what people have (money) but they away their most precious thing, time. That's backwards thinking.
Yup (Score:3, Insightful)
100% agree! When I was ready for a new phone a year or 2 ago, I went into my sprint store and looked around. First I got the Pixi, but I loved WebOS so much that I went in and exchanged soon enough so I could get the Pre. A truly amazing experience. True multitasking and there was a small community of people hacking the hell out of their Pre's. That's the awesome thing with WebOS, it's SOOO easily customizable! Within that day I was making boot splash screens and new app icons, along with slightly overclocking the processor. But then I soon realized that the hardware was seriously lacking and even worse, so was the community. I ended up taking it back to get an Android, because I really only saw room for iOS and Android. I was a little disappointed that customizing the android (hero) wasn't as simple as WebOS, but I soon learned the ins and outs. Fast forward a couple of years later, and I have TONS of Android phone choices with AMAZING specs. Currently I have an Samsung Epic 4g. The processor is overclocked to 4.3ghz and I have many custom rom choices. I'd love to see WebOS come onto better hardware, and see WAAAY more apps dev'd for it, but I'm not sure that will happen.
just move on (Score:3, Insightful)
I loved the WebOS UI and I'm sad to see it the platform go, but really at this point, people should get a clue and move on. WebOS is dead. You can play with the existing builds as much as you want but HP has proven time and again that they don't give a damn about the platform. If they did they wouldn't have scuttled the thing and gotten rid of it.
Sweet dreams are nice but they're only that: dreams. WebOS isn't coming back, folks. Get on with the program.
Nothing can change that tablets are mostly useless (Score:1, Insightful)
It doesn't matter what HP, or anyone else, does. Nothing can change that tablets just aren't very useful devices for the general public. Sure, there are very small niches where they can be marginally useful, but otherwise they're a temporary fad.
Tablets are in that sweet spot of uselessness between smart phones and netbooks. You get all of the drawbacks of smart phones and netbooks, without the benefits of either.
Sure, Apple has sold millions of tablets. But it should be telling that they're the only ones who have been able to achieve such sales levels. This didn't happen because tablets are useful. Rather, it happened because Apple is more like a religion, where its followers will consume absolutely anything it spews out. HP, RIM, and other companies just don't have consumers with such a religious devotion, thus they can't as easily sell them useless and unnecessary devices, and thus post far, far lower sales numbers.
What goes on with WebOS is irrelevant, given that tablets themselves often get very little use after the novelty wears off. It doesn't matter if your tablet runs open source software if that tablet sits on a bookshelf collecting dust and otherwise remaining completely unused.
Re:Time versus money (Score:5, Insightful)
You may need corporate backing to advance the project particularly far, and get some high quality polishing done, however OSS can still add a lot of developer effort. It's not a cure-all, but it can be a nice assist depending on the project.
Re:WebOS matters why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing can change that tablets are mostly usel (Score:5, Insightful)
If other people's actions are irrational, then you're spared the difficulty of revising your worldview to accomodate them. It's a safe course, but an intellectually puny one.
Unreasonable expectations. (Score:5, Insightful)
HP gave WebOS cement galoshes. It is basically abandonware now.
Don't expect any help from HP for any plans for the survival of WebOS. Any plans that depend on that are doomed to fail.
--
BMO
Count me against it. (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt HP is going to dump it on a git server and forget about it. They are going to continue to do with it what they want to do with it; that being the mysterious purpose they are wanting a buyer to give them a low cost license to use it. Opening it up to the OSS community will give people who find it interesting to port it to different hardware. There is no shortage of people out there rooting devices to put something that interests them on the device. Having a proprietary version hasn't helped Nokia sell interest in QT. If anything it has had a negative effect. There are those that worry about Nokia getting sold to Microsoft. After seeing what happened with Sun getting purchased by Oracle, I think the OSS community would be more hesitant if it were duel licensed.
It doesn't matter if it is commercially backed (Score:2, Insightful)
There are plenty of powerful open source projects that are not backed by corporations. Eigenbase existed before LucidEra and DynamoBI. Ingres started out as a community driven project, went commercial, and Postgres took over as the community-led version. Not only is it still around, but it is probably a few orders of magnitude more popular than Ingres now. Debian, Arch, KDE, and anything from the GNU project.
It doesn't matter one bit whether HP continues to develop WebOS. Android, while being developed quite well, is not thriving because it is open source. It is thriving because it is free. The idea that they can drop it and let a community take over is bullshit because community projects are led by people who use the software. You might think that there are tons of people that use Android, but really, the phone manufacturers are the true user-base of Android. They are the ones that put the finishing (copywrited) design on the OS, lock it down, install the uninstallable shit programs, and refuse to give updates. Why would a community every get involved in that?
Android will continue to thrive, but only because google is developing it and monetizing it. WebOS does not have a way for HP to monetize, and the phone manufacturers have already sunk their development into Android. It doesn't stand a chance.
why wait till Android is almost ready on TouchPad? (Score:3, Insightful)
Many of the OSS people they hope to attract are already busy porting Android to the TouchPad. By waiting till Android is nearing a usable release to open source WebOS they've lost those devs.
The hardware is appealing but the software EOL, the replacement already arriving and no-one seems very interested in any WebOS device that's not in a fire sale. Too little, too late.
It's all about the apps, or lack thereof (Score:5, Insightful)
I love WebOS. Between the excellent multitasking implementation, unobtrusive notifications, ease of rooting, excellent homebrew support, it's great. To me it just feels like a refined, excellent operating system for phones and tablets. That being said, as soon as I unboxed the pair of TouchPads I purchased for my wife and I, the first thing I did was install CyanogenMod on the pair, despite it being an alpha build.
Why?
Apps.
Nook app? Android has it, WebOS doesn't.
Netflix? Android has it, WebOS doesn't.
Amazon MP3 (for cloud player access)? Android has it, WebOS doesn't.
Musicnotes (digital copies of sheet music we've purchased online)? Android has it, WebOS doesn't.
And so on. Nobody is going to spend a lot of time developing or porting apps to WebOS since at this point, it's pretty much dead to the average consumer. Even companies that do want to develop on it like Astraware are waiting to see if enough people buy the apps they've put out for WebOS before they bother to port more - it has to make financial sense. So I end up spending most of my time on my TouchPad in Android, and I doubt my wife will ever bother to boot WebOS again.
Now, if someone were to set WebOS up so that it could run Android apps and the Android Marketplace, I'd happily wipe the Android partition off my TouchPad and never leave WebOS land again. Here's to hoping someone can do that.