HP Cuts Staff As WebOS Transitions To Opensource 64
alphadogg writes "Hewlett-Packard has cut 275 jobs in its webOS group, as part of its strategy to turn the operating system over to the open-source community, according to IDG News Service. HP said last year that it would stop making devices that use the operating system which was developed by Palm for phones and tablets, and later decided to release the software under the Apache License 2.0. As webOS continues the transition to open-source software, HP no longer needs many of the engineering and other related positions that it required before, the company said in a statement. 'This creates a smaller and more nimble team that is well-equipped to deliver an open source webOS and sustain HP's commitment to the software over the long term,' it added."
Re:Palm (Score:4, Interesting)
You know who should have bought Palm?
Nintendo.
Integrating PalmOS (even at the PalmOS 4 level) into the base operating system of the DS would have been super-awesome. Even just a PalmOS cart would have been great, maybe with an integrated Bluetooth dialler. A DS in a leather cover would not have looked at all out of place in a business meeting. A target market of 150 million units, the possibility of selling add-on services (cloud sync, Exchange integration, etc), a low cost of entry for new buyers (a DS is very cheap, a new phone is not).
I've not used WebOS but I presume it's rather heavier than the old PalmOS builds used to be ; they are missing a trick. PalmOS was great, even in it's early incarnations. Modern hardware would really make it snap.