HP Releases More WebOS Components for the TouchPad 48
About two months ago, HP made the first source releases of webOS components. Conspicuously absent, however, were the sources to the Luna system manager, and it was not possible to build an image for the TouchPad with what was available. On Tuesday, the webOS team released the Luna sources and build tools as "webOS Community Edition." This is a continuation of their previous source releases, and is intended only for the TouchPad; Open webOS is still slated for release in September and will be designed for porting to new hardware platforms. Quoting the developers: "With the release of the webOS Community Edition you can now learn how the TouchPad works, modify your TouchPad experience and then apply that learning to Open webOS 1.0 in the future. We are excited to empower the community to create custom user experiences on the TouchPad. For example, developers can now modify the card view, launcher, notifications, Just Type and more." You can grab the latest over at Github. The developers claim you can build and install it onto actual hardware: anyone want to give it a shot?
Like OpenMoko (Score:5, Interesting)
It matters because :
- that gives an upgrade path for current webos device owner to see updates to their device even if only as a small comunity of enthousiats (kind of how OpenMoko is still seeing some development around the FreeRunner and its FreeSmartphone.org-based SHR OS. Its small, slow paced, community driven. But it's *there* !)
- webOS GUI is really nice and really does serve well portable devices like tablets and smartphone. much better multitasking than anything else. also nice concepts of apps build around HTML5+Javascript (even Microsoft is toying with the idea in Metro). Opensourcing Luna (i.e.: the GUI itself) is interesting because that means that the GUI could be incorporated back into Android, although that would require a lot of work. But would give to Cyanogen and the Like a really nice and interesting interface which could compete against other such custom interfaces sitting above Android (like HTC's Sense UI).
In short: somewhat merging Open webOS (or at least Luna) and Android would bring a real interesting iOS- / Windows- killer (well, ahem, as if Windows 8 RT needed any efforts in killing...)
- maybe some enthousiats groups will release newer hardware for open web os. I mean openmoko is a really small comunity, and that hasn't stopped the people at golden delicious to design build and ship a hardware upgrade for the freerunner (a newer mobo based around an OMAP similar to what is found in WebOS devices, most android phones and most iphones).
- just look at the GP32, GP2X, Pandora, and the like : a project doesn't need multi-million shipped device to thrive. a small community of enthousiasts is more than enough to keep it alive. and web os has a small comunity of dedicated enthousiast. just look at the official webos app store, or even at the open-source homebrew app store. that's a tremendous production of apps for a platform that is so much dwarfed by the number of Android and iOS devices.
- Who knows, it an Android/open webOS hybrid is well done (please CyanogenMod, please! start collaborating with WebOS internals to make it happen), some smaller device maker might be interested into picking it up. (I mean stock CyanogenMod has already been approached by some manufacturer).
Re:Adopting it to other OSS project? (Score:4, Interesting)
Before I got ICS installed on my Touchpad, I have to say WebOS > Android except for one major shortcoming: Apps. If WebOS had the same apps as Android I'd still be using it. But now, ICS multitasking is at least as good as WebOS, and it has all the apps. The notification system in ICS brings Android to par with WebOS as well.
Shame WebOS was too little, too late, too small. Because overall it really had a lot of things right.