Dozens Rejoice As HP Details Plans For Open Source WebOS

When HP announced that they’d make webOS open source, they neglected details of any kind. Instead, we got the usual “in the coming months” vagueness, the sort of thing that helped bring webOS to the strong market presence it has now.

Depressing numbers courtesy of comScore and FierceWireless.

Color me surprised, because today HP released a detailed road map for their open source rollout. The final product will be out in September 2012. While this is a bit of a wait, the road map actually shows that webOS has something going on almost every month in the meantime:

• January: Enyo 2.0 and Enyo source code Apache License, Version 2.0.
• February: Intended project governance model, QT WebKit extensions, JavaScript core, UI Enyo widgets.
• March: Linux standard kernel, Graphics extensions EGL, LevelDB, USB extensions.
• April: Ares 2.0, Enyo 2.1, Node services.
• July: System manager (“Luna”), System manager bus, Core applications, Enyo 2.2.
• August: Build release model, Open webOS Beta, Open webOS 1.0.

You may have noticed that this means webOS will switch from their own custom Linux kernel to a standard Linux kernel. This is very, very good news for those looking to port the OS to existing Android devices, and this move opens the potential for webOS on netbooks and desktops. Also, it looks like the focus here is on making sure there are tools out there for developers right from the start, with regular updates to their Enyo framework. That’s a good thing, and shows a trend that I’ve always enjoyed about webOS — real support of their (admittedly small pool of) developers.

Last but not least is the rebranding of webOS. As of August, the original webOS will be a thing of the past (some may argue that it already is). Instead of going for a 3.0 designation, the new open source version of HP’s operating system will be called Open webOS and and start with version 1.0.

Honestly, if this bit of reality twisting allows me to to run webOS on an HTC Evo 3D, I’m fine with this cute bit of technofiction that no one is really going to fall for anyway.