webOS opens to mobile developers, Technology ,

Hewlett Packard Company has opened its webOS mobile operating system todevelopers and other companies.The company revealed thatthey looked at a number of options for webOS, including a sale and shut downof the division.According to the developers circular in my possession,HP will make webOS available under an open source licensingagreement, but it has still not hashed out the terms of the licensing deal itplans to offer.There are a number of open source projects that can be used asexamples for deciding the structure of licensing, including Android and browserMozilla.The company plans to solicit ideas from developers before deciding on thelicensing terms.HP likes the adoption of Android because it's growing likewildfire with a big developer community and hardware community.

WebOS logo

Meanwhile,HPwould like to avoid fragmentation of the software that currently plaguesAndroid.HP may also get back into the consumer tablet market in 2013 but itwill not be making any more smartphones.The future of webOS had been in limbosince August after HP killed its flagship webOS-based TouchPad tablet followingpoor sales. HP, which acquired webOS in a US$1.2 billion purchase of Palm in2010, had been trying to figure out how to recoup its investment after a failedforay into the smartphone and tablet market.I have always believed that HP'swebOS could be an alternative to companies apprehensive.

The webOS platform, which had been HP-only software, is widely viewed asa strong mobile platform by developers like but has been criticized for havingfew applications which is an important consideration while choosing a mobiledevice.Most developers prefer to work on Apple's iOS or either Google's Androidbecause both are on millions of devices unlike webOS.There is no doubt that makingit open source changes the rules of the game and has the potential to makewebOS more appealing. This in my opinion presents a potential challenge toAndroid, but I wouldn't call it a real challenge until we get a little furtherdown the road.I have to say that HP still has to make sure the code isavailable and the tools for developers are as robust as those provided byAndroid.