Reality Check: HP Has Doubts About Open Source WebOS
After weeks of consideration, Hewlett-Packard has confirmed plans to contribute webOS to the open source community. On the one hand, that’s good news for webOS lovers who want to see the mobile operating system live on. On the other hand, the timing of HP’s announcement essentially proves that HP itself has serious doubts about webOS’s viability as an open source project amid Apple iOS and Google Android dominance.
First, the background: HP essentially acquired webOS technology when HP purchased Palm for $1.2 billion in April 2010, hoping to cash in on the $100 billion connected mobile device market. At one point, former HP CEO Leo Apotheker predicted webOS would become a standard operating system for a range of HP devices. But in August 2011, Apotheker killed the webOS TouchPad tablet and smartphone initiative, essentially putting the future of webOS into doubt.
When HP’s board ousted Apotheker and named Meg Whitman as the company’s new CEO in September 2011, Whitman promised to take a close look at webOS’s future. Her decision arrived today when HP announced plans to open source webOS.
Is This Really Good News?
But here’s the reality check:
- Good News: When technology companies want to make big, impressive news announcements they usually do so on Tuesdays — giving reporters and bloggers ample time to organize their thoughts on a Monday, digest the news on Tuesday and cover the development throughout the week.
- Mixed or Bad News: When technology companies want to downplay news or a business development, they typically do so on a Friday afternoon, when most readers, reporters and even anonymous bloggers like yours truly are starting to think about the weekend.
What HP Said
HP made the webOS open source announcement today — Friday, Dec. 9. According to an official statement from HP issued today:
“HP plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS. By combining the innovative webOS platform with the development power of the open source community, there is the opportunity to significantly improve applications and web services for the next generation of devices.”
HP plans to invest in the project but plenty of questions remain:
- Will HP ever introduce new hardware based on the webOS open source project? HP didn’t make any firm commitments today.
- Which hardware companies, if any, will dive into the webOS open source effort? It’s too soon to say.
- Is there room for webOS to truly compete with Apple iOS and Google Android? Hmm…
- Can the webOS open source project truly achieve credibility after HP — with zero notice — abandoned its own webOS hardware development earlier this year?
- What is the fate of HP’s own webOS team?
HP says developers and customers can offer input and suggestions at http://developer.palm.com/blog/. The VAR Guy will be watching to see if webOS attracts an open source crowd… or simply fades away.
Gnome and Ubuntu should abandon whatever they are thinking of wrt slates and cellphones, dump Unity and cooperate. Gnome 3 on desktops. WebOS on mobile units + management of anything remote (cloud, printers, tv, NAS, routers, home servers ++).
KDE are getting closer to Qt – and could unite with MeeGO.
This would have consolidated the wilderness into 2 environments that could matter.
Further, this would have opened up for consolidating on the distro side too, reducing the number of half baked spinoffs and turning a few environments into something with real commercial potential.
Any open-source project lives or dies by its community. HP needs to make sure there is a community around WebOS, and furthermore that its direction is not dictated by the company. You can’t open-source something and still keep tight control of it at the same time—as Sun/Oracle found out with Java.
There is a core of people who find WebOS worth preserving and developing. Whether there are enough of them to form a viable community is an open question, but HP needs to welcome and encourage these people, not alienate them.
Jack, Lawrence: The VAR Guy thanks you for your insights. Do you think WebOS has a chance to attract a new audience of hardware developers?
-TVG
As I said on the 24th of December 2010 “My bet is that HP’s webOS tablet will be killed by the end of 2011, thanks in large part to Microsoft’s stranglehold over its PC OS business and leveraging it will use to force HP to toe-the-line.”
http://www.thevarguy.com/2010/12/23/rumor-has-it-hppalms-palmpad-set-to-debut-ces-2011/
In that thread of 12 months ago I highlighted that a key part of HP’s strategy was simply to use WebOS as a bargaining tool with Microsoft. Yes, Leo Apotheker has been replaced by Meg Whitman, but HP still dreams of the day when it can at least win some concessions from Microsoft. However HP’s current move reflects absolutely no commitment to WebOS, but simply a hollow threat to Microsoft that it could if it wanted to. In reality the Microsoft sales force will be partying hard as it celebrates what it thinks is yet another crushing win.
However, while Microsoft is yet again showing itself to be the tail that is wagging the dog, it will assist HP in its PC market crash as the world rushes to lower cost solutions running Android and Chrome that will satisfy the needs of 90% of users, without having to pay the Microsoft tax.
This announcement is simply confirmation of yet another nail in the coffin of HP’s PC business because it is unable to execute a strategy that enables it to adjust to the new era of lower cost PCs in which the operating system tax is removed.
That’s a tough spot. It takes time to establish a community, and hardware vendors needs an predictable environment they can rely on for years.
There’s no room for short perspectives, and a community without structure, or a community without visions will be a waste. The question is whether it’s at all possible to establish “the right community”.
Everybody have seen what can happen – even when Nokia and Intel backs up a project together, and HP’s handling of WebOS adds up to that experience.
Further, keeping in mind that a big player like RIM struggles to keep their head above water and Microsoft still seems to be unable to profit from WP (if you compare the 2 latest ComScore reports you’ll see that the US sales looks grim)….
The advantage of WebOS (besides being tailormade for mobility) is the opportunity to connect and manage devices and services through one unified UX.
When HP, who’s capable of delivering virtually any hardware and service don’t find it viable – who will? …bearing in mind that HP (for most HW vendors) is an significant competitor who still keeps some kind of control through financing)….
Will any hardware vendor trust HP who easily can squeeze WebOS through financing?
There’s a lot of ifs and buts.
Will there be a community willing to commit 100%? Will the quality of such community be good enough? It must become way heavier and better than any community we’ve seen yet – with industrial/corporate qualities that takes years to build.
It could be an huge opportunity for Canoncial/Ubuntu/Gnome, but i just don’t believe they are capable of creating such organisation/community together.
Without the right community, I really doubt the hardware side of it will engage.
[…] for some interesting changes in the mobile landscape. Both CNET#8217;s Stephen Shankland and The VAR Guy think nothing much will come of this move. As both a long time Open Source zealot and a mobile […]
What doubt check for the Open Source WebOs?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111126002651AAqylKm
Patrick Smith –gt; craplink –gt; should be deleted.
Jack: I think you’re overestimating the development efforts that goes into the spinoffs. Linux Mint is an exception. I think they actually do develop quite a bit, and I don’t think they would shut down their community if only Ubuntu replaced Unity with Gnome Shell. I don’t think you’d achieve any noticeable extra consolidation by doing that. Unity is just a Compiz plugin. It’s not a competing desktop environment or anything like that. Don’t listen to the fanatics who are acting as if it’s some sort of blood feud. Gnome and Ubuntu are working well together.
But Unity _does_ actually consolidate. Gnome Shell extensions only work with Gnome Shell. Unity extensions works with Unity, KDE, Xfce, LXDE, Windows, OS X and of course, Gnome Shell. That is _the_ design goal. You write one extension for one environment, and it works anywhere. That’s extremely valuable.
This brings me onto WebOS. It’s quite nice. I just think it’s too different. There is simply too little reuse of development efforts and user experience. I hope it survives as a project, but I have difficulty imagining it doing anything similar to what Android has done. The age of computing is still in its infancy, though, so who knows. Browsers of 2011 doesn’t seem like anything close to a viable platform to replace native apps. That is going to change. The question is when. If WebOS keeps evolving in the background, its time may come. But I don’t think it’s tomorrow or next year.
Actually, you are proving my point. It is not likely that Ubuntu/Canonical/Gnome ever will be able to capitalize from this situation which actually is a huge opportunity.
WebOS is/was highly regarded for it’s potential. In fact even the Apple crowd was positive to it’s upside. The only reason mentioning Canonical/Gnome/Unity is to see which community would be capable of turning WebOS into business.
In my view you are proving that for buntu/gnome/unity such process will turn into a battle between “mine and yours”. Everybody will watch out for their breadcrumbs totally ignoring the truckload of bread 10 feet away.
That was always the trouble with Linux communities and it still is.
To be blunt:
I don’t give an rat’s ass about unity extensions and the low level miniscule details of Ubuntu. That discussion belongs to the Ubuntu forums.
No. Unity doesn’t consolidate. At all. In any way, shape or form. If you stopped guarding your crums and started looking for truckloads of bread you’ll probably see that.
I think the VAR Guy is being a bit overly simplistic here. HP weren’t just abandoning their webOS tablets. They were effectively abandoning their entire hardware line up. At least on the PC side of the business. Which is what prompted the share holders and board to act so far as I know.
No doubt HP will have a lot of work a head of it rebuilding it’s brand and recovering from this very odd episode in it’s history. But I also think we should all consider ourselves very lucky. Especially those of us using open source software. I think it’s clear HP narrowly avoided becoming another Nokia or Novell.
As for webOS, it has a very active and highly coordinated community. I think it could easily recover and carve out a little chunk of the market. All it needs is 5%. It doesn’t need to be an iOS or Android “killer”. And given the current patent war between Apple and Google amp; Co. webOS could be very attractive. Certainly Apple might take offence to those “rounded” corners on HP’s tablet. But that’s an easy fix.
I think that HP should donate it to some foundation like Apache or Mozilla.
Suhail: you mean the brand or the software? It isn’t necessary to donate the software to anyone in particular as long as they open source it. I would prefer a GPL-based license and not an MIT one. The WebOS brand should be dropped entirely. That has to be one of the worst names in the history of computing. Call it BluieOS or something instead 🙂
Jo-Erlend Schinstad: I mean both the brand and software. I don’t prefer a GPL-based license, even Android which is Linux based is not released under a GPL license. I have no problem with brand associated with name, as long as there is thriving community behind it.
The VAR Guy appreciates all the comments but he remains highly skeptical of WebOS. [email protected] suggests webOS only needs 5% market share to carve out a respectable market niche for itself. But at 5%, The VAR Guy doubts webOS will attract many apps…
-TVG