Why there's real hope for webOS - if HP is committed
22.05.12
Just ask Nokia , which sought to sustain Symbian as a mobile powerhouse by turning Symbian into an open-source project. Except that it didn't . Not immediately, anyway. From the outset, the Symbian Foundation promised a long wait for the Symbian code, but it took years, and was eventually pulled back into proprietary software land .
In open-source land, the lack of shipping code is a deal killer. It is impossible to sustain interest in chimerical code.
In this, webOS is already ahead of Symbian. The code is apparently already in a condition to be released, or will shortly be such. As of today, there's still nothing in the waiting GitHub repository , but I've been told by a senior executive at HP that there will not be a long wait for the code.
HP chief executive Meg Whitman is trying to dampen expectations by suggesting that HP must "walk before [it] can run with webOS", but she may not have much time to demonstrate success. Android rumbles on, powering more than 50 per cent of smartphones shipped and taking an increasingly respectable chunk of the tablet market, too.
Source: Register