6 ms·

Open webOS Beta Officially Released

137 points by mikecane 14y ago

wgirish 14y ago
Will it run on HP Touchpad ?
- darklajid 14y ago
  The article specifically points to the webos-ports project for that. There you can follow the 'webOS - Community Edition for the Touchpad' project.
  - mikecane 14y ago
    And we'll need the Community to port that fantastic LunaCE to Open webOS.
mitjak 14y ago
Will definitely keep my ears open for further announcements. As much as I avoid webOS due to the lack of quality apps, booting into it even for a short while causes me to realize just how smooth its UX is and how awkward and backwards in a lot of ways the other mobile OSs are.
- trun 14y ago
  Totally agree. I can't tell you how many times I tried to close apps on my android phone by swiping upwards after I started using WebOS.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
grantjgordon 14y ago
Way to go! Web OS always had such promise -- I hope that it can make a bigger impact now that it's been freed from the shackles of the dying Palm.
mikecane 14y ago
Waiting for someone to port this to the Nexus 7...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
iscrewyou 14y ago
Question: Does this openness also include the things that WebOS was amazing at? Like Swipe Up to close, card stacks, etc? Is, say Google, allowed to use that without paying royalties? Or does HP still own those software patents?
- tomkit 14y ago
  It depends on the exact open source license they release it under. I googled around and all I could find was that they would release it under "an open source license".
  - hackernews 14y ago
    From the post: "The Beta release is comprised of 54 webOS components available as opensource. This brings over 450,000 lines of code released under the Apache 2.0 license, which is one of the most liberal and accepted in the open source community."
    - Danieru 14y ago
      That is good news, Apache 2.0 does in fact have a patent grant. It also happens to be Goolge's favourite license.
      - azakai 14y ago
        The patent grant is only for those using the code. So it wouldn't help Google unless Google rebuilt Android on WebOS.
        stinkytaco 14y ago
        That would be... awesome.
        rbanffy 14y ago
        How much code is enough to be covered?
neya 14y ago
Wow..this is seriously good news...can't wait to see open Source software like this prosper...hopefully no one will sue them, though..
kevincennis 14y ago
WebOS would have been so awesome if Palm had put it on nicer hardware and found a way to get developers on-board.
- agumonkey 14y ago
  In an interview the lead said there was a shortage of parts, nothing else was available.
- programminggeek 14y ago
  One interview basically said Apple had bought out all the parts that they wanted to use and HP is/was unwilling to invest in the product enough to get the parts that would be good enough to be competitive. The same thing happened in the iPod/mp3 player market. Hard to compete when it takes tens or hundreds of millions of dollars up front just to secure parts to be on par with Apple, let alone trying to get ahead. Most big company management just doesn't want to invest that kind of money to compete with an established winner like the iPad. Samsung is about the only company who can afford to do it and that's largely because Apple is in effect subsidizing Samsung's production costs by buying so many Samsung parts.
wtracy 14y ago
The announcement mentions in passing a client-server model that allows the UI to handle things like touch interaction without blocking on app code. Can anyone elaborate on how this actually works? I would expect the UI rendering and Javascript execution to be all happening in one WebKit process. I would be excited to learn if the webOS team has come up with something I don't know about here.
- unwiredben 14y ago
  Since version 2, webOS has supported application-bundled node.js services. An application can spin up those service processes and have them handle communications with external servers and doing data processing, with communication handled over the Luna Service Bus, a on-device transport that allows both simple request-response or subscriptions for JSON-formatted data.
macco 14y ago
Great to have a real free os for mobiles. I am very thrilled what people will do with it.

137 points by mikecane 14y ago

wgirish 14y ago

Will it run on HP Touchpad ?

darklajid 14y ago
The article specifically points to the webos-ports project for that. There you can follow the 'webOS - Community Edition for the Touchpad' project.
- mikecane 14y ago
  And we'll need the Community to port that fantastic LunaCE to Open webOS.

mitjak 14y ago

Will definitely keep my ears open for further announcements. As much as I avoid webOS due to the lack of quality apps, booting into it even for a short while causes me to realize just how smooth its UX is and how awkward and backwards in a lot of ways the other mobile OSs are.

trun 14y ago
Totally agree. I can't tell you how many times I tried to close apps on my android phone by swiping upwards after I started using WebOS.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

grantjgordon 14y ago

Way to go! Web OS always had such promise -- I hope that it can make a bigger impact now that it's been freed from the shackles of the dying Palm.

mikecane 14y ago

Waiting for someone to port this to the Nexus 7...

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

iscrewyou 14y ago

Question: Does this openness also include the things that WebOS was amazing at? Like Swipe Up to close, card stacks, etc? Is, say Google, allowed to use that without paying royalties? Or does HP still own those software patents?

tomkit 14y ago
It depends on the exact open source license they release it under. I googled around and all I could find was that they would release it under "an open source license".
- hackernews 14y ago
  From the post: "The Beta release is comprised of 54 webOS components available as opensource. This brings over 450,000 lines of code released under the Apache 2.0 license, which is one of the most liberal and accepted in the open source community."
  - Danieru 14y ago
    That is good news, Apache 2.0 does in fact have a patent grant. It also happens to be Goolge's favourite license.
    - azakai 14y ago
      The patent grant is only for those using the code. So it wouldn't help Google unless Google rebuilt Android on WebOS.
      - stinkytaco 14y ago
        That would be... awesome.
      - rbanffy 14y ago
        How much code is enough to be covered?

neya 14y ago

Wow..this is seriously good news...can't wait to see open Source software like this prosper...hopefully no one will sue them, though..

kevincennis 14y ago

WebOS would have been so awesome if Palm had put it on nicer hardware and found a way to get developers on-board.

agumonkey 14y ago
In an interview the lead said there was a shortage of parts, nothing else was available.
programminggeek 14y ago
One interview basically said Apple had bought out all the parts that they wanted to use and HP is/was unwilling to invest in the product enough to get the parts that would be good enough to be competitive. The same thing happened in the iPod/mp3 player market. Hard to compete when it takes tens or hundreds of millions of dollars up front just to secure parts to be on par with Apple, let alone trying to get ahead. Most big company management just doesn't want to invest that kind of money to compete with an established winner like the iPad. Samsung is about the only company who can afford to do it and that's largely because Apple is in effect subsidizing Samsung's production costs by buying so many Samsung parts.

wtracy 14y ago

The announcement mentions in passing a client-server model that allows the UI to handle things like touch interaction without blocking on app code. Can anyone elaborate on how this actually works? I would expect the UI rendering and Javascript execution to be all happening in one WebKit process. I would be excited to learn if the webOS team has come up with something I don't know about here.

unwiredben 14y ago
Since version 2, webOS has supported application-bundled node.js services. An application can spin up those service processes and have them handle communications with external servers and doing data processing, with communication handled over the Luna Service Bus, a on-device transport that allows both simple request-response or subscriptions for JSON-formatted data.

macco 14y ago

Great to have a real free os for mobiles. I am very thrilled what people will do with it.