Skip to main content

Open webOS reaches version 1.0 on time, completes its open source transformation

Open webOS reaches version 1.0 on time, completes its open source transformation

Share this story

Today is the last weekday in September, and that means today is the last day for HP's Open webOS team to keep to the roadmap it set for itself in January and complete webOS' open source transition. It turns out that the team was able to achieve that goal, as Open webOS 1.0 is available now as a final, non-beta version. The operating system itself hasn't experienced any major changes with the bump up to version 1.0, but the web-based Enyo 2 application framework is now supported.

What does that all mean for consumers, though? We've already been told that original webOS hardware won't be supported, but now that open sourcing is complete the OS is ready to be ported to other devices. HP won't be taking the lead on that — it's in the hands of the developer community and hardware manufacturers — but the computer company has shown off a port of the OS running on a TouchSmart all-in-one. The company says it took only a few days of work to get the port working, and while performance isn't stellar, it's likely that it could improve with some more optimizations.

"We will continue to develop for the platform, and we will continue to add new features"

While Open webOS has now reached version 1.0, the team says that it will continue to add new features and that "we expect to have more Open webOS port announcements in the future." For now, you can download Open webOS' source code right here — just don't expect to get it running on your firesale HP TouchPad.

Lastly, today's announcement leaves us in the dark as to whether Gram, the HP-funded company born from the webOS Global Business Unit, has any plans to use webOS. We'll just have to keep on waiting for now.