HP’s CEO Leo Aptheker is currently on stage at D9, answering questions from the audience. The thing hasn’t concluded yet, but I think this one warrants its own item: Apotheker has revealed that HP is also licensing webOS to other hardware makers. “It’s a great OS – why wouldn’t we want to offer it to other companies? Why wouldn’t they want to use webOS? Appliance makers could use it to connect up normal home devices. We’d like to make webOS available to these people – enterprises, SMBs, etc. Yes, webOS will be more than just a system that runs inside an HP product.” When asked more directly if, for instance, HTC could build webOS phones, Apotheker answered: “We’d certainly have that conversation.”
It would be fun if a third modern mobile OS would get a significant market share. If Windows 7 can sell it would make it 4 even.
Now that would be really offer a choice for the consumer.
HP wants now to be Google 2. It is, let’s see, 3 years too late?
Edited 2011-06-01 19:31 UTC
It’s called Android. And you’re a day late and a dollar short HP.
Hope it can gain some traction. webOS looks great and it’s a proper Linux unlike Android.
It is? It’s a Linux kernel, but the rest of the OS is closed source and proprietary. I’m not sure I would call that a proper Linux. Also, why would you say that Android is not a proper Linux?
Which enduser gives a damn about being a “proper” Linux or not? They don’t care about being “proper”, or even “linux”, they just want a smartphone which works good and has nice apps.
Consume, consume, consume, is that really everything anyone could want? Some endusers care about more than being able to buy and download apps. A powerful userspace like a normal GNU/Linux distro provides is really far more pleasant to use than what you get to work with in Android. I have no idea whether WebOS has such a thing, though.
Well, Linux is nothing more than a kernel.
Slap on the GNU stuff and some apps and you’ve got a Linux distribution.
So I guess if Android uses a Linux kernel one could call it “Linux” just like Linux distribution are called Linux while they consist of much more than just a kernel.
Android lacks all the Linux distribution stuff and instead Google added their code.
Actually, you have Gnu/Linux.
Actually, that would be Android/Linux. And put the webOS userland on Linux and you have webOS/Linux.
Similarly, put the Gnu userland on the Hurd and you have Gnu/Hurd, or the Android userland on BSD and you have Android/BSD.
It’s such a simple, useful system that if anyone but rms had proposed it, it would have been adopted by acclamation. Instead, it’s “controversial”. *sigh*
Actually it’s GNU/Android/Lunix and GNU/webOS/Lunix, as RMS himself would say. Too bad Google guys are tainting the OS with non GPL3 stuff so people who luv freedom like RMS and ESR can’t really use Android.
And do not forget that Android runs on hardware designed by proprietary pigs, not on Open Hardware.
We should boycott Android and only use really free software like Debian GNU/Lunix.
And so you make my point for me, since none of these terms show up on fsf.org or stallman.org, and Replicant runs on proprietary hardware. But I suppose tech forums would lose their character without the occasional venom. *sigh*
The Android Kernel is a fork of the mainline linux kernel and with device drivers and patches that are incompatible with mainline (porting was difficult until recent developments in mainline).
Also the It does not use common low level userspace progams and daemons found in most linux distributions (unlike webOS and Meego).
The only non standard part of WebOS is its gui and frameworks the rest is quite “Linuxy”.
Yeah, people, that’s what I’m talking about! We don’t want screwy proprietary designs on top of our beloved Lunix kernel. All we want is tablets with full GNU/Lunix goodies. We want tablets with bash, X Windows, Gnome, terminal apps, Emacs and Vim. And python. If we can have Mutt, ircll and lynx, that would be indeed lovely.
Nothing is more exciting than opening a terminal on your tablet and typing:
#chmod +rwx yourmom
#mount -raep
Apple and Google better wake up. Soon WebOS will be running on toasters world wide!
To be toast or to be the toaster.
Actually, it’d be cutting in on Java’s action there.
I think you mean netbsd, not java.
No. He means Java. Many appliances use embedded versions of Java for producing their UI and for programming them. Java is is the standard that Blu-ray discs use for example. You can actually write Java applications that run on your Blu-ray player if you want to. TiVo’s software is also written in Java. And once again, it’s possible to write applications in Java that run on the TiVo.
Edited 2011-06-02 02:47 UTC
Java may run on all those appliances, but the toaster market is clearly dominated by netbsd.
I don’t know. Most of the toasters I’ve met were solely made of a few analog components, so I don’t see how NetBSD (or Java, for that matter) could run on them.
NetBSD is definitely the ToasterOS of choice http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/05/08/11/1754253/The-NetBSD-Toas…
Is there such a thing as an award for most geeky inventions of a year ?
It’s a joke. Based on the whole “NetBSD runs on everything” meme. And I’m sure there has been someone who has made a NetBSD powered toaster.
I now know
And this thread confirms that someone actually got NetBSD to run on a toaster.
Well… After all, biologists have managed to discover that Viagra helped hamsters to recover from jet lag after unmentioned experiments…
If it actually happens, that’s a game changer! Those who do not code mobile apps do not realize just how awesome webOS is to develop on in comparison to other platforms –it’s worlds apart.
If you actually like Javascript that is. And even it does happen, it’s not a game changer unless other companies actually license it. And given WebOS has basically been a total failure so far, I’m not gonna hold my breath that it can be resurrected.
I guess it’s wonderful to develop an app for the two users of webOS platform.
This is the move I’ve been advocating for about a year now. If you’re trying to build a platform which is attractive to developers one thing you need is a broad install base (more users, more audience, more potential sales) and it’s hard to have a large install base if the consumer demand for your software is bottlenecked based on how fast you can manufacture hardware. Furthermore, users are not all the same and some might like hardware with different features and price points.
As a single company you’d have a hard time satisfying everyone and, meanwhile, competitors with OSes that don’t implement your platform are drawing away those users, which reduces the incentive for apps to be written for your platform, which will over time dampen your user base.
Applie and Blackberry are ridiculously popular for very different reasons but it’s just not likely that either one will win long-term because each is insular and makes its OS only for itself. If the 1980s and 90s operating system battles taught us anything it is this: restricting your OS to just the hardware you make will kill you. Not because you make a bad system but just because you can’t compete with a zillion commodity CPUs running a commodity OS. When every other company in the market is undermining you with every product it’s harder to win than when every other company in the market is bolstering your platform with every product.
tl;dr if you want to be the Microsoft of mobile phones you need to license your OS.
Because now, each time I read this guy’s name, I think about aspirin and viagra. It really doesn’t help taking what he says seriously.
Edited 2011-06-02 12:09 UTC