

HP Kicks webOS To The Kerb - Hoff
http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/12/11/hp-kicks-webos-to-the-kerb

======
sho_hn
"Releasing a product as Open Source isn’t always an admission of failure; see
exhibits Linux or, more recently, WebKit."

WebKit in particular is a derivative of KHTML and KJS, KDE's HTML and
JavaScript engines. Given their LGPL licensing, Apple had no choice but to
make WebKit open source as well. Now, The article doesn't preclude this, but
since the above follows a rant about "corpospeak" and is thus chiefly
concerned with the behavior of corporate/commercial entities around open
source releases, it seems prudent to point out that the WebKit codebase wasn't
originally the product of such an entity -- and the same of course applies to
Linux, too, making both rather poor examples for the author's purpose.

Cringe-cringe at the iTunes analogy, too, with the "more or less legally" not
applying to what's in RHEL. This is also indicative of sub-par writing: A
simple explanation using clear language ("customers pay for services, not the
code") is eschewed in favor of trying to make a comparison that doesn't really
fit, but has brand recognition.

Summarizing Firefox in terms of Mozilla Corp.'s financial situation is also
doing poorly by it. Mozilla's possible financial dependence on Google is an
interesting topic in and of itself, but anyone who's measuring Firefox by its
success as a "3. Profit!" scheme doesn't understand its history or its makers
- nor its true success/impact in web history.

Gassée can range from entertaining to insightful, but this one's just too
lazily executed and seemingly unaware of a lot of context. Well, it was a
Sunday I suppose.

~~~
freehunter
The Linux example in particular is awful. Linux was not a product released as
open source, it was an open source project from the beginning. Project, not
product. Products are open sourced either as a principle or as an admission.

It's difficult to tell which side WebOS falls on, as parts of it were open
source all along, and Palm/HP has always embraced the hacker community since
the Pre came along (allowing booting from USB, custom kernels, Preware, root
access without jumping through hoops, etc). This could be a natural
progression, or it could be a last-hurrah. It will be decided in the
marketplace, not in the media, and it won't take long to find out. The next 6
months will define WebOS' future, if other companies jump on board or not. A
system doesn't often get three chances at success, and WebOS has used up two
of them already.

~~~
sho_hn
> The Linux example in particular is awful. Linux was not a product released
> as open source, it was an open source project from the beginning.

I may not have gotten this across properly, but the same is true of WebKit or
rather its KHTML/KJS progenitors (KDE is an open source community and its
trademark-holding legal entity is a not-for-profit).

------
azakai
So many things wrong here. In particular,

> But the successful Open Source offerings were created in Open Source form.
> They weren’t “contributed” in a last-ditch effort to save face after
> unsuccessful attempts to monetize a proprietary version.

No, that isn't true at all. Many very successful open source projects were
"contributed" after commercial development, for example OpenOffice and
Netscape/Mozilla. And we might as well list Android there too, it's developed
behind closed doors and contributed periodically as open source - and it seems
to be doing quite well.

It's true that sometimes projects are "contributed" in the sense of donating
them and forgetting about them. But that doesn't mean all contributions of
previously closed-source code are unsuccessful.

Furthermore, the author seems to only value huge amounts of revenue as a
marker of success. The only FOSS project they consider to be "a success" is
apparently Red Hat with $10B market cap. It's a success, to be sure, but to
say all other open source projects are not (including ones with hundreds of
millions of users!) is just funny.

Given the situation HP is in, open sourcing WebOS makes the most sense. There
is no other good option. Some good analysis, which is spot on as opposed to
the article here, can be found at

<http://www.andrewsavory.com/blog/2011/2168>

------
nl
What's with this "Chrome marketshare has surpassed Firefox, therefore Firefox
is worthless" meme that is going around lately?

Firefox still has >25% browser share[1]. That gives them de-facto control of
the searches from a large number of of them (excluding the people who change
their default search engine).

If Mozilla can't get >$100 million a year form Google with 25% of the world's
deployed browsers then I'm going to start a search engine and pull an
Lycos[2].

[1] <http://gs.statcounter.com/>

[2] I _think_ it was Lycos. One of the early search engines bid money they
didn't have to get a placement on the Netscape search engine, and then went
and got funding based on the placement.

~~~
zobzu
Firefox will probably get more this year. They had a long term deal.

------
quanticle
While the open sourcing of webOS and the exit of HP from the tablet and phone
market may not be good news for the continued existence of webOS as a separate
entity, it does allow us to learn from webOS and integrate it's best features
into other systems, such as Android.

And who knows? Maybe webOS will catch on. I know it made some design decisions
that were superior to Android, in many ways. It was designed from the ground
up for touch interfaces, whereas Android was designed initially for a keyboard
+ trackball interface. I think webOS will at least make Android stronger, even
if it doesn't survive on its own.

~~~
cjrandolph
HP isn't getting out of tablets entirely. They will be making Win 8 tablets.

[http://www.bgr.com/2011/10/28/hp-windows-8-tablets-
arriving-...](http://www.bgr.com/2011/10/28/hp-windows-8-tablets-arriving-
next-year-ceo-says-webos-future-up-in-the-air/)

------
swdunlop
While the article itself is just a rant, what makes it interesting is that it
is Jean-Louis Gassée's rant. JLG is memorable for me as one of the founders of
BeOS -- and was with Be right up until Palm acquired their IP in a firesale.

Perhaps he is bitter about how things turned out with Palm and HP?

------
macspoofing
>Google has been Firefox’ sugar daddy as the Mountain View company battles
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer quasi-monopoly.

Wrong. Firefox is downloaded by millions of users - there's value in being the
default search engine. If Google didn't offer fair market value, Microsoft or
Yahoo would.

------
Tichy
What about Star Office and Blender, didn't they start as closed source and now
live on happily as open source projects? (I might be wrong, too lazy to look
it up).

~~~
gvb
Yes and yes.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice>
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice>)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_%28software%29>

Don't forget QT <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_%28framework%29>

There are enough counter examples to call BS on the whole diatribe.

------
aaront
He brings up the point of Symbian going open source and having a fallout. I
think this is different. Symbian was a old, tired OS that wasn't extremely
exciting. webOS has a fairly active homebrew community that will do some
pretty cool stuff with the source.

Also symbian was pretty much a phone-only OS, and I'd imagine was pretty tied
down to feature phones. webOS will most likely be ported to netbooks pretty
early on when it's released (the development emulator runs an x86 version),
thus making a low-power consumption cloud-based netbook environment.

~~~
kermitthehermit
Any kind of resources invested in Symbian (people, money, time, hardware, etc)
could only have a limited return.

As you've said, it was only for phones, it was a pretty bad inflexible
platform and improving it was very difficult.

However, Android and WebOS can help each other and improvements which end up
going into the Linux kernel (as that's the "real OS") can be of use to ALL
Linux devices.

After all, WebOS has a thinner stack above the Linux kernel. From what I've
seen so far, it does a pretty good job at connecting the web to the Linux
kernel and wrapping it nicely for the end user.

This means people will be able to customize it to their needs and provide
patches upstream. From what I have seen so far, WebOS is a lot easier to work
with when it comes to making something cool for it. I've even thought of using
it for some of my own projects and I am now confident that it will be the
right stack to use for those projects.

This is what will allow a far more rapid expansion than any other OS on mobile
devices and touch based appliances - flexibility.

That guy who wrote the article didn't have the slightest idea about what he
was talking or what he wanted to say.

------
muppetman
I think this is bad for WebOS myself. Look at Linux - I love it to bits, but
it has terrible traction because there's KDE, Gnome, XFCE, etc etc. It's so
customisable and fragmented that it's totally confusing for novice users.
That's not even to mention Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS etc. So much choice is great
for the niche user, but has gone a long way (in my opinion, of course) to
stopping widespread adoption of Linux as an OS.

I worry this'll happen to WebOS, each tablet maker will release their take on
it, app stores will be different etc and it'll be relegated to that Tablet OS
only nerds use.

~~~
tikhonj
The rich configurability and diversity inherent to Linux have not done much
against simply because they are optional--if you're confused and don't care,
you can simply get Ubuntu and not worry about it.

The real problem, for the "common user", is that you cannot waltz into your
neighborhood Best Buy and get a Linux laptop. To run Linux, you have to
realize that the operating system is not part of the computer, care enough to
install another one and spend a bit of effort getting it to work with whatever
computer you have. If half the $500 laptops at Staples, for example, came with
Linux, it would be much more popular.

There are, I think, two core reasons people cannot easily buy a laptop with
Linux: Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft for its anti-competitive behavior and
virtual monopoly; both companies for unrelenting marketing that presents only
two options--the patently false Mac vs PC dichotomy being a perfect example.

I know from experience that completely technologically inexperienced people
are perfectly happy with Linux as long as they're not the ones installing it.
The fact that they could possibly be running KDE instead of Unity does not
worry them in the slightest; in fact, particularly with Ubuntu, very little
_does_ worry them. My roommate, for example, has had fewer problems with
Ubuntu than with Windows, and they were easier to handle.

In short, Linux adoption is not limited by any inherent qualities. In fact, if
we just look at the sort of people who would install any OS at all, it
controls a large part of the market; however, this is just an unfair a
comparison as looking at the market in general.

~~~
muppetman
I understand what you're saying and as I've just realised in another reply, I
wasn't really that clear. Linux the kernel is widely adopted and a huge
sucess.

But the GUI aspect, the bit the user actually interacts with, isn't. There's
so many choices. A vendor can't just built a single binary easily like they
can for Windows/MacOS.

It's this, the fragmentation of the user-space that's my concern. WebOS is
built on Linux anyway, that'll never be a problem.

You can "can simply get Ubuntu and not worry about it". I know that, you know
that, most technical people know that. I guess it's not too hard for most non-
technical people to figure that out, but look at Linux Mint. It's suddenly
taking off in a big way. How do I know which one to pick? Which one is going
to run the apps I need etc? It's that - the confusion - that I worry might
also happen to WebOS if 10 different builds are released.

~~~
kermitthehermit
The vendor's troubles with shipping hardware with Linux don't lie in "extreme
fragmentation" or "hard to decide which distribution / software stack to sell
the hardware with".

Just so you don't think about it again: it's mostly Microsoft blackmailing
people into not selling ANYTHING but Windows on the hardware.

If you think that's not true, you should really think of the time when ASUS
was selling netbooks with Linux. I recall reading a lot of stories about
vendors being blackmailed by Microsoft - stop selling hardware with Linux or
you will not receive any more rights to sell your hardware with Windows.

------
teyc
Can someone explain to me what WebOS actually is?

Wikipedia says it is based on the Linux Kernel, so is it like Android which
sits on top of a small Linux kernel, but has its own API for UI and telephony?

My understanding is that to achieve fluid, high FPS UI we need to HW
accelerate, which means getting specs from HW manufacturers, which
traditionally has been a problem for Linux hobbyists. The people who have
access to these are the manufacturers. In this sense, WebOS would have
difficulty achieving any kind of traction.

~~~
masklinn
> Can someone explain to me what WebOS actually is?

It's the OS Palm developed for its tactile smartphone "Pre" line (which sadly
failed in the market).

> Wikipedia says it is based on the Linux Kernel, so is it like Android which
> sits on top of a small Linux kernel, but has its own API for UI and
> telephony?

Yes.

> My understanding is that to achieve fluid, high FPS UI we need to HW
> accelerate, which means getting specs from HW manufacturers, which
> traditionally has been a problem for Linux hobbyists. The people who have
> access to these are the manufacturers.

That's an issue when trying to get open-source drivers, but these don't have
such restrictions (all Android phones have "the right" GPU drivers, Android is
just awful at using them). Phone manufacturers have all the specs they need
when the build phones, and can use binary blobs provided by chip manufacturers
if need be.

> In this sense, WebOS would have difficulty achieving any kind of traction.

This issue really has very little relevance.

~~~
teyc
Thanks.

The absence of GPU drivers mean WebOS has little relevance for tinkerers.

------
DiabloD3
This article tries to make a point, and then double backs on itself and makes
a totally unrelated point that has nothing to do with HP, WebOS, or anything
remotely related.

Am I the only one who thinks this?

