
HP's decision means webOS could end up more open than Android - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/12/hps-decision-means-webos-could-end-up-more-open-than-android.ars
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ricw
Or it could end up dead. No products = no development. No development = dead.

WebOS will have exactly the same fate as so many great OS that had zero
commercial backing, let alone products. Let alone that it'll fall massively
behind the current market leaders and never be able to catch up again..

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beatle
I bet Samsung, HTC, Sony, etc. all want to reduce their reliance on Android
now that Google will soon own Motorola.

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nextparadigms
I'd rather see them a more open alternative like WebOS than WP7, which hasn't
been successful for them so far anyway. I love Android, but a strong WebOS
alternative would be great.

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zmmmmm
Emphasis on _could_. What we have now is necessary but not sufficient for that
to happen.

It's going to be really interesting to see how it plays out. Even assuming it
does get adoption, the most likely path is device makers and carriers taking
the open source version and customizing the crap out of it and releasing their
own "closed" versions of it, just like Android. And if HP does anything to
prevent that then what we inevitably have is something _less_ open than
Android.

I _do_ very much like the fact that Google now has another player that will
keep them honest about how "open" they are.

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hakl
A copyleft license [1] could probably eliminate most invasive proprietary
"value-add". Though that might hinder adoption, being just a dump pipe or a
box mover isn't very profitable. Hopefully companies are getting desperate
enough to give up on Apple-like profits.

1\. A license that requires derivative works to be distributed under the same
terms

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wazoox
WebOS UI could easily run atop an Android kernel. Programming in some nice
web-based toolkit instead of java-like stuff would be a godsend (PS: I always
hated java to the bones).

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kkowalczyk
No, it couldn't.

If by "Android kernel" you mean the full richness of the existing APIs, the UI
framework, UI conventions etc., then no, you can't just mash up two full-
featured OS who both need exclusive access to hardware, have their own UI
conventions, APIs, different ways of doing the same things (like showing
notifications, switching between applications) etc.

If by "Android kernel" you mean "slightly modified Linux kernel that Android
uses" then technically yes but it's a meaningless statement. WebOS already
uses (possibly slightly modified) Linux kernel, the kernel changes constitute
about 0.1% of their code and they are not what defines Android or WebOS.

~~~
warthogkernel
The inverse is more useful.

webOS running with an interface to the Android market and ability to run
Android apps. It should not be that hard to get that working if people pitch
in to help.

\- Dalvik needs to work under webOS which should be a recompile and some
changes. There's also Alien.

\- Android apps need to have a generic wrapper to put them into webOS cards.

\- Some other interface issues to clean up.

So, who wants to help do this?

PS: FWIW, webOS essentially uses an Android kernel already.

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j45
Exciting. In some ways webOS seems more modern and advanced than iOS and
Android because it's using web / cloud paradigms at it's absolute core.

Even though I run iOS, the fact that you can build entire apps in Javascript
is cool. Hopefully I can get my hands on a touchpad to try it out

~~~
tuacker
Interestingly enough isn't that how iOS started out? At least to some extend.
It would be interesting to know how mobile/web would look today if Apple
didn't introduce native apps and instead fully committed to web apps.

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Zirro
I remember reading that Steve Jobs originally wanted the iPhone only to run
web apps. That's why the "Add site to homescreen"-option has always been in
the browser.

Then jailbreakers came along, and demanded to be able to run native code, and
boom, Apple agrees and we have the App Store.

It's interesting how opinions can change, and choices strike back.

~~~
bryanlarsen
The big difference is that all the apps on the original iPhone were native
apps, so the iPhone javascript interfaces were missing a lot of features. All
the apps on the original WebOS phones were actually web apps, so their
javascript interfaces didn't suck.

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bookwormAT
At this stage the kind of openess I strive for is that developers have an
option to distribute software to customers without asking a third party for
permission. The kind of openess we know from OS X and Windows XP.

