After several failed attempts to make it big in the mobile marketplace, it looks like WebOS will now be open sourced by HP:

The ultimate fate of HP’s webOS mobile platform was finally revealed today. The company has announced plans to contribute its operating system to the open source software community. The move will open the door for other hardware manufacturers to adopt the operating system and ship it on their own devices.

It’s not clear yet whether HP intends to continue shipping new mobile devices with webOS. The company’s statement says unambiguously that the company will continue to invest in the platform and sees in webOS the long-term potential “to improve applications and web services for the next generation of devices.” It doesn’t, however, indicate whether we can expect to see new webOS smartphones from HP in the near future.

It also looks like HP wants to structure the governance model of the new project after Fedora’s example, which is encouraging.

HP will use an open governance model and has looked extensively at Red Hat’s Fedora model. The goal is to be open, but prevent forks. Under the Fedora model, contributions are evaluated by the community.

Comment on this article via Google+.

After several failed attempts to make it big in the mobile marketplace, it looks like WebOS will now be open sourced by HP: The ultimate fate of HP's webOS mobile platform was finally revealed today. The company has announced plans to contribute its operating system to the open source software community. The move will open ...