WebOS Chief Architect Also Leaves HP

It's another Palm/webOS-based departure from HP, this time the company's webOS chief architect. Ouch.

The Verge reports that HP's Brian Hernacki, who recently served as chief architect for webOS, has left the company.

Hernacki follows former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein who resigned from HP last week after serving as a "product innovator" since his company's acquisition back in 2010. As of this writing, Hernacki has not released a public statement regarding his departure. It's also unknown if Hernacki left HP on his own accord, or was let go as part of the reorganization of HP's webOS unit.

From June 2009 to February 2011, Hernacki served as Palm's chief security architect. Before that, he worked at Symantec for six years as a researcher and architect. He also served as a software engineer for Netscape Communications from January 1996 to April 2000. Currently his LinkedIn profile still lists him as HP's chief architect for webOS despite Tuesday's report.

News of the two Palm-based departures follows the announcement of HP's plans to make webOS open-source. Just last week the company revealed its roadmap for releasing webOS to the developer community, claiming that webOS in its entirety will be unleashed by September. The company began the rollout this month by releasing Enyo 2.0 and the Enyo source code.

"Enyo 2.0 enables developers to write a single application that works across mobile devices and desktop web browsers, from the webOS, iOS and Android platforms to the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers -- and more," HP said in a press release. "The source code for Enyo is available today, giving the open source community immediate access to the acclaimed application framework for webOS."

Former Palm CEO Rubinstein, after leaving HP last week, said that he plans to move on to bigger, better things. "I am going to take a well deserved break after four and a half years of developing webOS," he said. Later he admitted that his leave had been in the works even before HP acquired Palm for $1.2 billion nearly two years ago.

The departure of Hernacki and Rubenstein also follows Richard Kerris, the former head of webOS developer relations, who exited the HP scene back in October 2011. Kerris now works for Nokia as the company's Global Head of Developer Relations. That said, are ex-Palm employees now jumping the HP ship?