Along with the Open webOS project (which will see HP release components to the community for developing future versions of the mobile OS), HP now says it will provide additional components from the current release of webOS residing on the TouchPad (version 3.0.5). These components will be a separate "Community Edition" and reside at opensource.palm.com. The full stand-alone package should be up for grabs by June.
"We are publishing this legacy code to provide members of our community around the globe the ability to work with legacy devices using the current platform," reports webOS CTO Sam Greenblatt. "One of our core values is that as many components of future and legacy operating systems should be open to the community."
Developers won't get the full webOS 3.0.5 release, as it contains proprietary third-party software that HP can't legally open source. What they will get are portions that fall within open source, though it's so far unclear as to what those portions will be. This separate release is something of a "thank you" for supporting the mobile OS over the years.
"We value the contributions the webOS community has made over the past few years, and hope that this additional release will help you better understand the platform and create a constructive environment for moving forward as Open webOS itself is released," he added.
Greenblatt also made a quick note about the Open webOS release commitments for March, saying that the Linux 3.3 kernel has produced a seventh release candidate that may be ready for release by the end of the month.
"We will stick to our schedule of releasing our abstraction layer and components in the next few days in anticipation of the release of Linux 3.3," he reports. "You should be able to work with it on any standard Linux kernel (e.g., Ubuntu or Debian-based) for now."
