You may remember a while back that HP announced their intentions to eventually make the webOS platform open source.
At the time they said that it would only be future versions of webOS that would be open source. However, HP has announced plans to release additional parts of version 3.0.5, which already features on the company’s TouchPad. It’s thought that by doing this it will allow independent developers the chance to further tweak the operating system already running on the device.
HP expects to have the source code for 3.0.5 ready by June time this year, along with rebranding the source components of webOS 3.0.5 as webOS Community Edition.
The reason why HP is only releasing certain components instead of all the source code is because version 3.0.5 of webOS contains proprietary software from other software companies, which HP does not have the rights to publish.
It’s no secret though that developers have already been hacking the OS even before its conversion to open source – we’ve already heard of custom kernels for the TouchPad, and others who have successfully overclocked the device amongst other things.
Anyway, if you happen to be a developer and are keen on contributing to the webOS Community Edition, there’s only a couple months left before you’ll be able to do just that.
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