News from HP - the open version of WebOS will not support older devices

Company Hewlett Packard has made several important statements regarding the operating system, WebOS, which in his time with the company bought a Palm. In particular, HP plans to release a new version of the operating system open source. Ready to review those components of the future of an open system, as manager of Luna, as well as key applications, including e-mail client, a utility for working with contacts, calendar and notepad to take notes. The bad news is that the public version of the Open WebOS will be compatible with products such HP, as a tablet HP TouchPad, and the HP Pre smartphones and HP Veer.

As it turns out, refusal to support the new operating system on older hardware has a very obvious reasons. The fact that licensing the source code of the operating system with open access directly conflicts with the use of some hardware components in an earlier product HP. TouchPad Tablet PC and other devices have already been released based on WebOS contain equipment for which the necessary closed software components, and their public counterparts will not be easy to create a variety of reasons the legal and technical issues. Thus, the open platform WebOS just can not get open-source drivers for the graphics accelerator and network equipment.

Among other things, mentioned smartphones and Tablet HP does not support the latest kernel Linux, and Open WebOS new system will be designed for the platform with the kernel Linux 3.3 and newer versions. As a result, if you were hoping to get a software upgrade to the tablet HP TouchPad WebOS 3.0.5 from version to version Open WebOS, would be long, if at all worth it.

Of course, we can not exclude that independent developers will create a special build Open WebOS for use in tablets TouchPad, but the probability of this is extremely low, because the attractiveness of this platform has not been evaluated before the end of potential customers. Perhaps it makes sense to install an operating system Android in tablet TouchPad, although the camera at the same time will not work.

Theoretically, HP can still release new smartphones and tablets have the new version of Open WebOS. At the same time, the market situation would not really changed since then, both because of shockingly low sales continued production models TouchPad, Pre and Veer has been discontinued. On the other hand, now from HP, as air, we need breakthrough solutions that will literally turn the market, as it managed to make an Apple with its iPhone and iPad. In the current situation, it seems, HP will try to convince other manufacturers to do products based on Open WebOS - those who now uses a system Android. Also, it is likely release a special version of Open WebOS from independent developers to run on devices such as Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the Nokia N9.