HP Releases Two Beta Versions of Open-Source WebOS

Hewlett-Packard released two beta versions of its open source webOS on Friday: one for developers that runs on the Ubuntu Linux desktop, and one for the "OpenEmbedded" development environment, intended to help developers port webOS to new devices. The August Edition, as the webOS team calls the latest release on the project website, consists of 45 open source webOS components and 450,000 lines of code. The two versions were released under the Apache 2.0 license, which is one of the most liberal and accepted in the open source community.

The beta desktop build includes a version of the webOS System Manager that will run as an application on the Ubuntu desktop. System Manager's functions include rendering the webOS Card View, Launcher, Status Bar and other user interface elements. Core webOS applications such as Calendar and Contacts run within System Manager, and the new version also supports apps built with the third party JavaScript framework Enyo.