HP's webOS to be fully open-sourced by September

HP is moving ahead with its plans to open-source webOS and has provided a few details on how the process will develop. According to the company, the mobile operating system will be given to the open source community under an Apache license 2.0, starting with the Enyo object-oriented JavaScript development framework released today.

Like the original framework, it supports WebKit, but version 2.0 also expands compatibility to modern desktop browsers such as Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

Following Enyo 2.0's release this month HP will unveil a project governance model to determine how the open source program is managed, while also releasing Qt-based WebKit browser extensions, the JavaScript engine core, and Enyo widgets that form part of the webOS UI.

The company has set a few other milestones for the next few months, including the Ares 2.0 application development toolkit, Luna system manager and a set of core applications, until September when the full code base of Open webOS 1.0 will be released to the open source community.

HP has previously said there's a great deal of interest from manufacturers on the platform. By making it open source, they are giving it a chance to take off with the help of the open source community, which could have an interesting effect on the market as smartphone manufacturers look to diversify away from Android. Then again, the planned September release timeframe leaves plenty of time for Android, iOS and even Windows Phone to continue grabbing market share while it is also awfully close to Windows 8's arrival on tablets.