Months after Hewlett-Packard originally announced the open-source version of WebOS, the beta version of the platform is on its way out the door.
Today’s release includes two environments for developers. The first is the laptop construct, which is alleged to give you the ideal development atmosphere for designing the WebOS user experience with more features and integrating different open-source technologies at the Ubuntu pc.
Some of those new features include support for core apps such as Calendar and Contacts as well as third-party Enyo apps.
The second is the OpenEmbedded build for porting WebOS to new devices. It’s equipped with an ARM emulator for running db8 and node.js services, and HP said that it included OpenEmbedded because of its widespread community adoption and cross-compiling support for embedded platforms.
Overall, the beta model of Open WebOS is made out of 54 WebOS elements available as open supply, touted as bringing greater than 450,000 lines of code launched underneath the Apache 2.0 license.
When open-source WebOS was first announced last year, it met with a bit of a negative reaction because of criticisms that HP didn’t have a clear plan for the platform as well as uncertainty about how the platform would affect the mobile spectrum in general.
HP provided a few more details in January, including the news that the first version of the platform would be available by September of 2012.
HP roughly acknowledged in a blog publish the long time it took to push out Open WebOS to developers, citing that it required numerous laborious work, lengthy hours, and weekend sacrifices by way of our engineering workforce to deliver on our promise, and we have now accomplished this purpose.
However, HP didn’t provide a specific date yet for when in September the release of Open WebOS will take place.