Cynthia Murrell in Big Loss Department: HP Open Sources WebOS points to Neil McAllister’s story, How HP and Open Source Can Save WebOS which says in part:
HP’s press release offers few specifics. We don’t know which open source license (or licenses) it plans to use for WebOS or what form the project’s governance will take. To its credit, HP says it is “committed to good, transparent, and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation of the platform.” What it hasn’t said, however, is how committed it is to ongoing WebOS development.
Unfortunately, the answer might be “not very.” A month ago, HP wasn’t talking about open source; it was trying to sell off its whole Palm division, WebOS and all. Rumored bidders included Intel and Qualcomm. The catch: Any buyer would have had to agree to license WebOS back to HP at a deep discount. It seems HP may only be truly committed to the platform if it can offload the cost of developing and maintaining it.
Yet if that’s what HP hopes to achieve by opening the WebOS source, it’s bound to be disappointed. Most open source projects rely on dedicated developers to set their tone and direction, not casual contributors, and effective management of an active open source community can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.
I mention this as a cautionary tale about commercial products, whose sponsors suddenly “see the light” about open source software and decided to donate software to open source projects.
As the various NoSQL databases and other semantic technologies shake out over the next several years, we are likely to see more “donations” of software products. Which may be a good thing if the donating companies contribute expertise and resources to help make those projects a benefit to the entire community.
On the other hand, donating software products that fracture and drain the resources of the open source community aren’t doing the community any favors.
It would be less distracting if they would simply donate the source code and any relevant patents under an Apache license to a public repository. If there is any benefit to the open source community, someone will pick it up and run with it. If not, the open source community is not the loser.