HP Looking For webOS Developers In Hiring Spree

When HP announced that webOS would become an open-source platform, the company stated that it would be an "active participant and investor in the project," and it looks to be keeping its word. The Powerbase has found more than 50 job postings at HP looking for developers in Sunnyvale, California and Shanghai to work on webOS and Enyo, the operating system's HTML5-based application framework. The positions range from internships to both senior designers and engineers.

With Open webOS finally reaching version 1.0 and even making an appearance on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus development of the operating system seems to be moving in the right direction. It's important to note, however, that many members of the original Enyo team left earlier this year to work for Google, so the company may just be looking to fill the gaps that resulted from the departure. At this point, the future is still unclear for webOS, but it's obvious that HP hasn't given up on the operating system despite its history of uncertainties.

Personally I'd like to see Jason Robitaille @Jaycanuck apply and be accepted. I have followed this guy since I first fell in love with webOS in 2009. This guy is one of the most amazing Homebrew developers I have ever followed. 

Update: seems there are rules that against that

Google Snags The webOS Enyo Team

At one time the Enyo app framework was supposed to help webOS run faster and on a wider variety of devices, but as HP continues to struggle, reports have surfaced from The Verge and AllThingsD that much of the team behind it, including leader Matthew McNulty, has been hired away by Google. Numbering a half dozen or so, the immediate danger is the effect this might have on HP's efforts to open source webOS, but in a statement the company indicated it remains on track and will stick to the roadmap it announced in January. Less clear is what these employees might end up working on for Google, although Enyo's focus on web apps and HTML5 suggests the possibility they'll end up working on ChromeOS projects.

Jason Robitaille Joining Enyo Team

Homebrew extraordinaire Jason Robitaille, the creator of webOS Quick Install, Comic Shelf (and its big sibling, Comic Shelf HD), Internalz, Internalz Pro, and many other apps, dozens of patches, and several homebrew services, will soon be joining the Enyo team in sunny San Francisco for the summer as their intern, he announced today on his Twitter account. The move is unsurprising, given his active participation in the community and numerous recent contributions to the open source Enyo project.

Jason's ability to work with the Enyo team came following the herculean recruiting efforts of Matt McNulty, the Senior Director of Frameworks and Tools at HP, more simply known as the head of the Enyo team. As a Canadian citizen, Jason required more than just the typical human resources visits to hire. McNulty did everything he had to do to ensure that Jason would be able to get the necessary documents from the US State Department to work and live in California, which is neither trivial nor quick.

Jason has told us that he will be starting later this month, May 14th to be precise, and that his internship will last roughly three months, ending in early August. We look forward to seeing what contributions he can make to Enyo 2.2, which is currently scheduled for release in July. We wish him the best of luck and we hope he can take with him some great knowledge, excellent memories, and perhaps even an offer for a job after he graduates. We expect he will enjoy working with the great group of folks over in the Enyo team and home he enjoys his time in San Francisco - after all we could use a guy like him at HP helping mold Enyo into a better framework and Open webOS into a better operating system with the community truly in mind.

Enyo 2.0 Beta 3 Release Now Live With Improvements

Less than a month after the release of the Enyo 2.0 beta 2, beta numero 3 is now out, bringing bug fixes, core improvements, and some new user interface elements.

The Onyx user interface style (heavily-influenced visually by but not code-based-on the Enyo 1.0 UI) has gain a new set of sliders and progress bars. There's the basic slider, which can come with or without a "this much" blue fill from zero. There are also two sets of progress meters - the standard progress bar, and a progress button. Both have the option of including stationary or moving diagonal stripes (the moving one making it seem like it's loading faster, or at least working when you've got a larger action to complete), or just a plain gradient. The progress buttons are taller vertically and include an X button to kill the action. As with the Enyo 2.0 beta 2, these UI widgets (and the framework as a whole) are fully open source and support all browsers, not just WebKit.

Open webOS 1.0 And Enyo 2.0 Revised Dream's

In 2009 the dream of webOS and the Palm Pre was a successful web-based mobile platform with full-featured apps built with web code. It was an ambitious dream, but it came packaged with a flawed plan and debilitating lack of resources. The idea of building apps with just HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and a sprinkling of custom code seemed so obvious and yet something that nobody had yet grasped.

There's a reason nobody had yet grasped it - it's not easy. Sure, programming in HTML isn't exactly rocket surgery, but building an OS to support solely those apps is a more difficult proposition. It took webOS a while to get its footing, too long, in fact.

Today the dream has been revised. webOS is still at its core based on web technologies, but the dream is of those web-coded apps being everywhere and breeding success back down to the to-be-open-sourced webOS. Today's open sourcing of the Enyo application framework was the first of many steps to fulfilling that dream, and it's a pretty big one. It didn't take long after the announcement for Enyo-based apps to find their way into our browsers and other platforms, and we imagine that's just going to be the beginning. There are plenty of well-built Enyo apps that we're certain developers will be excited to be able to bring to other platforms without much effort (at least compared to the effort of completely rewriting the app for other platforms).

Today was really all about Enyo. Having the roadmap for the webOS open source release is great and all, but it's just to set expectations. We now know what we can look forward to in the coming months (ha, gotcha!), but at least in our estimation the most interesting item on the list was the very last one in September 2012: Open webOS 1.0.

This is not HP going back and pulling webOS 1.0 out of the vaults and open sourcing it. Nor is this HP dialing down the version number on 3.0 and shoving it out to the public. As we discussed last month after HP's announcement of their open source plans, there's plenty of work to be done with regards to open sourcing webOS. And today we got a glimpse at some of that work, such as adopting the standard Linux kernel for distribution onto more devices with better driver support and switching to JavaScriptCore over V8. These changes weren't just made with "going open" as a concern, in fact we wouldn't say that was a concern at all, though certainly a nice bonus as a result. The idea behind these changes (and likely plenty more to come) was to make webOS hardware agnostic - more like Linux and Android.

The revised dream is that by making webOS a new alternative to Android they might be able to pick up some marketshare in the process, making it easier to justify bringing back webOS hardware from HP. That's part of why HP's reseting the version counter to 1.0, and maybe pulling off a rename here to Open webOS (though personally we're still likely to just call it webOS if that's the case).

That's the dream. Now if that will be the reality, that remains to be seen. But at least today's news not only puts us a step closer, but also makes it an actual possibility. An open source application framework is one step, but we have to hope that Open webOS 1.0 takes massive leaps ahead, because that's exactly what the competition is going to be doing too

HP to Keep webOS, Make it Open Source

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 9, 2011 – HP today announced it will contribute the webOS software to the open source community.

HP plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS. By combining the innovative webOS platform with the development power of the open source community, there is the opportunity to significantly improve applications and web services for the next generation of devices.

webOS offers a number of benefits to the entire ecosystem of web applications. For developers, applications can be easily built using standard web technologies. In addition, its single integrated stack offers multiplatform portability. For device manufacturers, it provides a single web-centric platform to run across multiple devices. As a result, the end user benefits from a fast, immersive user experience.

webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable,‖ said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. ―By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.‖

HP will make the underlying code of webOS available under an open source license. Developers, partners, HP engineers and other hardware manufacturers can deliver ongoing enhancements and new versions into the marketplace.

HP will engage the open source community to help define the charter of the open source project under a set of operating principles: The goal of the project is to accelerate the open development of the webOS platform

• HP will be an active participant and investor in the project

• Good, transparent and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation

• Software will be provided as a pure open source project

HP also will contribute ENYO, the application framework for webOS, to the community in the near future along with a plan for the remaining components of the user space.

Beginning today, developers and customers are invited to provide input and suggestions at http://developer.palm.com/blog/.