webOS 3.0.5 'Community Edition' Released To Open Source

As promised back in March, HP today released to open source some large chunks of webOS 3.0.5 as the new "Community Edition". The Community Edition of webOS is meant for, well, the homebrew community and will enable homebrew developers even deeper (and more legal) access to the webOS source code to make alterations and improvements.

As a sign of how serious HP is about the community aspect of the webOS Community Edition, they actually worked hand-in-hand with the WebOS Internals homebrew group to make this happen. WebOS Internals has put together a team named WebOS Ports dedicated to working with the Community Edition, led by Tom King - though you might know him from his work as ka6sox.

So just what can we expect out of the Community Edition? HP's code releases come from webOS 3.0.5 and as such are geared towards the TouchPad. Among the things the WebOS Ports team (and anybody else, it is open source after all) will be able to tinker with are notifications, the app launcher (hello custom pages), Just Type, and even card view among other things.

We're excited about the potential for the webOS Community Edition. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit in webOS could be fixed, updated, or added thanks to the newly open-sourced code and the WebOS Ports team. Yeah, we're psyched. Just imagine... a TouchPad with a zoomed-out card view, or Just Type with multi-choice actions, or built-in Twitter and Facebook sharing across all apps, or... the possibilities may not be endless, but they are many.

It's worth noting that the webOS Community Edition release and Open webOS are two separate projects. Open webOS is going for the 1.0 version and is an active and ongoing project for HP, while the Community Edition is more of a code dump for the benefit of the community.

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.

webOS 2.2.5 And 3.0.6 Caught In Testing Logs

After HP announced that webOS would be going open source way back in December we honestly thought we would never see another webOS update until the planned September release of Open webOS 1.0. Then, to our surprise, webOS 2.2.4 and 3.0.5 said hello to the world. It wasn't much of an update for Pre3 owners, but Pre 2 users finally received Bluetooth messaging support and Skype voice calling to add to their device's capabilities. Meanwhile the TouchPad gained faster view switching in calendar, IM presence indicators in Email, support for HTTP video streaming, an easy on/off toggle for auto-correct, the ability to insert a period when double-tapping the space bar, and a fistful of bug fixes. Sadly the Veer was still left in the cold and disappointed many owners longing for some Touch-to-Share action.

So we revised our expectations, 2.2.4 and 3.0.5 to be the last updates before Open webOS hits and we maybe see something new pushed over-the-air from HP. Leave it to some Metrix logs to prove us wrong. Our very own Arthur Thornton, of Sparrow and Voice Memos fame, decided to check his logs since he had neglected to do so for a while. And what did he find while checking those logs? Why, four devices using webOS 2.2.5 accessed Voice Memos, two of which turned out to be Pre3s (the other two are unknown at this point). Curiosity piqued, Arthur checked his Metrix logs for Sparrow, discovering that at least one device running webOS 3.0.6 has used the app. Interesting, no?

We've heard nothing from HP to indicate that webOS 2.2.5 or 3.0.6 would ever be coming, but that they're showing up in app logs - even relatively new apps like Sparrow, has us hopeful that they might see a release soon. webOS smartphones and TouchPad are decent with their current OS versions, but we wouldn't say no to the usual bug fixes and speed and battery improvements that are par for the course for a x.x.1 update. And we're sure Veer owners wouldn't mind having Touch-to-Share enabled nearly a year after the phone was released. So keep your fingers crossed webOS faithful, there might be at least one more update to be had from our beloved devices before Open webOS is upon us!

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

Project Macaw Goes Public For webOS

Need proof that there are still awesome things happening in webOS? Then look no further than the newest entrant in the webOS Nation Homebrew Gallery: Project Macaw, a swanky new Twitter client for webOS smartphones and tablets based on the open source Phnx client. Buzz has been building about Macaw for some time now - enough that it was a nominee for best homebrew app in the webOS Nation Best of 2011 Awards. Macaw takes the old Phnx app, a beautiful and fully functional Twitter client in its own right, a step further into awesome territory.

Macaw works on both the TouchPad and webOS smartphones with the same IPK package, though it’s a Mojo app on both so you won’t have any of the fancy sliding panes that trademark Enyo. Both apps have taken a Carbon-style approach to life, arranging your Timeline, Mentions, Messages, Lists, and Search/Trends in a horizontal-swiping fashion. On a smartphone you get a distinctly divided feeling, with each stream taking up the whole screen, while TouchPad users of Macaw will see three independent panels at a time. It’s somewhat like Spaz HD in that respect, but presented in a much more attractive manner, as one would expect from the successor to Phnx.

Despite still be a work-in-progress, Project Macaw still strikes out a position as a fully functional and beautiful Twitter client poised to rock on both the Pre and TouchPad.

Download link