"While Android has enjoyed the lime-light of being the "open
source, linux based" mobile platform — and it is all of that
and more, the Palm webOS is heavily invested in Linux technology
and deserves some attention not only on its merits as a viable
mobile platform, but also as a demonstration of a for-profit
company making use of open source technologies. I am no wizard when
it comes to deciphering the differences between the various open
source licensing options so I'll refrain from commenting on which
license they are using, why they are using it, or how well they're
doing as an open source net-izen. I simply haven't taken the time
to research those things and candidly my focus is elsewhere. What I
can see is that webOS is built upon Linux, webkit and many other
open source technologies that are of interest to many. The features
that make webOS a solid platform are enabled by a strong foundation
and innovative, open source technology.
"The development environment for webOS centers around Virtual
Box from Sun, an open source Virtual Machine technology which hosts
the webOS. When the emulator is running you can ssh into it and
navigate the file system. You can even edit files with vi! I did it
just because I could. Here is a quick view into the belly of the
emulator. Note that I believe the same thing can be done with a
real Palm Pre which has been put into development mode:
