[ Thanks to Steven J.
Vaughan-Nichols for this link. ]
“HP first acquired its own Linux distribution bough Palm to get
its hand on webOS. For some reason, a lot of people seemed to think
that Palm was still using its old proprietary operating system,
Palm OS. Nope. WebOS has proprietary extensions but this mobile
device OS with its Linux kernel heart has more in common with
Android and MeeGo than it does with its proprietary
fore-bearers.“HP seems to plan to position webOS as a competitor to those
mobile Linux operating systems. To be exact, rather than just use
it to create a 21st century Palm Pilot or yet another smartphone,
most analysts think HP has its eye on using it in their own
Linux-based iPad competitor. Officially, HP is only saying that
they’re planning on using it for Internet-connected printers.“Somehow, even though printers are still a big part of HP’s
business, I can’t see HP spending over a billion bucks just to add
Internet printing capabilities to their printers when they could do
that by simply incorporating IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) into
their printers for nothing.”