By Sudarshana Banerjee

What do you do when you are a Fortune 500 company with an operating system to spare? Contribute the source code to the open source community, of course.

HP has announced that it will contribute its webOS software to the open source community. HP says it plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS; the complete opposite of what its former CEO Leo Apothekar had proposed a while back.

“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 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.

Check this out for more info.