There are reports doing the rounds suggesting that Google might be poaching HP’s team working on Enyo, which is a webOS HTML5 based framework that debuted on the TouchPad. The news puts a huge question mark on the future of the ‘Open webOS’ project that HP had promised.
HP is working on a project to make the webOS software an open source platform and the Enyo team is supposed to be a team at the centre of the development of the project. As per HP’s strategy, they are supposed to offer version 1 by late 2012.
Also when it comes to the team’s move to Google it is unclear right now as to which team these guys would be a part of. With Android’s design Chief Matias Duarte having been previously associated with Palm during its Pre launch, there is a chance that the Enyo team might be a part of the Android development platform. The webOS platform though not highly successful, is considered to be an innovative platform and there is surely a thing or two for Android to learn and adopt from it.
Besides the team can also be part of the Chrome group, where web apps (read HTML5 based apps) are central to its development, which is exactly what the Enyo team’s core functioning at HP was. It’s also believed that though it’s not the entire team that’s leaving HP, Matt McNulty who led the Enyo team along with its core developers responsible for the entire coding for the platform will be leaving.
HP has not commented on these rumors but has reaffirmed their commitment to the Open webOS project and reassured that the project is on schedule. There has been no official statement from Google on this front as well.
