Jon Rubinstein, of both Apple and Palm fame, has decided to get the hell out of dodge:
Rubinstein is said to have no immediate plans, and had completed a 12-24 month commitment to stay with HP after the acquisition. “Jon has fulfilled his commitment and we wish him well,” HP spokeswoman Mylene Mangalindan said. In a brief comment to AllThingsD, Rubinstein said, “I am going to take a well deserved break after four and a half years of developing webOS.”
After Léo Apotheker, ex-CEO of HP, essentially killed WebOS, I can imagine Jon wasn’t very happy. While HP’s current CEO, Meg Whitman, is open sourcing WebOS, the project he spent so much time developing isn’t on firm legs.
Of course, Jon is well known for working with Apple and helping to develop the iPod. It’s a shame that such a smart guy and his passion project got wiped out because of terrible management at the top of HP. That said, we’ll probably see something great in the not-too-distant future from Jon. He’s a brilliant guy, and it seems like he has many more years of innovation left in him.
What do you think about his departure? Is WebOS completely dead now? Sound off by leaving a comment below this post. We’re curious about what you think.
Source: All Things D
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Considering how royally HP borked up almost every aspect of their business over the last 1,5 years I can't really say I'm all that surprised over the sad fate of WebOS. And I don't mean that I'm sad over its open sourcing, but rather in that it could have been a truly awesome platform next to iOS.
I suppose the positive of all these negative affairs is that at least the codebase and the technology will be available to all. Perhaps some hardware manufacturer will use it as a means of escaping the patent mess that currently pesters the mobile phone industry, seeing as how HP owns a ton of patents which no other company can do much about.
In all honesty I thought the HP acquisition of Palm would be the best thing since Apple and iOS, but boy was I wrong. Now the main man behind the new Palm isn't even with the company any more. Perhaps he will use his connections and knowledge to try again, using Open WebOS? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
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