I, like many others had high hopes for WebOS, specially after HP bought it.

I wanted WebOS to succeed (heck, I’m even a registered developer although I never published any app). So the news about HP stopping development of WebOS hardware is sad, sad news. I guess I’ll go back to learning iOS.

In any case, HP is not being the best advocate of their own platform (which they say will continue developing): their latest message to developers - sent via email and posted on their blog - contains no reassuring words or message at all, aside of course from the request for developers to not cancel their plans of attending future developer events.

A comment in the blog post says it all:

Wow. I was really expecting something a little more encouraging. This sounds like a cookie cutter response. Especially in light of Microsoft swooping in to woo webOS developers over to Mango, I really don’t see how any developer would want to continue this “journey” with no clear vision for the future. You just asked developers who need income to feed their families to continue to support a platform for which there will be no hardware. I was half expecting to hear something about “soon we’ll be signing with partner x”. Wow.

By the way, check out Marco Arment’s take on the whole announcement from HP