After months of waiting, webOS fans finally have a clear answer from HP as to what is happening to their beloved platform. Well, sort of. At today’s “all hands on deck” meeting HP CEO, Meg Whitman, announced that HP will be open sourcing the core webOS source code to everyone from “homebrew developers to a manufacturers”. Essentially, HP is turning webOS into Android, or, a much prettier Android.

More specifically, Meg announced a few key points to keep in mind regarding webOS moving foward, basically saying the company was still committed to webOS, and that by open sourcing the platform will help push webOS into the hearts and minds of developers much more quickly.

Sadly, Meg neglected to mention anything regarding webOS hardware (or if the company would even attempt it in any form again) as well as the hundreds of webOS jobs still in limbo. But hey, at least knowing the platform isn’t dead is something, right?

The open source move will begin with “Enyo” in a few weeks with more chunks of webOS getting the open source treatment as time progresses. HP mentioned that a roadmap was incoming.

As for intelectual property and patents, HP has stated that they will keep all webOS related patents in-house and use them to protect webOS developers moving forward.

Gadgetsteria’s take: We’re happy to see webOS keeping webOS alive, however, we’re worried that the Android approach will allow various parties to fragment webOS into another Android, and somewhat ruin a part of webOS’ uniqueness.