It's been a tough old time for HP and its webOS operating system. From snagging a number one spot in T3's Hot 100 Gadgets in 2010 with the Palm Pre, to a four-star review of its recently deceased TouchPad tablet, HP has since scrapped both gadgets and bid farewell to its proprietary OS as well. But hope springs eternal, at least for HP's presumably dwindling fanbase, as the company has announced that webOS will ride again - this time as open source software that anyone with the patience and requisite coding knowledge can tinker with.

"webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable." Said HP CEO Meg Whitman in a statement released by the company. "By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices."

HP also pledge to continue supporting the webOS software now that it's in the hands of the open source community, saying that it will be "an active participant and investor in the project", while the goal of making webOS open source is to "accelerate the open development of the webOS platform."