like AmigaOS, I'm sure WebOS will live on in one form or another as it's still the best mobile OS out there hands down! since HP released it as Open Source Apple and Android have 'borrowed' (cough stolen) various parts of WebOS into their own but still no comparison to the original.
Stolen is a bit harsh in this case i think!
1) WebOS is based on WebKit , which is a fork of KHTML and KJS , originally part of the KDE toolkit. Based on your reckoning that would mean HP "stole" it as well. (I believe the original fork was from Apple) Now webkit is maintained by a consortium of various companies including Apple and Google.
2) HP Fired a ton of engineers a while back. A chunk of these were the engineers that were working on WebOS. This happened when HP ceased development of WebOS and open sourced it. Google hired the team , and allowed them to continue work on it. I see that as a positive step in keeping WebOS alive .
Nick
