Last year HP released the TouchPad tablet but quickly announced they were going to discontinue the device along with its webOS smartphones, which led to a fire sale across the world with the TouchPad quickly selling out at all stockists. Now we have news of the webOS 3.0.5 source code for the HP TouchPad.

The company has already revealed its plans to turn the webOS operating system into an open source software for running on smartphones and tablet PCs, but at first this was for future versions of the operating system, and now according to a report on liliputing the company has revealed plans to make available extra parts of webOS 3.0.5 as open source software.

This could allow independent developers to further enhance the operating system software that is already available for the HP TouchPad device. The company is looking to get the source code ready around June this year, and is also rebranding the open source components of webOS 3.0.5 as the webOS Community Edition.

As it is being explained by WebOS Nation the reason behind this decision in releasing components over the entire source code, is because webOS features proprietary software from other companies that HP has no rights to make available.

Hackers have still been able to develop custom kernels, over clock, and other alterations to the HP TouchPad and other devices using webOS, without the source code. Once HP makes even more of the code available it will be interesting to see what other changes can be made to the tablet PCs software.

Meanwhile it is being reported that HP pulled the plug on Palm’s webOS early as the company had only owned the handset maker for around sixteen months before the decision was made. Former HP chief Phil McKinney revealed the information, and as Cnet are reporting the company originally planned to give the Palm team 3 years to develop the operating system, and make the hardware successful.

Do you have an HP TouchPad?