To start with, HP has released an updated, open source version of its Enyo developer tools and plans to deliver Open webOS by September. The company published a roadmap (see below) detailing its plans to release different components of the software, including key apps and its Linux kernel, over the coming months.

“This is a decisive step toward meeting our goal of accelerating the platform’s development and ensuring that its benefits will be delivered to the entire ecosystem of Web applications,” newly minted Chief Strategy Officer Bill Veghte said in a statement.

Of course, the big question now is how much interest there is outside HP in using the operating system.

Last year, Zynga hired Electronic Arts’ COO John Schappert, who now holds the same title at the social games company. It also picked up EA Play’s EVP Jeff Karp, who is now Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer.

Most recently, Cottle was overseeing EA Mobile, Playfish, Pogo, Hasbro and PopCap, and had been one of the key driving forces behind transforming the company from primarily a packaged goods company to a digital company.

At Zynga, Cottle will serve as EVP of business and corporate development in charge of new global partnerships, acquisitions and other development roles.

In a letter sent to employees today, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello downplayed the departure of Cottle, and said it was going to fold EA Interactive into the entire organization now that “everyone and everything is digital.”

Four years ago, when it originally set up EA Interactive, it was to oversee mobile, social and Pogo, he explained. But today, those initiatives are part of every group within the company.

“It’s abundantly clear that the digital transformation is not confined to one group,” he wrote. “Therefore, we have decided to begin 2012 by folding EAi into the organizations noted below. This reflects our new reality: everyone and everything is digital.”

Executives now leading the charge include EA Labels President Frank Gibeau, COO Peter Moore, CTO Rajat Taneja and EVP of digital Kristian Segerstrale.

Riccitiello provided further evidence of EA’s digital transformation by announcing that the company had achieved more than $1 billion in digital revenues in 2011.

The loss of another high-profile executive to Zynga represents a signficant blow to the company, which has been clear about its attempt to challenge Zynga’s dominance in social gaming. Last year, it paid $750 million to acquire PopCap to become the second-largest social game maker on Facebook.

Cottle, who was at EA for the past five years, previously worked at Palm, where he held the position of COO, and at the Walt Disney Company, where he was he was an SVP and chief marketing officer.

“It’s rare that you find someone who possesses a deep operational background and also has the vision to see where your business and your industry are headed,” said Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus in a release. “His skill set, combined with his deep understanding of the games, technology and entertainment spaces will help us accelerate our mission of connecting the world through games.”

And though the immediate question over whether or not HP would ultimately keep the platform or sell it to someone else is now answered, it was clear from talking with Whitman and Andreessen that there are still a lot of issues to sort out. There are questions about business models, how to work with outside developers, hardware manufacturers, and even over how many people will keep their jobs.

It’s also notable that Andreessen was on hand because of his history with open source projects. As the creator of the Netscape Web browser, Andreessen was there for that company’s much-remembered IPO, its acquisition by AOL, and the transformation of the Netscape browser into an open source project now called Mozilla, which produces the popular browser Firefox.

My first question was about what kind of contribution — both financial and otherwise — HP is prepared to make to this new open source project.

AllThingsD: Meg, do you have any thoughts on how much you’re going to contribute to this webOS effort in terms of money and people at this point?

Whitman: I won’t give you a dollar number but I will tell you that it will be a substantial software investment but it will not break the bank at HP. This is a wonderful asset, actually, but what I was telling employees this morning is you’re a start-up now. You’re a start-up with a number of people, 750,000 installed devices out there, and with your first venture capitalist, and that’s HP. And let’s go figure out how to change the world out there.

The thought that it’s now a start-up makes me want to turn to you, Marc, and ask, what do you think of that?

Andreessen: I’ve been lucky enough to have been involved in a number of what I think have turned out to be very successful open sourcing projects that are a lot like this. And of course the big one that I was in the middle of was the transition from Netscape to Mozilla, which is not a perfect analogy but there are a lot of similarities and that just turned out marvelously well. And then obviously Linux has been a huge transformative force in the industry in the last 10 years, and both Linux as an open source project and Red Hat as a business have been spectacular. So we live in a world now where open source now, unlike 10 or 15 years ago, is mainstream, it’s widely accepted, it’s widely adopted, it’s trusted, enterprises are willing to bet on it, hardware companies are willing to bet on it, and chip companies build it into their plants from day one. So I think we have a real opportunity to have something really special happen.

Meg, in looking back to before your time as CEO when there was a plan to have webOS on printers and all the consumer PCs. Will there be any changes to those plans?

Whitman: I think we’ve got to walk before we run here. And let’s see what form webOS takes. In 2012 as you know we’re bringing two Windows 8 tablets to the market, we’re excited about that, we’re going to be working with them [Microsoft] constructively, but there may be an opportunity in 2013 to think of a different device, maybe come back to tablets. Let’s just see how it goes, but obviously HP would be one of the likely suspect hardware manufacturers for webOS.

So you’re not closing the door entirely to hardware down the road, just not right away?

Whitman: In all likelihood, not in 2012. The 2012 road map is already done.

One thing that comes to mind is that, based on our reporting, there may be headcount reductions in webOS at some point. Can you give us any clarity on that?

Whitman: I can’t. We have released no numbers on that and the reason is we don’t know. I’d tell you if I knew, but we don’t know. We’ve got to get a business plan, a product road map, a business model that we think will work, and decide how we’re going to engage with other hardware manufacturers, how we’re going to engage the open source community and that will determine ultimately the types and numbers of people.

The company is hanging on to the mobile operating system, according to multiple sources, but will submit it to the open source community. HP plans to make the source code available to software developers under an open source arrangement, which will give other hardware manufacturers the ability to work with it.

While the company isn’t necessarily going to announce any layoffs today, the effort will no doubt result in a smaller webOS team going forward, sources said. And whatever cuts happen, whether they get announced today or at a date in the near future, they would come on top of the 500 people already cut from the webOS division earlier this year.

The move marks yet another twist and turn in the saga of what once was Palm, a pioneer in the handheld computing arena. The company has had more lives than a cat already, having been part of U.S. Robotics, then 3Com, then spun off as a public company, split into parts, reborn under Jon Rubinstein and then sold to HP.

HP announced earlier this year it was killing off the hardware part of the webOS business and exploring alternatives for the software. When Meg Whitman took the helm she said she would take another look at things.

A few weeks back she held a meeting to tell staff that there was nothing yet to announce and then later promised a decision was coming before Christmas. And, well, now here it is, though whether webOS will really make a mark or just fade into obscurity remains an open question.

HP has already taken a massive write-down related to its $1.2 billion purchase of Palm in 2010.

Expectations were running high for the future of the platform at HP under prior CEOs Mark Hurd and Léo Apotheker. On Apotheker’s watch, the company launched the TouchPad tablet over the summer only to kill it and the entire webOS hardware business after sales failed to gain traction with consumers. The last TouchPads are now the subject of a fire sale on eBay.

(Update: And the official release is now out.)

HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

HP to enable creativity of the community to accelerate the next-generation web-centric platform

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 9, 2011 – HP today announced it will contribute the webOS software to the open source community.

HP plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS. By combining the innovative webOS platform with the development power of the open source community, there is the opportunity to significantly improve applications and web services for the next generation of devices.

webOS offers a number of benefits to the entire ecosystem of web applications. For developers, applications can be easily built using standard web technologies. In addition, its single integrated stack offers multiplatform portability. For device manufacturers, it provides a single web-centric platform to run across multiple devices. As a result, the end user benefits from a fast, immersive user experience.

―webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable,‖ said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. ―By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.‖

HP will make the underlying code of webOS available under an open source license. Developers, partners, HP engineers and other hardware manufacturers can deliver ongoing enhancements and new versions into the marketplace.

HP will engage the open source community to help define the charter of the open source project under a set of operating principles: The goal of the project is to accelerate the open development of the webOS platform

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HP will be an active participant and investor in the project

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Good, transparent and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation

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Software will be provided as a pure open source project

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HP also will contribute ENYO, the application framework for webOS, to the community in the near future along with a plan for the remaining components of the user space.

Beginning today, developers and customers are invited to provide input and suggestions at http://developer.palm.com/blog/.

Kleiner Perkins has nabbed former Twitter engineering head Mike Abbott, who left the social communications company less than two months ago to be an entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital.

(Well, that didn’t last long, Mike, but maybe the food was better at 2750 Sand Hill Road than at 2480 Sand Hill Road.)

In an interview this morning, Abbott said that he hopes to stay a VC for 20 years (yipes!), since it allows him to work closely with a wide range of entrepreneurs and also get a broad view across a spectrum of businesses.

“I am really energized about what’s been happening in a lot of places like software,” he said. “From my experience, I think I bring a lot of differentiation for the companies Kleiner is invested in.”

And tech cred too. “We think engineers will be thrilled to have access to Mike and he’s a magnet for talent,” said Kleiner partner Ted Schlein, who compared him to all the comic-book heroes, The Avengers, in one person. “Mike is multi-faceted.”

Abbott was indeed a high-profile hire for Twitter a little over a year ago from Palm, where he served as head of its software and services, in charge of its webOS mobile platform.

He was brought in to provide a level of discipline and reliability to the Twitter communications platform and service, which had been plagued by persistent outages that made the Fail Whale infamous.

Abbott will focus on social, mobile and cloud investments at the well-known Silicon Valley venture firm while working on a team that includes high-profile players Mary Meeker and Bing Gordon.

Here’s the official press release:

Michael Abbott Joins Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as Partner

Engineering Leader to Help Social, Mobile and Cloud Entrepreneurs Build Teams and Ventures

MENLO PARK, Calif., December 1, 2011 – Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) today announced that Mike Abbott, former vice president of engineering at Twitter, has joined the firm as a partner on its digital team. Abbott led the building of innovative, high-performance applications and services at Twitter, Palm and Microsoft. With a deep background in social and mobile applications and infrastructure, Mike is also an expert in enterprise infrastructure and cloud computing and “big data” businesses, having founded Composite Software, and advised Cloudera and Jawbone.

“I’m excited to join KPCB’s partners to build new ventures faster,” said Abbott. “The partner mix of founders, operators and investors is ideal for entrepreneurs racing to scale at this disruptive time.”

“Mike is an exceptional and well-respected leader with an outstanding track record shipping great products,” said Ted Schlein, partner, KPCB. “Mike’s deep expertise from Palm and Twitter will help social, mobile and cloud entrepreneurs win.”

Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, said, “Mike is a huge engineering talent and will be a terrific asset to Kleiner’s technology companies. He was instrumental in helping us scale Twitter’s architecture to support incredible growth ̶ from 100 million daily Tweets in January 2011 to about 250 million daily tweets today.”

In less than a year and a half, Abbott grew the Twitter engineering team from 80 to more than 350 engineers in an intensely competitive recruiting market. Abbott’s team rebuilt and solidified Twitter’s infrastructure. Prior to joining Twitter in 2010, Abbott led the software development team at Palm that created HP/Palm’s next-generation webOS platform. Abbott was previously the general manager at Microsoft for .NET online services, which became Azure. Prior to that, he co-founded Passenger Inc. and founded Composite Software. Abbott has advised and invested in numerous software companies such as Cloudera, Hearsay Labs, Saynow and Jawbone.

Mike Abbott is just the third senior KPCB partner added in three years, joining Bing Gordon and Mary Meeker, each with exceptional records serving mobile, social and cloud entrepreneurs. KPCB’s digital team also bolstered its infrastructure expertise with the recent addition of Ray Bradford from Amazon Web Services, where he helped grow the company’s cloud database business.

HP investors, grab your Mylanta …

HP spent $1.2 billion to buy Palm in 2010. Reporting fourth-quarter earnings Monday, the company said it had been forced to write off a record $3.3 billion, about half of which was “related to the wind down of its webOS device business.”

From HP’s earnings statement:

Non-GAAP earnings and operating profit information excludes after-tax costs of $3.3 billion, or $1.56 per diluted share, related to the wind down of HP’s webOS device business, impairment of goodwill and purchased intangible assets, amortization of purchased intangible assets, restructuring charges and acquisition-related charges.

Update: I originally read that list of items as all connected to webOS, but the related expenses seem to break out like so: $885 million from the “impairment of goodwill and purchased intangible assets” was largely tied to webOS and Palm, and $775 million in one-time charges were related to the wind down.

So $1.66 billion to wind down webOS, the crown jewel of HP’s Palm acquisition. That was $1.2 billion well spent …

Hewlett-Packard called an all-hands meeting Tuesday to tell the unit’s workers that it still doesn’t know what it is going to do with webOS, a source told AllThingsD.

According to The Verge, HP CEO Meg Whitman told employees that a decision is still some three to four weeks away.

“It’s really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision,” Whitman said, according to The Verge. “If HP decides to do this (keep webOS), we’re going to do it in a very significant way, over a multiyear period.”

An HP representative told AllThingsD the company had nothing to announce.

As we’ve noted, the company doesn’t really have any easy answers. Most of the would-be buyers have said privately or publicly (and presumably to HP, as well) that they are not interested. The OS, though praised for its interface, has suffered from neglect under current and past management, while rivals like Apple, Google and even Microsoft are moving full speed ahead.

Previous CEO Léo Apotheker had made the call to ax the webOS hardware, pursue strategic alternatives for the software and sell the PC business. Last month, Whitman said HP would keep the PC business, but also said the company had yet to finalize its plans for webOS.

HP acquired the unit with its billion-dollar-plus acquisition of Palm and at one point talked of putting the OS on every PC and on many of the printers it sells, not to mention cellphones and tablets.

I’m checking in with sources, and hope to have a bit more soon, though clearly there isn’t much new to say here.