According to The Verge, HP CEO Meg Whitman announced to HP employees that the future of webOS is still unknown. It appears their recent attempts to sell-off the webOS platform has not panned out.

From the article, Meg Whitman is quoted as saying:

“It’s really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision,” she told those gathered with her on the HP campus, adding that a decision would come in the next three to four weeks. […] “If HP decides [to keep webOS], we’re going to do it in a very significant way over a multi-year period,” she said, adding that “it’s a very expensive proposition, but HP can make that bet.”

If HP were to keep webOS, I wonder how they would make that happen. Considering that their TouchPad sales were only seen as successful after they dropped the price to $99, I don’t hold too much faith in webOS with HP still at the helm.

It appears HP is leaning towards selling off the webOS unit, instead of keeping it in-house or open sourcing the platform. From Reuters:

Hewlett-Packard Co is evaluating a potential sale of its webOS software platform in a deal that could fetch hundreds of millions of dollars but likely less than the $1.2 billion the company paid for Palm Inc in 2010, said four sources close to the matter.

The article asserts that multiple companies have shown interest in purchasing webOS, with the aim of gaining patents rather than continuing to extend the platform.

While HP has made it known that they will continue to be in the PC business, they have been less vocal on the future of webOS. Ina Fried from AllThingsD posted an interesting look at some of HP’s options, but also offered the following gem:

One interesting option — one that has circulated within HP, though has yet to win favor — is to simply give away webOS and its developer tools to the community, allowing it to be an open source alternative for mobile (and potentially other) devices.

I wonder how this would work from a patent/litigation perspective. If HP were to maintain ownership and control of webOS—hence control what goes into the main branch—they could fend off potential lawsuits by filtering user submissions.