The
HP TouchPad maybe an over and done with story as far as HP is concerned, but they still did their best to keep a few secrets inside their servers. After a few TouchPads got shipped out of the warehouse accidently running an experimental build of Android, the community jumped on the chance to get the
kernel source. HP wasn’t having it. Saying it was not something they were ever working on and they don’t know how it happened. Later saying that it was experimental and they would not release the kernel source since the product was never supposed to see the light of day. Well, we know what happens when a company doesn’t cooperate with the Android mafia. With some continued communications and an attorney, the CM team was finally able to get HP to release the kernel source. In addition to the source, HP also released code to androidvncserver and i2c-tools. According to Green, a CM team member, the only missing item is the Wi-Fi driver. He explains a bit of this in a post at RootzWiki:
I did some digging around and it appears that the wifi driver shipped with both webOS and with the Android are GPL, there are multiple evidences of that including the driver licensing string. Plus the driver is linked against 10+ GPLONLy kernel symbols which makes it kernel derivative. HP is still investigating this matter and we hope to hear from them soon.
Green has suspicion that the kernel for Android and the kernel for WebOS were developed by two different teams. There is evidence in the comments in the code to suggest this. Not that it really matters that much to the average user hoping for more CM7 and CM9 on the TouchPad. Green has already indicated that bits and pieces of the code will more than likely make its way to CM9 for the TouchPad. If you want the full scoop from Green, pop on over to RootzWiki and do a little more reading.
Source: RootzWiki via Androidpolice
i almost wet myself when i heard this, this is great news! im so excited