Just when you thought Hewlett Packard's webOS was done for, the little operating system lives to fight another day. HP has promised to make more tablets with the webOS system with the software actually going the open source route like Google's Android.

Hewlett Packard's CEO Meg Whitman told the Verge that the company will make a new webOS device but it will take some time before the new tablets reach the market.

When asked if HP plans to make more webOS devices, she answered, "The answer to that is yes, but what I can't tell you is whether that will be in 2012 or not. But we will use webOS in new hardware, but it's just going to take us a little longer to reorganize the team in a quite different direction than we've been taking it in the past."

Whitman also said that HP will focus on tablets instead of smartphones for future webOS devices. She didn't delve into any details about the tablets but did say that the company would run it like a start-up with a four or five-year timeframe.

HP had previously said that it would be abandoning making tablets and the webOS platform. The company slashed the price of its poorly performing tablet, the TouchPad to $99. The discounted tablet sold out immediately.

HP's webOS system had been largely considered dead in the water with rumors that HP would sell the operating system it bought from Palm. Meg Whitman stayed the executioner's axe when she said on Friday that the OS will go open sourced.

The move to make webOS an open source offering could be last chance for the plucky OS. But in order for it to succeed the OS has to overcome some tremendous odds against it. Open source works for Google's Android or Mozilla's Firefox because they have backers that continue to support the platforms. HP doesn't have the same support for webOS as Google does for Android. Of course the webOS can always survive as a niche platform but it will survive like Linux does as desktop OS, a platform that has a great attraction for die-hard fans but small in comparison to Microsoft or Apple.