When news began to spread that HP may have shipped TouchPads with Android, the porting teams reached out to the company, asking for the source code -- and the firmware that drives multi-touch and wireless functionality on the device -- based on Android's open source license. Phil Robb, director of HP's open-source program office, responded to the developers claiming that not only did HP not authorize the distribution of Android on the TouchPad tablets, but that HP didn't ship them in the first place, even by mistake.

"We presently believe that some person or persons unknown may have facilitated the delivery of these Android-based units strictly against the policy and authorization of HP," Robb wrote. He went on to ask the Android developer community to provide any information they could offer that would help HP track down the individuals responsible for slipping the Android TouchPads into the distribution.