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Steve Jobs says Apple "created" WebKit. That wording makes it sounds like it started from nothing. But it didn't, WebKit was forked from the KHTML project in

Steve Jobs says Apple "created" WebKit. That wording makes it sounds like it started from nothing. But it didn't, WebKit was forked from the KHTML project in 2002 and later diverged (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webkit#Origins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webkit#Origins). One might say WebKit evolved out of KHTML.

jrockway 16y ago
And it was like pulling teeth to get Apple to contribute their changes back. For a while, IIRC, they claimed bug reports were proprietary information, and they refused to provide them back to the KHTML team. And that was before Apple was evil!
- kragen 16y ago
  Wasn't that still after Apple sued Real Networks for making it possible to put RealAudio stuff onto iPods, in 2005, and called hackers unethical? Real: "Our Harmony technology enables consumers to securely transfer purchased music to digital music devices, including...iPod..." Apple: "We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod, and we are investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCA and other laws." To me, that was the day Apple turned evil.
  - jrockway 16y ago
    For me, it was PT_DENY_ATTACH.
  - benatkin 16y ago
    No, Webkit's been around for longer than that. > The name and project 'WebKit' were created in 2002 when Apple Inc. created a fork of KHTML and KJS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins
rodh257 16y ago
I don't know much about the project itself, but wouldn't web-kit have received contributions from outside of Apple aswell? (perhaps only since 2005 when it was open sourced though)
tumult 16y ago
Maybe you're forgetting some history. When Apple announced Safari, people said it was completely stupid to not choose the Gecko engine. People said that the KHTML engine was totally immature and progressing slowly. Why on earth would you pick KHTML over Gecko? After a fairly huge amount of work on the part of WebKit contributors, you can see that Apple's move was both not stupid and also generous. WebKit development rapidly outstripped every other engine, and it's still on the leading edge today. It's open source software, with a mostly BSD license.
- jbellis 16y ago
  > people said it was completely stupid to not choose the Gecko engine That's not how I remember the reaction of the (few) people familiar with both KHTML and Gecko.
  - pablasso 16y ago
    it would be more helpful if you tell us how you remember it
    - psadauskas 16y ago
      Not the OP, but from what I remember: * Gecko code was a mess and difficult to separate, integrate. KHTML was cleaner, and already intended to be pluggable, just missing some edge-case features. * KDE/KHTML devs had to fight to get Webkit's source opened, and when they finally did, all they got was code dumps that were impossible to integrate back into KHTML It's gotten a lot better, and Apple's Webkit devs have become much more open, but from what I understand, it was a huge ordeal to get them to abide by KHTML's GPL.
      - tumult 16y ago
        WebCore (the actual rendering fundamentals itself) was open source before WebKit (the bigger chunk of code that makes up more of a browser's features). When code was released back to KHTML, it came in big chunks with large changes because WebKit development was being taken in a different direction and at a much higher speed than KHTML. Therefore backporting was extremely difficult, and it seems like the WebKit people were not too eager to spend time documenting all of their changes back against existing KHTML code, so they just dumped out big patches and diffs without much commenting. Some features were backported, but you can see today that WebKit is farther ahead than the KHTML fork, and receives a lot more attention.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Legion 16y ago
>> Steve Jobs says Apple "created" WebKit. That wording makes it sounds like it started from nothing. That wording is also more TechCrunch's than Steve's. Steve's words: > Well Chrome is not... you know. And it's based on webkit, work we did at Apple. > Almost every modern browser is based on webkit... Nokia, Palm, Android, RIM has one... and of course ours. > We've created a real competitor to IE. In the mobile space it's #1. (link: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/01/steve-jobs-live-from-d8/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/01/steve-jobs-live-from-d8/) While that still takes more credit than I'd care to see, "work we did at Apple" definitely is a softer statement than "Apple 'created' WebKit". Even though the word "created" does come up a couple of sentences later...
- tel 16y ago
  "... created a real competitor..." Which I'd have to give to them completely. KHTML wasn't going to compete with IE on its own.
- sireat 16y ago
  "work we did at Apple" is the politicians way of saying that they created it. Compare it to the infamous "I took the initiative in creating ..." To nitpickers like us, they can say that they did not create it, but to a regular reader/listener it sounds like they did.
- dieterrams 16y ago
  After watching some of the video footage, I noticed that Engadget's transcription is often highly paraphrased. So I transcribed directly from one of the D8 videos: Steve: We took a tiny little open source project, and we created what's called "WebKit" out there, and we did an interesting thing for Apple: we put it in open source. So it turns out that he did say they "created" WebKit, but he also points out that it was created using an existing open source project. Turns out this thread was a lot of hubbub over nothing, as I suspected. Unless someone wants to gripe about KHTML being described as "tiny little".
  - nailer 16y ago
    > and we created what's called "WebKit" out there, and we did an interesting thing for Apple: we put it in open source. He's acting like Apple had a choice about the licensing of someone else's work.

jrockway 16y ago

And it was like pulling teeth to get Apple to contribute their changes back. For a while, IIRC, they claimed bug reports were proprietary information, and they refused to provide them back to the KHTML team. And that was before Apple was evil!

kragen 16y ago
Wasn't that still after Apple sued Real Networks for making it possible to put RealAudio stuff onto iPods, in 2005, and called hackers unethical? Real: "Our Harmony technology enables consumers to securely transfer purchased music to digital music devices, including...iPod..." Apple: "We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod, and we are investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCA and other laws." To me, that was the day Apple turned evil.
- jrockway 16y ago
  For me, it was PT_DENY_ATTACH.
- benatkin 16y ago
  No, Webkit's been around for longer than that. > The name and project 'WebKit' were created in 2002 when Apple Inc. created a fork of KHTML and KJS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins

rodh257 16y ago

I don't know much about the project itself, but wouldn't web-kit have received contributions from outside of Apple aswell? (perhaps only since 2005 when it was open sourced though)

tumult 16y ago

Maybe you're forgetting some history. When Apple announced Safari, people said it was completely stupid to not choose the Gecko engine. People said that the KHTML engine was totally immature and progressing slowly. Why on earth would you pick KHTML over Gecko? After a fairly huge amount of work on the part of WebKit contributors, you can see that Apple's move was both not stupid and also generous. WebKit development rapidly outstripped every other engine, and it's still on the leading edge today. It's open source software, with a mostly BSD license.

jbellis 16y ago
> people said it was completely stupid to not choose the Gecko engine That's not how I remember the reaction of the (few) people familiar with both KHTML and Gecko.
- pablasso 16y ago
  it would be more helpful if you tell us how you remember it
  - psadauskas 16y ago
    Not the OP, but from what I remember: * Gecko code was a mess and difficult to separate, integrate. KHTML was cleaner, and already intended to be pluggable, just missing some edge-case features. * KDE/KHTML devs had to fight to get Webkit's source opened, and when they finally did, all they got was code dumps that were impossible to integrate back into KHTML It's gotten a lot better, and Apple's Webkit devs have become much more open, but from what I understand, it was a huge ordeal to get them to abide by KHTML's GPL.
    - tumult 16y ago
      WebCore (the actual rendering fundamentals itself) was open source before WebKit (the bigger chunk of code that makes up more of a browser's features). When code was released back to KHTML, it came in big chunks with large changes because WebKit development was being taken in a different direction and at a much higher speed than KHTML. Therefore backporting was extremely difficult, and it seems like the WebKit people were not too eager to spend time documenting all of their changes back against existing KHTML code, so they just dumped out big patches and diffs without much commenting. Some features were backported, but you can see today that WebKit is farther ahead than the KHTML fork, and receives a lot more attention.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

Legion 16y ago

>> Steve Jobs says Apple "created" WebKit. That wording makes it sounds like it started from nothing. That wording is also more TechCrunch's than Steve's. Steve's words: > Well Chrome is not... you know. And it's based on webkit, work we did at Apple. > Almost every modern browser is based on webkit... Nokia, Palm, Android, RIM has one... and of course ours. > We've created a real competitor to IE. In the mobile space it's #1. (link: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/01/steve-jobs-live-from-d8/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/01/steve-jobs-live-from-d8/) While that still takes more credit than I'd care to see, "work we did at Apple" definitely is a softer statement than "Apple 'created' WebKit". Even though the word "created" does come up a couple of sentences later...

tel 16y ago
"... created a real competitor..." Which I'd have to give to them completely. KHTML wasn't going to compete with IE on its own.
sireat 16y ago
"work we did at Apple" is the politicians way of saying that they created it. Compare it to the infamous "I took the initiative in creating ..." To nitpickers like us, they can say that they did not create it, but to a regular reader/listener it sounds like they did.
dieterrams 16y ago
After watching some of the video footage, I noticed that Engadget's transcription is often highly paraphrased. So I transcribed directly from one of the D8 videos: Steve: We took a tiny little open source project, and we created what's called "WebKit" out there, and we did an interesting thing for Apple: we put it in open source. So it turns out that he did say they "created" WebKit, but he also points out that it was created using an existing open source project. Turns out this thread was a lot of hubbub over nothing, as I suspected. Unless someone wants to gripe about KHTML being described as "tiny little".
- nailer 16y ago
  > and we created what's called "WebKit" out there, and we did an interesting thing for Apple: we put it in open source. He's acting like Apple had a choice about the licensing of someone else's work.