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The reason I walked away from Chrome a couple of years ago is because of the amount of information it sends to Google. I'm curious to know where Safari stands

The reason I walked away from Chrome a couple of years ago is because of the amount of information it sends to Google. I'm curious to know where Safari stands in that regard: how much and how often does it "call home"? Oh, and also : how much of it is Open Source? In my experience, Apple is particularly good at OpenSourcing lots of pieces while keeping the juicy bits proprietary. Can Safari be 100% rebuilt from source?

latexr 7y ago
Don’t hold me to this, but I think you may be able to build Webkit from source, giving you a functional browser. I think Chromium is to Chrome as Webkit is to Safari. The latter have proprietary code on top of the open-source former.
- bbernoulli 7y ago
  Blink is to Chromium/Chrome as Webkit is to Safari Webkit and blink are browser engines and Chromium/Chrome are both browsers, but Chromium doesn't include the closed source pieces that Chrome does.
  - latexr 7y ago
    > Webkit and blink are browser engines Petty sure Webkit is also a browser you can build and run, like Chromium.
    - floatboth 7y ago
      No, WebKit is an engine. It ships with small demo browsers for some platforms (minibrowser for gtk, at least) but that's it. You might be confused by Apple calling its nightly Safari builds "WebKit technical preview" or whatever. It (used to) show up as "WebKit.app", but it's literally Apple Safari.
      - latexr 7y ago
        > You might be confused by Apple calling its nightly Safari builds "WebKit technical preview" or whatever. It (used to) show up as "WebKit.app", but it's literally Apple Safari. Probably that, yes.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        "Safari" is a proprietary browser that uses WebKit, which is open source. Safari Technology Preview (purple Safari) and WebKit.app (black Safari) are just Safari, but with the WebKit swapped out through various methods. Oh, and MiniBrowser works on macOS as well.
        floatboth 7y ago
        > WebKit.app (black Safari) are just Safari, but with the WebKit swapped out through various methods yes, that's exactly what I said
        saagarjha 7y ago
        You seemed to conflate Safari Technology Preview with the WebKit nightlies, when they are in fact different things and structured differently and used for different things (the former acts much more like a "standalone Safari" than does the latter, which is essentially just the WebKit frameworks loaded in to your existing Safari).
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Chromium is a pretty functional browser in and of itself; WebKit does not ship with this. Pretty much all of Safari's UI is not open source.
saagarjha 7y ago
> Can Safari be 100% rebuilt from source? No. WebKit (the browser engine that Safari uses) is open but the browser UI is not.

latexr 7y ago

Don’t hold me to this, but I think you may be able to build Webkit from source, giving you a functional browser. I think Chromium is to Chrome as Webkit is to Safari. The latter have proprietary code on top of the open-source former.

bbernoulli 7y ago
Blink is to Chromium/Chrome as Webkit is to Safari Webkit and blink are browser engines and Chromium/Chrome are both browsers, but Chromium doesn't include the closed source pieces that Chrome does.
- latexr 7y ago
  > Webkit and blink are browser engines Petty sure Webkit is also a browser you can build and run, like Chromium.
  - floatboth 7y ago
    No, WebKit is an engine. It ships with small demo browsers for some platforms (minibrowser for gtk, at least) but that's it. You might be confused by Apple calling its nightly Safari builds "WebKit technical preview" or whatever. It (used to) show up as "WebKit.app", but it's literally Apple Safari.
    - latexr 7y ago
      > You might be confused by Apple calling its nightly Safari builds "WebKit technical preview" or whatever. It (used to) show up as "WebKit.app", but it's literally Apple Safari. Probably that, yes.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      "Safari" is a proprietary browser that uses WebKit, which is open source. Safari Technology Preview (purple Safari) and WebKit.app (black Safari) are just Safari, but with the WebKit swapped out through various methods. Oh, and MiniBrowser works on macOS as well.
      - floatboth 7y ago
        > WebKit.app (black Safari) are just Safari, but with the WebKit swapped out through various methods yes, that's exactly what I said
        saagarjha 7y ago
        You seemed to conflate Safari Technology Preview with the WebKit nightlies, when they are in fact different things and structured differently and used for different things (the former acts much more like a "standalone Safari" than does the latter, which is essentially just the WebKit frameworks loaded in to your existing Safari).
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Chromium is a pretty functional browser in and of itself; WebKit does not ship with this. Pretty much all of Safari's UI is not open source.

saagarjha 7y ago

> Can Safari be 100% rebuilt from source? No. WebKit (the browser engine that Safari uses) is open but the browser UI is not.