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Apple throws things over the wall after taking it and hiding it. They don't "give back" in any meaningful sense. I'm still bitter at how they murdered KHTML.

by kick 7y ago

Apple throws things over the wall after taking it and hiding it. They don't "give back" in any meaningful sense. I'm still bitter at how they murdered KHTML. (Before someone comments "But KHTML is LGPL!": I know. That's the point. The GPL doesn't have these problems. The LGPL is too weak to be meaningful.)

duskwuff 7y ago
> I'm still bitter at how they murdered KHTML. Murdered? Thanks in large part to the work Apple did to transform KHTML into WebKit, WebKit and its derivatives (like Blink) have utterly dominated the browser marketplace. I have a hard time reconciling your characterization of Apple's action with the facts.
- kick 7y ago
  Murdered. They forked it in a way that couldn't be upstreamed (they waited a year and change before releasing source, when doing so releasing it as undocumented garbage), and made their contributions in a way that allowed it to be closed.
xeeeeeeeeeeenu 7y ago
GPL doesn't forbid forking.
- kick 7y ago
  Safari would have been released as free software if KHTML was GPL.
  - petecox 7y ago
    Apple wouldn't have based a product around it if it were GPL.
    - kick 7y ago
      Which is fine, too! What happened wasn't, though.
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > Which is fine, too! Yes, we know that a certain subset of Free Software zealots prefer preventing non-Free software to promoting Free software. > What happened wasn't, though. Why exactly is the creation of a set of F/OSS browser engine cores which have essentially completely extinguished the proprietary cores to dominate the space not “fine”?
        kick 7y ago
        There were already multiple good libre browser engines: KHTML, Gecko, and (kind of) the Tcl one. Apple forked one in a hostile fashion, and later used it to release proprietary software. A substantial volume of web browsers, including the largest two (Chrome, Safari), are proprietary software, directly because of this. It made the WWW less free, and hurt users.
        ksec 7y ago
        >A substantial volume of web browsers, including the largest two (Chrome, Safari), are proprietary software I guess you are the 0.0001% of the internet who consider Chrome and Safari to be proprietary software, when it has an Open Source version freely available.
        saagarjha 7y ago
        Safari is 100% proprietary and closed source, and certain parts of WebKit are as well. Chrome isn’t completely open source either, though to a lesser extent.

by kick 7y ago

duskwuff 7y ago

> I'm still bitter at how they murdered KHTML. Murdered? Thanks in large part to the work Apple did to transform KHTML into WebKit, WebKit and its derivatives (like Blink) have utterly dominated the browser marketplace. I have a hard time reconciling your characterization of Apple's action with the facts.

kick 7y ago
Murdered. They forked it in a way that couldn't be upstreamed (they waited a year and change before releasing source, when doing so releasing it as undocumented garbage), and made their contributions in a way that allowed it to be closed.

xeeeeeeeeeeenu 7y ago

GPL doesn't forbid forking.

kick 7y ago
Safari would have been released as free software if KHTML was GPL.
- petecox 7y ago
  Apple wouldn't have based a product around it if it were GPL.
  - kick 7y ago
    Which is fine, too! What happened wasn't, though.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > Which is fine, too! Yes, we know that a certain subset of Free Software zealots prefer preventing non-Free software to promoting Free software. > What happened wasn't, though. Why exactly is the creation of a set of F/OSS browser engine cores which have essentially completely extinguished the proprietary cores to dominate the space not “fine”?
      - kick 7y ago
        There were already multiple good libre browser engines: KHTML, Gecko, and (kind of) the Tcl one. Apple forked one in a hostile fashion, and later used it to release proprietary software. A substantial volume of web browsers, including the largest two (Chrome, Safari), are proprietary software, directly because of this. It made the WWW less free, and hurt users.
        ksec 7y ago
        >A substantial volume of web browsers, including the largest two (Chrome, Safari), are proprietary software I guess you are the 0.0001% of the internet who consider Chrome and Safari to be proprietary software, when it has an Open Source version freely available.
        saagarjha 7y ago
        Safari is 100% proprietary and closed source, and certain parts of WebKit are as well. Chrome isn’t completely open source either, though to a lesser extent.