6 ms·

Only that Apple's track record for supporting anything long term, cross platform, "open", is non-existent. At this point I don't even care about how good their

Only that Apple's track record for supporting anything long term, cross platform, "open", is non-existent. At this point I don't even care about how good their language is. Apple has a very, very long way to go before I can trust them on anything of that magnitude. I would instead assume they WILL pull the rug from under developers for any random reason. (And I say this as an iOS developer)

1propionyl 6y ago
One counterexample that comes to mind is CUPS (the printing system). LLVM and WebKit are also extremely non-trivial open source (and cross platform) contributions. Most Linux users here likely use one or two out of three of these on a weekly basis. Many likely use all three on a weekly basis. Some use all three daily.
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  Apple has removed most stuff that's needed for non-mac platforms from CUPS over the years, which are maintained by the Linux community separately now. WebKit is probably pretty rare outside macos, most browsers will be built from Chromium/Blink instead. LLVM is developed by many companies these days, including Intel, Sony and Google.
  - kayodelycaon 6y ago
    At least one command line tool in my toolbox uses webkit. (wkhtmltopdf)
  - floatboth 6y ago
    > Apple has removed most stuff that's needed for non-mac platforms from CUPS over the years Wrong. Upstream CUPS on Apple's github has support for everything, even systemd. > WebKit is probably pretty rare outside macos, most browsers will be built from Chromium/Blink GTK's WebView (and browsers like Epiphany aka GNOME Web) use WebKit, complete with Apple's web inspector / devtools.
    - formerly_proven 6y ago
      https://github.com/OpenPrinting https://github.com/OpenPrinting and cups-filters in particular. > GTK's WebView (and browsers like Epiphany aka GNOME Web) use WebKit, complete with Apple's web inspector / devtools. Good point, Qt's legacy HTML engine (Qt WebKit) is, well, WebKit, too. The newer Qt WebEngine uses Blink. I suspect this is a common pattern with components built on KHTML/WebKit before Chromium became Blink. In any case, Blink is clearly the fork that won.

1propionyl 6y ago

One counterexample that comes to mind is CUPS (the printing system). LLVM and WebKit are also extremely non-trivial open source (and cross platform) contributions. Most Linux users here likely use one or two out of three of these on a weekly basis. Many likely use all three on a weekly basis. Some use all three daily.

formerly_proven 6y ago
Apple has removed most stuff that's needed for non-mac platforms from CUPS over the years, which are maintained by the Linux community separately now. WebKit is probably pretty rare outside macos, most browsers will be built from Chromium/Blink instead. LLVM is developed by many companies these days, including Intel, Sony and Google.
- kayodelycaon 6y ago
  At least one command line tool in my toolbox uses webkit. (wkhtmltopdf)
- floatboth 6y ago
  > Apple has removed most stuff that's needed for non-mac platforms from CUPS over the years Wrong. Upstream CUPS on Apple's github has support for everything, even systemd. > WebKit is probably pretty rare outside macos, most browsers will be built from Chromium/Blink GTK's WebView (and browsers like Epiphany aka GNOME Web) use WebKit, complete with Apple's web inspector / devtools.
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    https://github.com/OpenPrinting https://github.com/OpenPrinting and cups-filters in particular. > GTK's WebView (and browsers like Epiphany aka GNOME Web) use WebKit, complete with Apple's web inspector / devtools. Good point, Qt's legacy HTML engine (Qt WebKit) is, well, WebKit, too. The newer Qt WebEngine uses Blink. I suspect this is a common pattern with components built on KHTML/WebKit before Chromium became Blink. In any case, Blink is clearly the fork that won.