This depends on your definition of “Developed in the open”. Nobody is disputing that other people contributed to WebKit, however what is true is that WebKit wa

This depends on your definition of “Developed in the open”. Nobody is disputing that other people contributed to WebKit, however what is true is that WebKit was brought to the level of maturity require to create a competitive desktop browser before those contributions. The fact that competitors are able to use WebKit, and that Blink exists is validation that WebKit is really open. I do agree that Apple controls development of the mainline engine though, but that changes nothing about the meaning.