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I agree entirely, there is not much point in second guessing Apple. Their decision worked out very well for them. Safari is an excellent browser and WebKit is a

by azakai 15y ago

I agree entirely, there is not much point in second guessing Apple. Their decision worked out very well for them. Safari is an excellent browser and WebKit is an excellent browser engine. I do think though that the KHTML/Gecko thing is a pointless debate. For one thing, both are very good, so I'm not sure what there is to argue. But the real issue is KHTML/Gecko is a false dichotomy: Apple has huge resources and amazing engineering talent, so it could have written a new browser engine from scratch, and I'm pretty sure that browser engine would have been awesome. And, doing so would have given Apple complete freedom to pick the project's license, either more closed than KHTML's LGPL license (even entirely closed source, like most of OS X), or more permissive (even BSD, like Apple prefers in its open source projects). There are a lot of interesting possibilities there, that we can only speculate about. So again, I agree second guessing is pointless. But it just seems like debating KHTML/Gecko is even more pointless, given the other options Apple had.

chc 15y ago
I recall someone from Apple (I want to say David Hyatt) actually explained why they went the way they did. They looked at assimilating Gecko, but it was just too large to mold into the product they wanted without essentially throwing out most of the existing product. But still, starting from scratch would have ballooned the budget since a Web browser is a nontrivial undertaking†. KHTML was a happy medium — it was a solid, functional base, but it wasn't yet overwhelming for the Safari team. † Think about it. HTML rendering engines are probably the most-used piece of software around these days, and yet in the almost 20 years since the Web came about, there have only been about 10 notable rendering engines written for it, of which only three have had real commercial viability (Gecko, Trident and WebKit).
- azakai 15y ago
  It does make sense that KHTML was a compromise for Apple as you say. It's interesting that that was the motivation there, thanks for sharing that! About Opera, a comment: Opera definitely has real commercial viability. Unlike the other three you mention, Opera has had to be profitable all its life, and from the Opera browser itself (not subsidized by other products). Today Opera makes a lot of money from its mobile browser (but it is in danger from WebKit now).
  - chc 15y ago
    You're right, that isn't fair to Opera. I honestly just forgot about them when I was writing the postscript. Thanks for the reminder.

by azakai 15y ago

chc 15y ago

I recall someone from Apple (I want to say David Hyatt) actually explained why they went the way they did. They looked at assimilating Gecko, but it was just too large to mold into the product they wanted without essentially throwing out most of the existing product. But still, starting from scratch would have ballooned the budget since a Web browser is a nontrivial undertaking†. KHTML was a happy medium — it was a solid, functional base, but it wasn't yet overwhelming for the Safari team. † Think about it. HTML rendering engines are probably the most-used piece of software around these days, and yet in the almost 20 years since the Web came about, there have only been about 10 notable rendering engines written for it, of which only three have had real commercial viability (Gecko, Trident and WebKit).

azakai 15y ago
It does make sense that KHTML was a compromise for Apple as you say. It's interesting that that was the motivation there, thanks for sharing that! About Opera, a comment: Opera definitely has real commercial viability. Unlike the other three you mention, Opera has had to be profitable all its life, and from the Opera browser itself (not subsidized by other products). Today Opera makes a lot of money from its mobile browser (but it is in danger from WebKit now).
- chc 15y ago
  You're right, that isn't fair to Opera. I honestly just forgot about them when I was writing the postscript. Thanks for the reminder.