Safari vs. KHTML

Johnny Mnemonic writes "CNET has a story that describes the divergence between the code base of Safari and KHTML. Although there were high hopes that Apple would contribute significantly to the OSS project, that optimism has all but disappeared. Is an unrealized danger of OSS that others may take your project in a direction you didn't intend? Can OSS code and goals harmonize with the goals and needs of corporation designed code? Is it that Apple mismanaged the relationship, or that the KHTML guys expected too much? Interesting warning for other OSS-corporate marriages." We've previously reported on the frustration in the OSS community on this issue.

Comments

Which one should we go for?

[Swamii]

Hello Slashdot editors and fellow Slashdotters,

I am fine, how are you? Hope you are doing well.

Pardon my curiousity, but I would like to know what is the official /. position on this particular topic? I would like to think everything related to OSS is in the right, and corporations are always wrong, but I have a predicament. We always let Apple slide on things like vendor lock-in and other topics other ideas we hammer other corporations for.

I'm just not sure who I should be rooting for! Please help! Respond to this soon, as my head is hurting from trying to decide on my own, I need you to make up my mind for me.

Thank you Slashdotters and Slashdot editors,

Sincerely,
Gabriel

Re:Apple should start...

[Tet]

KHTML uses CVS, and Apple internally uses Perforce. [...] Apple, offer to buy licenses of your source control software for the KHTML core.

Since no one in their right mind would voluntarily use Perforce, that may not actually help...

Re:Its only the bad things we head about?

[wsapplegate]

> Apple quite simply forked Safari.

No, they forked kHTML. Safari is an Apple-made product, without any OSS code whatsoever.

> This happens all the time in the OSS world.

And, most of the time, hostile forks are frowned upon.

> Hello, does anyone really expect that X.org patches will remain 100% compatible with the XFree86 code structure ad aeternam ?

No, but everyone expects X.Org to

• Have their source control system public
• Have their bug tracker public
• Have their mailing lists public
• Make their patches in useful, small self-contained patches with clear descriptions ("frobs the master foobox" instead of "fixes bug #14567894 in our internal, private bug tracker")

Apple does nothing of this, they just release multimegabyte hunks of code that are just *useless* (you would probably spend more time trying to separate the big blob into small patches than to rewrite these independently). Your example thus falls completely flat.

> Could someone please tell me what exactly the problem is in the Apple-Safari case ?

Right where I told you. But don't let this detract you from praising Apple at every opportunity. I know that (on /. at least), praising Apple and Google whatever they do is Really Hip...