Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Safari vs. KHTML

Posted by Zonk on from the sibling-rivalry dept.

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.

4 of 553 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Its only the bad things we head about? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Actually, no, they don't. The LGPL says they have to release the code but they cannot (for instance) run it through an obfuscator before releasing the patch. The LGPL says that changes have to be returned in the "preferred form" for exactly this reason: given half a chance some corporations will try and follow the exact wording of the license and not the spirit.

    The whole point of the LGPL is so people can "share with their neighbours". Go read the GNU manifesto some time. Enormous undocumented patch dumps that can't be integrated without causing tons of regressions thanks to code nobody understands is not "sharing with your neighbours", it's grudgingly doing the absolute bare minimum you have to avoid getting sued (and to be frank, it's such a grey area if KDE was a huge corporate as well they'd probably be in court by now).

    So yes the KDE developers have a right to be pissed off, just the same as you would if a partner in a business relationship used a particular reading of the fine print to screw you over.

  2. forget safari or khtml by jlebrech · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    use camino.

  3. I see nothing wrong with it by bogie · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    There is no clause about having to spoon feed your patches back into the project you took your code from.

    And in fairness to Apple I don't see as nearly as many articles from them saying how "well they work with OSS" vs articles complaining that they don't work well with OSS from OSS users.

    That said I do wish Apple zealots would stop raving about how well Apple does play with OSS. They IMHO are the root cause of all of the bad will. If they would just shut the hell up then we could look at Apple as what they are, a passive OSS user. Instead everyone yelling about how they don't play nice. Yes Apple doesn't help out with OSS as much as we'd all like, surprise. Let's move on and spend our time talking about the companies that do help.

    --
    If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
  4. Re:Apple = Closed by bani · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Hah. Try something as simple as moving the window widgets (eg close button) to the right side.

    So much for "extremely customizable down to a very low level"...

    Also, the method for theming in OSX is a hack. You can see the results of this -- some applications get past shapeshifter without being themed.

    With UI frameworks like Qt, the theming is built in at a low level, it is well supported, and every app which uses Qt will follow the themes.