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Firefox Lead Engineer Scolds KDE Project
trent42 writes "Firefox lead developer Ben Goodger has had harsh words on his blog for the KDE project, in light of its public tiff with Apple over the KHTML rendering engine. Goodger says 'Safari's renderer is vastly superior to the KHTML used by Konqueror,' and that the KDE developers should follow Apple's lead and focus more on the needs of users, instead of insisting on software perfection."
Uh, maybe because their browser is buggy, slow, and sucks complete ass?
It's between developers for 3 open source projects: KHTML, WebCore, and Firefox.
The KHTML guys are really shooting themselves in the foot with this. They certainly aren't encouraging companies to participate with open source projects. The only thing they're doing is reinforcing an existing conception about open source developers -- that they're a pain to work with.
mbbac
and realize that not everyone subscribes to his views of software licensing.
KDE is rather bloated.
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
However, they are angry at something: people like you. Coming here on /. and making a completely backwards post that misrepresents everything they stand for. Sit down and STFU.
Why don't you put your name next to your ignorant bile. I am not the one misrepresenting anyone. I just READ THE GODDAMN ARTICLE AND RESPONDED TO THE CLAIMS IT MADE. If those are false, than maybe someone should mention that instead of anonymously flaming a random response.
Fucking a.
Everybody should know now to check references.
Here is the entire statement and it is NOT INFLAMITORY AT ALL.
May 12, 2005
Safari, KHTML, Perfection
I was reading CNet's coverage of some of the Safari vs. KHTML discussion that's been going on lately and was struck by a comment made by one of the KHTML developers...
"In open source, everything's supposed to be done the right way, but sometimes the less correct way is faster," Rusin said. "In fixing one problem, they were breaking a whole bunch of other things. Apple developers were focused on fixing bugs in such a way that we could not merge them back into KHTML. Those fixes were never an option for us."
Certainly, every project is free to be run the way it wants to be run - but there are a couple of givens here if you're trying to make software that changes the world:
1. No software is ever perfect.
2. In order to have the most positive impact, you need to take advantage of opportunity especially when it comes to release time. This means you may have to cut corners in some areas in order to ship on time. Smart money cuts corners in areas that people are less likely to be concerned about.
3. There needs to be a strong focus on meeting the needs of the target audience.
Some people would call me careless, but certainly I've been bitten by my own carelessness in my past enough to have that trait be tempered by some caution. Given (1) above, I certainly believe it better to iterate quickly even if you make some mistakes - get your vision out there for people to test and give feedback on rather than fussing for months before releasing anything, only to discover it was completely off track.
Not everyone wants to change the world, but Apple does - and although they may have done the least required of them in accordance with the licenses of the original source code, it was within their rights to do what they did, and no one should begrudge them for it. Safari's renderer is vastly superior to the KHTML used by Konqueror. Should I have to wait months or years for every patch that makes Safari more compatible to be done perfectly? No. Well, maybe as a software engineer I should. But does anyone that isn't a software engineer care? Probably not. Case closed.
Konqueror is much superior to FireFox... so who cares what FF devs complain to Konq devs about?
Luke-Jr