Apple Releases WebKit

rohanl writes "Apple has responded to recent criticisms from the KHTML developers by providing a live CVS repository (including all history) of WebCore, JavaScriptCore and the newly open sourced WebKit, public mailing list, irc channel and bug database. Details at the new webkit.opendarwin.org"

Comments

Dated icon

[grub]

Hey Taco, better change the Apple section's "G5" logo to the Intel logo.

Re:Dated icon

[PygmySurfer]

Actually, according to Apple, they're hope to have the ENTIRE Macintosh line transitioned to Intel CPUs by the end of 2007.

"Mac OS on Intel is to be given to developers (ADC "Select" and "Premier" members) now and to customers "this time next year." The transition will be completed in less than 2 years, by the end of 2007."

Re:Dated icon

[sootman]

Where did you get that quote? Note for the math imparired: since it is now the middle of 2005, the end of 2007 is over 2 years away. I forget what I read where, but the impression I got was they'd introduce new HW in mid-2006, have the whole line converted by mid-2007, and have sold their last piece of PPC hardware by the end of 2007. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.h tml says Apple will "transition all of its Macs to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007." That's 2 1/2 years away.

Remember, folks, Apple has 2 challenges to meet:
1) Convince the world that despite marketing to the contrary, Intel chips are just fine, so please buy Intel Macs once we start making them, and
2) Even though they're switching to Intel in 2006, PowerPC Macs are a) just fine and b) will be supported for quite some time, so please keep buying them in the meantime.

Really, this is a tremendous uphill battle. There are bunches of people who won't buy current hardware if something new is coming out. There are bunches more who won't buy Rev-A hardware. And so on and so on. Apple is fighting a battle on many fronts. It's obvious that Apple isn't doing this traumatic change just for fun--they must have had very strong reasons to make the change. You think Steve woke up one morning and wanted to leave IBM, contradict a decade of marketing, and shake the foundation of the Apple faithful? Strong forces are obviously at work here.

Also remember that OS X has its roots in NEXT, which ran on (IIRC) 68k, PPC, Alpha, and Intel, so they're no strangers to multiple platforms and fat binaries. So new PowerMacs will have a different chip? BFD. 9 out of 10 blindfolded users wouldn't even know. Did you see people jumping up in the middle of the keynote screaming "Hey! Something wrong here! I'll bet he's running this whole damn demo on an Intel chip!"?

Re:Dated icon

[Beardydog]

When he announces the developer's kit during the keynote, he moves to a large slide of a G5-style aluminum case with "$999" written next to it, if I remember correctly. It would be a little retarded to charge $999 for a mini that sells for $500 with a more costly processor in it, and doesn't have to be returned in a year and a half, and whose individual sale isn't quite as crucial to the success of the transition.

Re:Dated icon

[jbolden]

Apple has always been willing to sell their hardware to people who want to run other OSes. Heck they have an explicit supply contract with Yellow Dog Linux, you can't get more official than that.

But WAIT!!!

[mitchell_pgh]

But wait... what is KHTML going to complain about now! On a serious note, I'm happy to see Apple offer their versioning history. A step in the right direction IMHO.

Re:But WAIT!!!

[pebs]

But wait... what is KHTML going to complain about now!

Would Apple have done this had they not complained?

Re:But WAIT!!!

[svanstrom]

But wait... what is KHTML going to complain about now!

They're going to complain about the code being PPC-centric... no, wait... damn...

Re:But WAIT!!!

[JebusIsLord]

No one who has ever actually used Objective C++ and Carbon would actually complain about it. That has to be the nicest toolkit out there, bar none.

Re:But WAIT!!!

[JebusIsLord]

grr I mean cocoa of course. it is damn early.

Re:But WAIT!!!

[masklinn]

Grandparents point is that apple is going out of their way to appease a relatively small (even in opensource terms) group of people.

For god's sake, are you retarded? Did your parents repeatedly slam your head in a brick wall when you were younger?
The "relatively small group of people" you're talking about are the ones who created the base core of Safari's rendering engine (KHTML) for fuck's sake. And if you had at least checked what happened, you'd have seen that the K guys had indeed asked (privately, not in public channels) for limited access to Apple's Safari repository and bug tracker before...

Re:But WAIT!!!

[TomorrowPlusX]

Objective C++ is a bridge, allowing you to ( fairly ) seamlessly call C++ from objective-c and visa versa.

E.g., with ObjectiveC++ you don't need to write a pure-C bridge, to get Objective-C and C++ to interoperate.

Now, that said, it's not like you can write a C++ subclass of an Objective-C class, but it's useful. Really useful.

Re:But WAIT!!!

[GweeDo]

The KHTML developers NEVER complained about this. They complained about the people that were pissy about them not merging the Apple updates fast enough. Your post here is as bad as all the new sites that failed to read the original post and have since mis-communicated the whole freaking thing. Good work.

Re:But WAIT!!!

[bullitB]

They spend all this time asking Apple to open up, then they respond by putting WebKit on a CVS server instead of a Subversion one.

Re:But WAIT!!!

[mrchaotica]

Sure they would have known it was a problem -- I sent them a feedback email a few days ago asking them to work more closely with the KHTML devs. (And I'm not an involved party other than the fact that I use both Mac and Linux PCs.) Obviously, they listened to what I had to say, and all this has come about thanks to me!

You're welcome. ; )

Anyway, the point is that more people care about this than just the KHTML people -- Apple's doing it to appease the whole of Slashdot, at least.

Wait and see first...

[irchs]

I think we need to wait and see if this is anymore use the KHTML developers before we go proclaiming Apple as the good guys... :)

Personally I hope it is, as it is a good show of how two groups with different agenda's can benefit from Open Source.

Jan

Re:Wait and see first...

[svanstrom]

I think we need to wait and see if this is anymore use the KHTML developers before we go proclaiming Apple as the good guys... :)

Sorry, but that's just bs... the "KHTML developers" picked the license, and Apple gave back as much as they had to according to that license.
That's it, that's the whole thing; Apple never were the bad guys, because they did what they have to.

Now Apple is doing even more than they have to, and now you are waiting for the "KHTML developers" to say if they like it or not before figuring out if Apple are they good guys or not???

Wake up and realize that Apple's doing more than they have to, now it's up to the "KHTML developers" to figure out if they 1) want to use to code or 2) can use the code.

If they can't use the code, then what would Apple have to do to make them the good guys in your book??? Hire people to teach them and/or do the programming for them?

Re:Wait and see first...

[anno1602]

They had contributed back

They did release all their changes as one giant tarball, which, while complying with the license, is not a good basis for merging back changes. They did not get actively involved in hacking KHTML, instead they did a classic fork. This is not bashing Apple, just trying to bust some myths.

OSS people got upset as they wanted more.

KHTML developers never complained about Apple's way of doing things. They were annoyed about users saying "This is fixed in Safari, why isn't it fixed in KHTML? They are the same thing!", so they pointed out that no, it wasn't, and merging with Apple is no easy task, because (a) the codebases have diverged so much and (b) the format in which Apple publishes its changes is, while legally sufficient, not an good one for merging changes back. Somehow, that was interpreted as complaining about Apple, while all they were really doing was trying to bust the myth that KHTML and Webkit are still the same thing.

Re:Wait and see first...

[isilrion]

Actually, by doing this, Apple are doing WAY more than is required by the licence. This makes them 'good guys' for me (on this particular matter), regardless of the use the KHTML guys can make of this. Of course, this could be just a PR move, but it is still more than what they had to do.

That said, I hope that the KHTML group can make a good use of this. Even with access to the cvs repositories, I don't expect that merging back the changes will be trivial, just easier. I hope this won't be used by the fans to bash the KHTML developers ('hey, they gave you the repositories, and you still don't merge the changes overnight! You *are* lazy').

Overall, I believe this is a good thing.

Re:Wait and see first...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Apple wants to make some use of OSS code in their software, but they don't want to contribute back, which is not cool.

I think you're way off base. What makes you think they don't want to contribute back? Did you read the article about KDE passing the ACID compliance test? That was due to an Apple engineer patching WebCore so Safari would pass then specifically writing a bunch of comments and micro patches for the KDE guys. For which, I might add, he was thouroughly ridiculed here on Slashdot for not providing a CVS repository (Apple does not use CVS) which one of the KDE guys had asked for a few days previously.

Now Apple is providing a CVS repository at extra work and expense to themselves and you have the gall to say that they don't want to contribute back? Are you actively trying to make the OpenSource movement look like a bunch of pricks or is it unintentional? How about when a commercial company bends over backwards, spends money and time to do exactly what is asked of them even when they have no legal obligation, and basically do everything they can to be the good guy, use and support open code and standards and give back very useful improvements you don't attribute it to them being forced to by all the bad press you've previously generated about them in a forum that they don't care about anyway?

Apple is being nice because the engineers working there are good guys and want to be nice and help out. They aren't doing it to avoid bad press. Give credit where it is due already.

Re:Wait and see first...

[jusdisgi]

Sorry, but that's just bs... the "KHTML developers" picked the license, and Apple gave back as much as they had to according to that license. That's it, that's the whole thing; Apple never were the bad guys, because they did what they have to.

Bullshit. The fact that they weren't legally required to be good citizens does not mean no one should ever be able to criticize their actions. They took a piece of software from an open-source group, acted like they wanted to cooperate with them, then forked it too far and acted like asses when the KHTML guys asked them to try to work back toward one codebase. They went so far as to tell the KHTML guys to just drop their project and use Apple's version.

None of this was illegal. It was just a dickhead move.

Of course, now Apple has done something in the hopes of correcting that, which indicates they also feel they haven't done right by KHTML. Hopefully this will help the situation...overall, I have seen Apple as a halfway decent OSS player. But in this case, I think time will have to tell...the real issue is whether this will help the two codebases codevelop more or not. If it doesn't, Apple will have been the "bad guy" because they will have unnecessarily split development resources and time for a project that could have been cooperatively handled. That's a Bad Thing, regardless of whether it's legally permissible.

Re:Wait and see first...

[svanstrom]

the real issue is whether this will help the two codebases codevelop more or not. If it doesn't, Apple will have been the "bad guy" because they will have unnecessarily split development resources and time for a project that could have been cooperatively handled. That's a Bad Thing, regardless of whether it's legally permissible.

Forking isn't a bad thing, it happens all the time... The "problem" is that Apple didn't say that they were going to take the code and fork off, and I don't think they ever intended to; they just didn't have the time and culture to "bother" with returning the code in the shape that people expected.

Life sucks, shit happens and so on... but whatever you might think, Apple didn't do anything wrong; besides, why b*tch about this now that Apple's done more than enough to make people happy again?

Re:Wait and see first...

[jp10558]

Do you think they may start to converge again with this development?

Without wishing to sound too fanboyish...

[ickoonite]

...good stuff, good stuff. It seems they actually do care about how the open source community perceives them. And it can only do them good to remain on good terms with the Konqueror/KHTML team.

That said, some of the criticisms of the Konqueror team may have had some validity - specifically, there is little room in the cutthroat commercial arena for the unwavering dogmatism, devotion to absolute technical superiority over immediate user needs, etc. Hopefully the two can forge a way forward together now that Apple has made this (much needed) gesture.

iqu :)

Re:Without wishing to sound too fanboyish...

[nacturation]

Now if only they changed the name to WebKore and JavaScriptKore, they'd be best buddies.

Re:Without wishing to sound too fanboyish...

[ickoonite]

Do we know for certain that Apple's move to Intel is about DRM? You say it as though it were gospel but is this deepest of cynical views actually warranted? I don't think it necessarily is, although it could be useful in their wanting to ensure Mac OS X only runs on Macs, a policy which I thoroughly support (as I want Apple to stay in business).

Fact is that some form of DRM is an essential prerequisite for an information-based economy, regardless of what the 'information wants to be free' types spout over here. I don't particularly like it, and I understand the fundamental problem with it (the black and white nature of computers versus the grey world of legal interpretation), but I do accept that it is necessary.

And I'd certainly choose Apple's over Microsoft's any day, because I believe that Apple is less inclined to screw the consumer over. On that I can only hope I'm right.

As to ThinkSecret, I've outlined my views on it before, but if you really think that free speech trumps any and all other rights then you won't mind if I publish your name, address, phone number and any other information you might like to keep secret because, well, my right to free speech trumps yours of privacy, right? On the other hand, if you do want your right to privacy, why shouldn't companies be able to keep certain things under wraps? (Note that I'm not advocating Enron-style behaviour - that is a very different kind of thing, but let's not muddy the waters here by calling ThinkSecret an outlet for whistleblowers. It's not. Really. It's not.)

Incidentally, as regards the switch, just make it. Assuming you're on Windows at the moment, you've got nothing to hold you back - it's really quite staggering the difference it makes to day-to-day tasks, but often quite hard to quantify using actual words. If you knew the pain, the stress, most of all the frustration I feel when I use Windows now....

If on Linux, I suppose ideological constraints more than anything would keep someone on that platform. As to the 'experience', well, these days I find I have so much more time to do what I want to do, rather than forever tweaking Linux's innards. (See here for more.)

iqu :)

Good show Apple

[FreeUser]

Despite liking OS X and the now-defunct power-PC platform (though still preferring GNU/Linux on both PPC and AMD64), and having switched a number of people from Windoze to OS X, I have not been shy about being critical, even scathingly so, of Apple when they deserve it.

The deserved it in no small degree when they made it difficult for KHTML developers to reintegrate their changes into the mainline tree.

However, I am glad to see they responded to the community's criticisms in such a constructive manner. This is good for everybody. It's good for KHTML, as Apple's improvements can now be integrated cleanly into the mainline tree, and it is good for Apple, both on the PR/Community Relations front, and on the technical front, as they can continue to benefit from developments in KTHML and their porting burden should, at least theortecially, be lessened as their changes make it back into the main development tree.

Good show, Apple. Few flesh-and-blood people would have the character to admit a mae culpa and change their ways. For corporations, this is even more rare. This doesn't change my skepticism WRT the move to Intel (though if it is a move to AMD64 said skepticism is alleviated, and if the move is a result of supply issues with IBM, said move is understandable despite my skepticism, but I digress), but it is reassuring to see positive movements on other fronts.

Just a reminder

[frankie]

For the N+1th time, let's remember that:

1. Previously, Apple was following the LETTER of the LGPL license, and giving back all changes
2. The KHTML developers were not pleased about the monolithic tarballs, but accepted that it was a valid option
3. They were, however, annoyed about all the fanboys who complained that KHTML wasn't merging Apple's changes
4. Apple is now following the SPIRIT of LGPL
5. Yes, we are in fact through the looking glass, but that was yesterday's article

Any questions?

Re:Just a reminder

[mcc]

Apple wasn't even violating the spirit of the LGPL. They were possibly violating the spirit of the GPL... but alas these are substantially and philosophically somewhat different licenses, and so with the LGPL they weren'tn doing even that.

I'm baffled by the people stating in this thread that the GPL "preferred form" clause means that you have to give people access to your versioning system. Have you people read the GPLs? It offers CDs over postal mail as a valid method of satisfying your GPL obligations! It explicitly lists mailing big chunks of code as a valid option for GPL licensees! I mean, actually read these things, people!

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

Now if emailing big chunks of tarball on demand is violating the spirit of the GPL then why does the GPL suggest you do that?

Balance

[allanc]

I guess after switching to x86, Apple felt it needed to do something not-evil to balance things out.

Re:Balance

[vrai]

Well - a publicly traded company made a deal with another publicly traded company that will increase both their revenues! Also it allows the client company to produce faster, cheaper computers. What bastards eh?

Re:Balance

[Doktor Memory]

Steve doesn't mind the Opteron, but he's not using it.

For now.

If anyone thinks, even for a second, after the back-to-back heartbreaks of the PowerPC 7400 and 970 (not to mention the stillborn misfires of the 620, 8500 etc etc etc), that Apple will not -- having already gone through the pain of an x86 migration -- have an alternate supplier to Intel on deck... well, I'd like some of what that person is smoking. :)

Intel, AMD, Via, Transmeta: the whole gamut is open to Apple now, and they would be dumb indeed not to use whichever one makes the most sense for any given application.

Re:Only because..

[Kevinv]

a) Apple released the source before
b) they've just added additional ways of accessing the source instead of a giant tarball

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a company that's inherently evil, you know where to find it.

The Vice President's address book?

All of you zombies

[SamBeckett]

Bitching about the "SPIRIT" of the GPL, LGPL, whatever, are retarded. Seriously. Look, if the developers wanted to be dicks about it they could have (and should have) released their KHTML shit under a license that explicitly stated their desires.

SPIRIT schmirit.

Their behavior boils down to "Wah, I offered my friend a lollipop and he took it."

Re:All of you zombies

[Lemming Mark]

This whole mess started when Zack Rusin blogged saying (basically) -
* don't keep bugging us about when Konqueror will do what Safari does because it's not as simple as taking Apple's patches and applying them
* don't keep saying how great it is that Apple are giving us these features

He explicitly said that it was fine for Apple to behave as they were. He just asked that people didn't keep giving Apple credit for doing things that actually needed to be done independently by the KHTML team.

The mess started when multiple news websites and bloggers misreported this as an anti-Apple flame and subsequently seemed to base their articles on each others, not the original post.

Re:All of you zombies

[snorklewacker]

Their behavior boils down to "Wah, I offered my friend a lollipop and he took it."

No, that's slashdot's behavior. Most of the KHTML developers really wish slashdot would keep their damn uninformed blathering to themselves, and while they're at it, get a little informed and stop demanding that KHTML support Safari features within 1 day of implementation because "they're the same codebase, right?"

No one but slashbots are griping incessantly about the licensing.

Re:A good sign

[2nd Post!]

What are you talking about? Wasn't it only in the last month that KHTML was successfully able to integrate half the changes/patches provided from Apple into their trunk?

Getting half the patches in sounds like an advantage, especially compared to none, which is what would be the case if Apple had not adopted KHTML, right? So in the end, prior to this advance, KHTML gained lots of work, and Apple gained lots of work, and thus both had already benefited.

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Re:Only because..

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I'm sure Steve sensed you weren't happy and he made the WebKit developers stay up all night to get this together.

Not a zero sum game

[ChrisF79]

I think this problem highlights the fact that Corporate America doesn't seem to understand that if they treat relationships with open source developers as a non-zero-sum game, both parties can benefit. There is definitely a synergy that is created (or should be created) when open source teams up with corporate entities and this relationship needs to be nurtured further for the most bang for the buck.

Re:Not a zero sum game

[jtshaw]

What your saying requires that the corporate interest has the same goals in mind for the product.

Apple took khtml and extended it the way it felt it needed to for Safari. Meanwhile, the khtml people were changing and extending it there own way, which happened to be a bit of a different direction. This happens all the time, and it isn't anyones fault.

Many times it becomes very hard to backport code after forks, regardless of who forked the code. The only way to fix that is to restrict development by others to a similar path as your development, which shits on the "spirit" of the GPL just as much if not more then what people were complaining about Apple doing in the first place.

When you release code under the GPL you have to know that it is totally possibly somebody might fork it and create patches that are useless to you. That is the nature of the beast and all part of the OSS development environment. If you can't deal with it, then don't use the GPL.

Re:A good sign

[anno1602]

Under the "agreement", Apple could use KHTML as the renderer in their Safari browser, _if_ they returned all changes to the source code.

No, all the LGPL says is that Apple has to publish its changes, which they did in a giant tarball. They did not get involved in hacking KHTML and are not about to do that now, but then, they weren't required to do so. The "agreement", as you call it, was fullfilled. Still, some open source users (not the KHTML devels) thought that this was not enough and raised a stink. Apple got concerned about the bad PR and asked what they could do to simplify the KHTML developers' life, and releasing their changes in a CVS with history was one of the items on the list.

Now, we will continue to reap the benefits of both freelance and corporate coding.

That still remains to be seen. While the CVS makes the merger easier, it's still not a trivial task. KHTML and WebKit have diverged quite a bit since the fork.

Re:A good sign

[masklinn]

If anything, it is informative.

It's not, it's pure crap and that's been said time and time again in the previous threads and by the KHTML devs.

Apple always did what they were supposed to do under the KHTML license...

What more or less happened:

1. Apple was doing what they were supposed to do, but not anything more
2. KHTML devs asked for some more, mainly access to Apple/Safari's internal repository and bug tracker in order to have a better understanding of webcore and ease the porting of the patches to the main KHTML trunk
3. There were no answers from Apple
4. KHTML devs dropped the issue and just decided to forget about it and keep working as they always had
5. Acid 2 is released, Dave Hyatt does a wonderful job on Safari and soon gets the first fully Acid2 compliant browser (dev version)
6. Everyone is overjoyed... and people start saying how wonderful apple is and how it'll benefit to KHTML core (I've been guilty of it, too)
7. Main KHTML dev blogs saying that there is no way for the K devs to easily patch the tree from Webcore patches, that there is no real communication/backfeed between KHTML and Safari teams, and that people who don't have a clue about how it works should shut the fuck up (note that what he was ranting about was people not having a clue, not the relationship between Apple and the K team)

The

lack or very small amount of this agreed return occurring

of GP is fucking nonsense and cluelessness, which is why his post isn't informative in any way

Defunct?

[Gary W. Longsine]

Despite liking OS X and the now-defunct power-PC platform

Odd, my PowerBook G4 just exclaimed: "I'm not dead, yet!"

Re:NOone's inherently evil

[wrf3]

No parent has ever had to teach their children to lie.

Re:A good sign

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Because there is no "-1 factually incorrect" moderation. The previous poster apparently had no idea what they were talking about. The KDE team made no agreement with Apple, Apple just took the code and used it in compliance with its license. Then they released the changes when they released WebCore, much to the surprise and delight of the KDE team. They have been giving back all the changes, but since the Konqueror project decided a lot of them were not the way the wanted the project to go and since both groups are using different versioning systems the KDE folks were having some difficulty extracting the changes they wanted from all the Webcore code.

After some time of this one of the KDE guys got sick of everyone telling him how easy his job was now that Apple was doing all his work for him and wrote a very reasonable and clear statement about how Apple's changes were really hard to incorporate and why and how they wished Apple would give the team access to a CVS repository. This got posted to Slashdot and horribly misinterpreted by the vast majority of the readers into some sort of "Apple is stealing open source code" thread.

Immediately thereafter one of the Safari guys fixed Safari so it would pass the acid compliance test and made sure to put in special notes just for the KDE guys. Again, Slashdot picked this up and there was a huge rehashing of the previous argument, despite Apple trying hard to be nice. Now Apple has gone to great lengths and released exactly what the KDE team asked for despite the fact that it is extra work and expense (which they might have done earlier had they actually been asked).

The previous poster of course only read a few idiot's comments on Slashdot, never read any of the articles and thus was spreading his ignorance on Slashdot even more by restating factually incorrect third-hand interpretations of opinionated and poorly informed comments from Slashdot. Hence the modding down (or so I guess since I did not mod him).

Re:Oh, come on!

[daniil]

Just because you've just proven Godwin's law to hold it still doesn't mean that Nazis will be mentioned in every Internet discussion thread.

And since when is denying one form of determinism considered "taking determinism to its extreme"?

Posting from CVS WebKit...

[Dr. Sp0ng]

It's noticeably faster than the version that ships with Tiger (and yes, it passes Acid2 :)

"Preferred form" BS

[ubernostrum]

The "preferred form" of most Apple developers is probably some versioning system running as a client on G5 workstations, so obviously Apple is legally obligated to provide the changed source code to KHTML developers in that form. Go sign on to the KHTML project now and your free G5 will be shipped soon!

What??

[jpsowin]

You mean there is nothing to complain about now? Wait, what about that Intel thing? They can't get off the hook that easy!

THANKS TO APPLE AND ALL!!!

[-_broken_watchman_-]

[As Cies Breijs said]

My congratulations to all parties. Apple for beeing cooperative, and for giving back. To Zack Rusin http://www.kdedevelopers.org/blog/14 for sharing his opinion and reasoning, which openen up this issue.

If would be 'cool' if KDE-Konq and OSX-Safari use the same codebase for HTML-rendering and running JavaScripts. It would be 'cool' is KDE and Apple coders would work together on this.

Yet... if this will not be the case it already is a big help that both parties can view each others cvses/svns and bug databases.

I think once again Apple shows it really wants to play nice/fair with free/open-source movement.

Thanks for the good news :)

Re:Only because..

[Lars T.]

Actually, they simply also clicked the "release as OpenSource" checkbox, and stayed up all night partying.

Re:Safari for Windows

[Ryano]

"Safari's tabbed browsing isn't as elegant."

Doing a feature comparison between the two browsers' implementation of tabbed browsing, all I can come up with is as follows:

Favicons
Safari: Not supported
Firefox: Site's favicon is displayed in tab
Verdict: Win for Firefox

Close button
Safari: Each tab has its own close button
Firefox: Single close button to the extreme right of the tabs bar closes the active tab
Verdict: Win for Safari

Is there a single other significant difference?

In other News....

[iluvcapra]

In other news, Apple has been bought and is now operated by every troll that ever bitched about Apple on slashdot.

The best they could do at the time

[injustice_sucks]

Doesn't it seem logical that the tarball they released was the best they could do at the time? I bet if you look through the CVS repository they just released, you'll see some Intel specific stuff, maybe even just a check-in comment. That would have blown their big secret. Which, incidentally, is amazing they managed to keep that secret for 5 YEARS!

From previous discussions:

[NilObject]

It's been said before but I think it's insightful enough to say it here:

If they weren't happy with Apple following the license to the letter, they were using the wrong license.

Re:Safari for Windows

[pomo monster]

There's also the fact that Safari's intelligent about naming tabs. If you have five tabs open whose names all start with "Amazon.com," for example, and there's not enough room to display the whole title, Safari gets rid of the redundant part of the name. Meanwhile, in Firefox you'll probably be seeing "Amazon.com" five times--not particularly helpful.