Apple Gifts Top WebKit Contributors with MacBooks

soundofthemoon writes "Just nine months ago, Apple started the WebKit Open Source Project. In that time, contributors have added some significant improvements to WebKit (and thus Apple's Safari browser). Today Apple gave their open source contributors a big thank-you, including rewarding the top contributors with some nifty goodies: 'As a thank you, we are giving MacBook Pro computers to twelve of our top contributors. We've also invited five of them to attend Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference 2006 on Apple's dime.' Looks like donating your time isn't a thankless job anymore."

Comments

Re:Good for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I see they've found a way to unload all those pre-Intel Macs sitting in their warehouse.

As a thank you, we are giving MacBook Pro computers to twelve of our top contributors.

They are giving them intel versions.

Apple has done this before

[sagefire.org]

Apple has supported GIMP-print this way for a while now. Granted, they weren't giving them laptops. But, people working on GIMP-print got iMacs and were given special discounts on buying other macs for personal use.

It's a great model. Hopefully, they will continue to do it for years to come.

Not quite the same

[necro2607]

Well, it's not quite the same thing. These developers were rewards *after* doing a lot of work. They did the work without any knowledge of any potential "reward". That's what makes this situation a little different. :)

Not the First Time for Apple

[cshotton]

Apple has been rewarding the open source and shareware community for a long time. In September of 1994, I was one of the recipients of Apple's first "Cool Tools" award. They identified all of the open source, public domain, and shareware authors that were making the Mac one of the best Internet-capable computers of the time. Here's a link to an old TidBITS article about the award. All the winners got PowerMac 7100s which helped get most of the Cool Tools ported to PowerPC. Maybe a bit self-serving of Apple, but they were setting the standard for recognizing good work in their third party developer community over 12 years ago. And I got MacHTTP ported to PPC in about 2 days because of it!