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The Unforking of KDE's KHTML and Webkit Begins
Jiilik Oiolosse writes to tell us Ars Technica is reporting that after years of existing seperately, KHTML and Webkit are finally coming back together. "In open source terms, this may be as big of a deal as the gcc and egcs merger of yonder days. KHTML and Webkit are definitely coming of age. The KDE developers, responsible for the original creation of KHTML, are dedicated to seeing this unforking happen and are taking a leading role in that effort."
How will this impact Apple given that Safari uses it. Also after the unfork they decide to go the GPL3 route.
Finally, open-source has an answer to Voltron (or the Megazord, depending on which generation you are in.)
How is it I can live my whole life without ever hearing about something, and then two different, unrelated, stories both reference this whole EGCS thing on the same day?
I believe you mean KHTML and WebKit will be *spooning* soon!
The summary is a bit vague as to what 'coming together' means. Basically, Webkit is going to be adopted in KDE as a Kpart, features in KHTML that aren't in Webkit are being added to Webkit, then KHTML will die out. Seems at least some KHTML developers will be working on Webkit in the future. The article also goes into the history behind the forking, and is actually a decent read.
So we have the Webkit family.
The Gekko family.
Opera.
and the IE family of browsers.
All this would be great if they would all follow the standards!
Okay it would be great if IE followed the standards instead of making them up as they go. IE7 is better but far from perfect.
I wounder if there is any chance that Firefox will move to Webkit in the future? I know it is unlikely but one does wonder.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
Aparently the debate was in a Glasgow pub. So was the final decision was made over a broken bottle and a cry of "Stich this Jimmy!"?
My bias is pretty obvious. I sincerely hope that you are right.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
As big as GCC? I'll need Wikipedia's help just to know what Webkit is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webkit
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
This is a more accurate subject line. If you read the article, it is clear that the original developers are moving to WebKit instead of KHTML.
From TFA:
While there are still a few reservations, the consensus is to develop a Webkit KPart for embedding into Konqueror at the earliest opportunity and to take a more active role in the development of Webkit itself. This was hinted at earlier in an Ars interview with Lars Knoll, but now it is more or less the official word.
Now, KHTML won't be deleted right away since there are features in it that need to be ported into Webkit. For example, KHTML (in KDE 4) implements portions of the definition of the CSS3 standard, which will need to be adopted into Webkit and so forth. But the big deal is that the coders that invented the underlying layers that power Konqueror, some Nokia browsers, Abrowse, Safari, Adobe's Air, and now Epiphany and a few other projects that are in the works, are now back in the fold.
The inventor of the "spork" has a new invention... spildo!
Apple is pretty much driving this one now. I think this quote from TFA is telling, "its improvements had become difficult to move back into KHTML"
You are missing some of the context. WebKit is being heavily developed and is receiving contributions from many source, though what is most notable is the fact that WebKit has an abstraction layer, whereas KHTML does not. This abstraction layer allows WebKit to be adapted to many underlying architectures and this is why Webkit is getting the attention. Because of the original license nothing is stopping the KHTML developers from taking the WebKit source and making a fork (KHTML -> Webkit -> KHTML NG), but while everyone is benefiting there is little need to do this.
What is also interesting are some of the players that are contributing to WebKit, since there are big corporations in there too, including Adobe and Nokia. There are of course many unaffiliated developers that should not be forgotten, of course.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The nightlies look like they're just source, and the various home pages and first layer or two of wikiness didn't seem to have any indication that they want to support users as opposed to developers.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The thing many people miss about Firefox is, its entire UI is done in Gecko, via XUL. So you'd have to make KHTML/Webkit understand XUL first... ...and one has to wonder why you'd bother, when we have Konqueror.
Based on past history, MS would need the web world to coalesce to 1 stronger opponent. Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Safari/khtml, etc. I am not worried.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As simple as that. How could there be a concensus reached
at Glasgow, if a large portion of KHTML developers weren't
even there?
There is no definite decision to merge or "unfork".
Everyone has always believed that this would be
a nice goal, but getting the details right has never
happened, despite some people working very hard to
work them out.
What is true is that some KHTML developers believe they
may have a technical solution which could hopefully
lead to social solutions. Hopefully it will work out,
but perhaps it will not, and as such any such public
announcements are premature and misleading.
Maksim 'SadEagle' Orlovich,
KHTML ECMA, DOM, and KJS Developer
> I believe you mean KHTML and WebKit will be *spooning* soon!
Unforkingbelievable!
You did quote an example here -- but yes, this is probably my favorite way to do a merge, or an "unfork". Given fork A and fork B, pick fork B, port the features you miss from fork A, then drop A and use B.
But it is quite similar to gcc/egcs, in that the egcs fork got far enough ahead that the gcc people adopted it and "abandoned" their own new gcc version. I strongly suspect, however, that anything gcc had that egcs didn't was ported over before egcs was blessed as the new gcc.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Hey!
Stop throwing rotten fruit!
I would have, but the bitch keeps asking for it.
The Farewell Tour II
Khtml developers will add features that Webkit is lacking and then they will all get in the same boat. Trolltech and KDE will work together for Webkit under qt, Nokia works on gtk, Apple with whatever OSX uses. While I don't agree with Apple secretly forking it, the momentum Apple created should be used by the open source community. Webkit will be very versatile when this is done, being able to use both gtk and qt.
Are you actually aware of what this means?
Three very big development 'companies' are working together on *one* web engine with *one* code base.
Apple. Trolltech. KDE/The Open Source community. Maybe Nokia too, sometimes in the future.
Never thought that that would happen.
Hehehehe, it's posts like these that remind me why I added you to my friend list.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
Frankly if I had mod points I would have modded both of your posts down, and I couldn't care less about the GPLv2/GPLv3 debate or its outcome. Your first post didn't say anything worth being modded up, and I don't know what that "have you stopped beating your wife?" comment was about but it smells like flamebait to me.
And this one? Aside from worthless insulting of some anonymous moderator, you bust out some fantastic "ZOMG! ANTI-GPLV3 CONSPIRACY!!!" nonsense that simply deserves to get buried. And you used your karma bonus to do it.
Perhaps instead of some vast anti-GPLv3 conspiracy to keep you down, you're just being modded down for being an ass?
Apple's Safari is a closed and proprietary program that is why they removed the Qt dependency in the fist place and replaced it with a small subset of Qt functionality called KWQ. Since Qt's license only allows GPL and requires payment for other versions, I wonder what this means for companies wanting to release a product based on WebKit but decide not to publish the source code - such as Safari itself. They may or may not like the idea of shelling out $3000/developer just to include Webkit.
I don't know what that "have you stopped beating your wife?" comment was about but it smells like flamebait to me.
It's a well known example of a common fallacy.There is no fork.
Sincerely,
The New WebKHiTML Team