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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."
Finally, open-source has an answer to Voltron (or the Megazord, depending on which generation you are in.)
KHTML/Webkit and derivatives are under the LGPLv2, and the rights were not assigned to a central organization. They would have to contact every author that ever touched that code before they'd be permitted to offer it solely under the LGPLv3...
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.
Well, it's a famous forking/unforking story regarding GCC, and today we've had a GCC forking story, and a forking->unforking story. Since stories about successful unforks and stories about GCC aren't all that common on Slashdot, it makes sense you haven't seen it here before.
Fortunately, in this case the reference is actually relevant to the process and the discussion. In the GCC story, it was completely unrelated to a license-based fork of GCC.
When I worked on WebKit, the source that was publicly available was the source that went into Safari after it's had been adequately tested. They don't have a super-secret version that they are adding their improvements to. The version they improve is the LGPL version.
In fact, you can go and download the nightly build of WebKit and use it with Safari (Safari is just a wrapper that provides the gui).
http://nightly.webkit.org/
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
Huh? How do you get that from a story about Apple providing such an attractive fork that everyone, including the original authors, is switching to it?
The piece you quoted refers to a squabble about changes to Webkit being difficult to port to KHTML. Which, as the article notes, has been long resolved to everyone's satisfaction.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
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
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.
I believe the nightlies are actually compiled DLL's (or shared libraries, depending on which OS you are on). You can point the safari executable to use the nightly builds instead of the shipped build.
With that said, the nightlies can be buggy, leak, crash, etc. After all, it's just what the devs checked in the previous day and it hasn't really been fully tested.
I was just trying to make the point that the guts of Safari is open source, and that is where Apple puts it, it doesn't have a separate branch that it works on.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
Your facts are a bit off:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc-2.96.html
In particular, note that the gcc-2.96 debacle had nothing to do with egcs. GCC 2.95 was released after the gcc/egcs merger and before Red Hat released gcc-2.96.
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?