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Firefox's Effect On Other Browsers
An anonymous reader points out an interview with Mozilla's "evangelist," Christopher Blizzard, regarding the future of Firefox and how it affects other browsers. It's an Austrian site, so forgive the comma abuse. From derStandard:
"It's sort of interesting though, part of our strategy is to make sure, that we continue making change and the indirect effect of this is that Microsoft continues to have to do releases, because if we get so far ahead that we're able to drive the platform they are not able to keep up and keep their users. I mean, we have this joke which says 'Internet Explorer 7 is the best release we ever did,' because they would not have done it, if we would have not built Firefox. And the same is true for Apple, they are doing a lot to keep up with us. Safari 3.1 is a good example, as far as we see it, the only reason they did this release was that Firefox 3 would come out and have Javascript speed which would be twice as fast as theirs, cause that's how it was before. So by pushing other people to make releases we can go on our mission to make sure the web stays healthy."
What astonishes me is more that this latest release has gotten even my totally non-tech-savvy friends to download it and acknowledge its superiority to Internet Explorer 7. The Firefox team has not only improved the browser for those of us who already used it, but managed to convert another large segment of the market. It's sort of like the Nintendo Wii effect -- they realized it made more sense not to enlarge their slice of the tech-savvy pie, but to expand the pie to include casual users as well. Or at least that's how I see it, feel free to correct me with your own interpretation.
Erste Post du Dummkopf!
I hated every alternative to IE I tried... until I tried Firefox.
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Nothing of substance here, but, for the record, it's an Austrian site
Or maybe they did it because they were pushing javascript apps for the iPhone, and working on the javascript-based SproutCore frameworks and the associated MobileMe apps.
Not everything revolves around Firefox.
Apple did not release Safari because of Firefox. After all, Firefox was on Apple. They released it because they wanted to be in control of their future. As it was, MS had announced that they were going to pull MSIE from them. What amazes me, is that Apple has not pushed OO to be on there. They would be smart to add a few coders to the project just to ensure that it can compete against Office on their platform.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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... is that now developers of every other browser expect a cake from the IE team on their major releases. Sadness.
I always maintained that Win2K was such a good OS specifically because of the competition Microsoft was getting from open source, they didn't want to be caught napping and wake up to find Linux as a good desktop solution. This theory kind of fell apart with Vista, I have no idea what that steaming pile is in response to.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Safari is not trailing Firefox as it is being developed in all ways, especially JavaScript performance. I actually prefer to use Firefox 3 on the Mac (much better array of plug-ins, and better security), but the latest WebKit nightlies, on http://www.webkit.org/ since the implementation of Squirelfish (see blog there) are quite a bit faster in JavaScript performance than Firefox. If anything, Firefox is going to have some catching up to do in that department.
It is fascinating the way browsers have evolved. From little free apps, to the dominance to Netscape, to the crushing anticompetitive dominance of IE to the reemergence of the firebird from the ashes of Netscape... coming back to put down the bloated, lagging malware known as IE.
Oh yeah. Then there's Apple and Konqueror doin' their own little thing. Along with Opera and iCab and Omni and all those folks who seem to never go away.
Yeah, you're right, because I can't tell the difference at all between a MacBook Pro with OS X and an ASUS laptop with Linux and KDE.
And here I thought that one of the points of open source software was to make solved problems (like core web browser libraries) share-able and reduce duplicated effort. I guess in fact its just so that when someone does use your work, other people can post on Slashdot about how thats stealing credit.
And Opera is feeling so pressured by Firefox that it is systematically forced to copy Firefox's features months and even years before Firefox releases them... ^_^
This is all well and good, but... does it really mean anything? I mean, "Oooo, look, we write software so good that Microsoft has to scramble to keep up" seems like a questionable metric to me. I'd rather hear something like, "We just came up with something so cool you'll forget not to drool when we let you peek at the specs."
Not to knock FF3 - I like faster JS as much as the next guy, but, er, awesomebar?
cogito ergo dubito
What will Firefox copy next? (what? troll?)
Are you sure that apple just slap their own GUI on WebKit?
http://trac.webkit.org/
Agh! That website is a horrible javascript laden monstrosity!
Nothing shows up at all with noscript blocking the site, and when I allow the site the article takes up less than 1/3rd of the screen space!
I want to know what sort of horrible decisions are behind this site, and whether they came from management or the web developer themself. Or both.
middle-click-to-close on tabs comes to mind
It's hard to tell between a left-click, middle-click, and right-click on a one button mouse...
While Firefox may have inspired the release of IE 7 and pushed Apple to jump into the fray with a Windows release of Safari, it is also true that FF 2 was not all that it should have been and just maybe IE 7 and Safari pushed Mozilla hard enough to really ace FF 3 which it seems that they have done.
As a software developer who once loathed the idea of having to code for multiple browsers, I have now accepted that there will be differences and have learned to deal with it and promise to stop whining.
I applaud the browser race and hope that they continue to leapfrog each other for a long time to come.
is that Firefox has been driven (to a large extent) by Opera.
Credit where credit is due, please.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I never knew, that German, was quite so, comma-happy.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
I don't see why one would want to use a mouse for such a task at all either. I mean, I have a perfectly good keyboard, it's got a good hundred or so of "buttons" and one can even press multiple of them at the same time to get even more combinations! Such as command-w.
well something that isnt said is that if you kill off safari, IE and other things, there isnt the competition for firefox to stay number one. As long as there is competition *everyone* is trying to be #1 and they all innovate, as soon as there is only one real choice that innovation will die down, which is likely to cause a new competitor (or several dozen) to join the fray.
This is true for more than just browsers, and as pointed out, its not a new idea, but this aspect of it is one that many forget. Wishing complete destruction upon competition is only a good thing if you plan on releasing no further updates or if you are a consumer who wants no new features in whatever it is that you are using.
Wake up sonny, it's 2008!
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
The SQLite manager add-on is incredible.
I'm looking forward to canned index databases for interesting site(s).
The whole idea of exposing data to the user is going to lead to some interesting long-term effects.
If nothing else, one hopes that it will help usher the demise of that ugly data Bastille called the Windows Registry.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
... Firefox, Opera, IE and Safari all are great networking operating systems. They just lack good browsers.
My FF 3.1 never crashes on XP SP2.
Could you provide specific sites that break?
I wonder about your break problems. Is there anything specific that goes wrong?
Is your virus scan up to date?
What is your OS?
Are you Bill Gates perhaps? (sorry for the thought)
Thanks and I hope FF goes better for you,
Jim
Wow. If I read that bit about JavaScript right, he's really not pulling any punches. They developed Safari 3.1 so that Firefox's JavaScript would be twice as fast?
That does kinda crack me up. Mozilla has always seemed to be fairly mild in their attacks on other browsers. Until now?
Apple does very little of the core work for Safari. They just take the open-source WebKit engine and slap their own UI over it
You are incredibly misinformed. A quick glance at recent WebKit changes readily shows how blatantly false your claim is.
Microsoft said for years that they would partner with IBM and fully support OS/2. Then they reneged at the last minute and left OS/2 to rot.
Which is pretty much what they did with all the industry "standards", too... lied about it long enough to bury it.
I DO NOT LIKE companies that routinely lie to their customers.
Macbooks still only ship with a 1 button trackpad.
If only there were a +1, "oh, snap!" mod.
In Ubuntu 8.04, firefox will crash randomly on pages that have flash video with sound. There is a bug apparently between flash and pulseaudio. There have been a few patches that have been released, and it is better, but still sometimes crashes.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Macbooks still only ship with a 1 button trackpad.
Who needs 2 buttons?
Two fingers and a click gives you the secondary mouse button and dragging 2 fingers around the trackpad gives you scrolling (horizontal and vertical). 3 finger swipes gives you back and forward navigation as well.
2 button trackpads are so last year.
In reverse Polish,
Great Al Bundy quote. My life indeed. However in very high percentage of males in Dallas, I made a charming find last Sat. West Village is where they all gather.
Apologies but I think the issue is your nice Ubuntu 8.04 OS. Maybe FF 3.1 was not tested enough on that platform. PS I am green with envy, not because of today's jalapenos, but by your great OS.
Good luck,
Jim
Correction here. No one, not even me sometimes, can read my mind.
. . . . West Village is where they all gather . . . "they" in this context are women with excellent xx chromosomes.
Thanks,
Jim
Honestly, the OS should not matter. Anyway, I am using Vista. It's stable on XP SP3. As for the sites that break - random stuff. Tho most often if crashes when I open a new tab of gmail (right after log on). FF2 worked great both on Vista and on PCL0S 08. I haven't tested FF3 in PCLOS - maybe when I get some time.
look, I hope it's just me. Maybe I'll do a scrub, and reinstall it. Heck, I still have it on the computer, I just don't use it anymore until I have time to dig in and see where the conflict is. But if it's not just me, and it' actually buggy, it will hurt them.
as for the rest of the questions - come on, don't be silly. how many /. users do you think there are who don't have an updates anti-virus?
-- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
They just take the open-source WebKit engine and slap their own UI over it
WebKit was developed by Apple, originally as a fork of KHTML for their Safari browser. Apple open-sourced WebKit and it was so good that many of its improvements were copied back into KHTML. It's also being used by a number of mobile phones because of its strengths relative to e.g, Gecko, including Android.
Without Apple, there would be no WebKit. But don't let reality get in your way.
Yes, because holding two fingers on the trackpad and then clicking is so much easier than just clicking the other button...err, wait...
I admit, I liked FF3. It was really fast, and the upgrade made me hunt for extension updates that had a few more features than the one I currently used.
Unfortunately, for me, it also had a habit of not properly repainting the window. I could browse to a page, and as it rendered, it would "forget" to erase the previous stuff it drew, leading to a huge mess. Othertimes, I would drag a window over it, then switch back to Firefox. Except, Firefox doesn't draw the page, and I'm left with an image of the last window that covered it. Finally, the one thing that really irritated me, when I switched tabs, it didn't update the window. I have to scroll down and scroll back up, which redraws the page. If the page isn't very long, this doesn't work very well.
The irritating thing is, sometimes it works just fine - draws just fine, othertimes, I get this behavior. It's almost as if the Windows desktop heap is exhausted, except that the normal programs that fail when it's full, don't.
I just wish I knew how to file the bug so I can report it...
I switched back to FF2 - I'll take correctly drawing windows over speed... scrolling windows costs way more time than FF2's slower renderer.
So much they feel the need to force more than what you want on you via their "Software Update" tool. Even Microsoft doesn't combine an IE patch with Windows Media Player.
... and especially WebKit. The direction Apple is going with their WebKit and the many native Toolkits tying into WebKit [Qt, GKT+, Win32, wx and the obvious Cocoa] should be a clue to Mozilla that XUL and it's like aren't driving the direction of the Web like they once did.
In fact, I'd wager in a year's time with iPhone 3G and it's Cocoa Touch frameworks, combined with the WebKit on many platforms[ Qt for Cocoa being quite interesting] you'll see Apple and Google driving the Web more than Mozilla.
well something that isnt said is that if you kill off safari, IE and other things, there isnt the competition for firefox to stay number one. As long as there is competition *everyone* is trying to be #1 and they all innovate, as soon as there is only one real choice that innovation will die down, which is likely to cause a new competitor (or several dozen) to join the fray.
Killing off Safari or Opera would be bad for competition, but on IE I have to strongly disagree. IE and the way MS bundles it with Windows is the single largest factor in why the Web is a constant attempt to create cool new things with old broken technology. They have single-handedly held back progress for nearly a decade now. IE dying would be about the best thing for competition and innovation ever.
Whew... OK... I caught my breath. Damn, that article summary was funny. OK, so I guess I could see maybe the very first decision to fund Safari development at Apple to be in part due to the fact that FireFox on the Mac sucked so horribly that people actually went back and forth between FireFox and MSIE. Other than that, the claim that Safari tries to catch up with FireFox is truly entertaining. That was the best laugh I had all day! Thanks.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
This reminds me of a comment from Brian Behlendorf concerning the design of the Apache License to allow for modifications of the code for commercial release without accompanying source code, in contrast to the GPL. Behlendorf said that this was deliberate because the Apache Foundation believed that supporting the web protocols was more important than the keeping contributions to the Apache code open source.
Interesting to see this sentiment echoed from the client side a decade later.
I have a problem with pop-under windows. They "reappeared" recently, and I'm using FF exclusively. Unfortunately I can't tell if my switch from FF2 to FF3 was the reason, but it was around the time. Is this a known bug? I know I can try to figure out the domains of the sites appearing in those unwanted windows, but I'd be more interested in a general solution. BTW, I have "block pop up windows" activated in the settings, with a few exceptions.
My FF 3.1 never crashes on XP SP2.
Mine crashes daily.
Could you provide specific sites that break?
No idea. It crashes when I quit. All the windows close and it appears to go away, and then later on, when I try and launch it, it complains its already running, and to quit it first. If I pull up task manager, sure enough there is always a 'firefox *32' process sitting there, which I have to kill before I can open up a new window.
Its intermittent though, it doesn't always crash... maybe one time in 4 or 5.
I wonder about your break problems. Is there anything specific that goes wrong?
See above.
Is your virus scan up to date?
I don't have a resident AV suite, but I scan regularly with command line AV tools, and its clean.
What is your OS?
Vista x64 (the *32 in the process name above is x64's way of telling me its a 32-bit process. I'd use Firefox 64 if more plugins worked.)
Are you Bill Gates perhaps? (sorry for the thought)
Yeah, I'm a multi-billionaire trolling on slashdot. I wish. ;)
Thanks and I hope FF goes better for you,
Me too. FF2.x never gave me any issues at all, and I'm tempted to go back, but there are things about FF3 I like, and the crashes, because they always happen on exit (or when its supposed to be exiting) it doesn't really impact me that badly... but still daily crashing is really unacceptable.
WebKit was developed by Apple, originally as a fork of KHTML for their Safari browser.
Do you prefer the cherry or grape Kool-Aid?
Apple open-sourced WebKit
KDE open-sourced KHTML. Apple didn't have a choice in the matter.
and it was so good that many of its improvements were copied back into KHTML.
It was so divergent that the KDE folks pretty much had to accept WebKit as the new KHTML if they wanted to accept the improvements.
As you said, don't let reality get in the way.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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Apple open-sourced WebKit and it was so good that many of its improvements were copied back into KHTML.
Umm, KHTML was licensed as LGPL, which means Apple had to open source their fork if they distributed it. As for improvements being copied back, well that happened to some extent, but the Konquerer team seems to have pretty much given up on KHTML and are contributing to Webkit now.
KDE open-sourced KHTML. Apple didn't have a choice in the matter.
Nonsense. KHTML is LGPL. Apple could have used the libraries without contributing anything back.
Moreover, the DOM is Apple's, not KHTML's. WebCore, the basic component of WebKit, has very little relationship to KHTML.
It was so divergent that the KDE folks pretty much had to accept WebKit as the new KHTML if they wanted to accept the improvements.
That's not at all true. Most of the improvements shared back upstream, including KHTML's ability to pass Acid2, were adapted prior to the merger. KDE adopted WebKit by choice. There was nothing stopping them from continuing development of KHTML separately, nor was their any requirement that the KDE people actually adopt any of Apple's improvements.
Sour grapes that KHTML was largely abandoned in favor of something better doesn't explain why it's WebKit, and not KHTML, that is being adopted by other platforms.
And what version of Firefox, exactly, were you using in 2000...?
If being free is "the most significant feature", you must love MSIE...
As to the "inbuilt ads" from the (ancient) Opera trial version, they were displayed in the browsing bar's dead space (i.e., they didn't take up any space that would otherwise be used to render pages), and you could simply switch to full screen mode, and the ads would disappear.
Care to come up with more pseudoscience to support your religion?
I have the exact same problem on my Vista x64 laptop. Now, I don't notice the problem any more since I switched to Linux. However, it is definitely there for whatever reason.
Umm, KHTML was licensed as LGPL, which means Apple had to open source their fork if they distributed it.
No, you're thinking of GPL. The LGPL would have allowed them to use KHTML libraries without giving anything back--WebCore's "improvements" are largely Apple's own doing, apart from those changes which were shared upstream before KDE developers abandoned KHTML. Where they ran into trouble with sharing changes was with KJS.
Yes, because holding two fingers on the trackpad and then clicking is so much easier than just clicking the other button...err, wait...
Actually it is. According to the usability tests I've seen, it is faster and has a lower failure rate because to hit the second button you have to either stretch your hand over or use your other hand, neither of which is ideal. For mice, where one hand is already off the keyboard, multiple buttons are a usability win for experts, but for trackpad users it is a loss for novice users and expert users and more usable but less learnable for middle of the road users.
OK vux of numbers I am on board with you now.
XP SP2 just crashed with me. I was doing something multi tasking like that had a drop down window. Too many things to recount. My entire system turned to mud. My PC chip-set started heating up the PC fan roared as it kicked on high. CTL+ALT+DEL did not work. Finally it did. 100% CPU. Drive light on. Hard boot corrected the problem.
The last time this kind of stuff happened it was just before my HD went on permanent vacation to i-will-never-work-again land. I hope that this is not starting again. Something like 100% cpu perhaps abusing HD seek movements.
Thanks,
Jim
No, you're thinking of GPL. The LGPL would have allowed them to use KHTML libraries without giving anything back.
They can link to it without giving anything back, but the LGPL does not allow them to make changes to it and distribute them without giving the source back. Since Apple had to make significant changes to make it work modularly and the way they wanted, they had to give all those changes back. They don't have to open source the code for Safari, which links to Webkit, and in fact they don't.
WebCore's "improvements" are largely Apple's own doing, apart from those changes which were shared upstream before KDE developers abandoned KHTML.
Apple has done significant work to make Webkit better than KHTML was, but they are certainly building on a lot of work that was done before they entered the game. Apple has played nice with the Konqueror folks and gone out of their way to help them integrate changes and revise the way the shared code base was developed such that improvements from multiple groups including Konqueror, Apple, and Nokia can all be included. That said, to claim Apple had a choice about how Webkit would be licensed or if their changes to it would be open source is simply not true.
Firefox is behind on implementing SVG when compared with Opera
KDE open-sourced KHTML. Apple didn't have a choice in the matter.
Nonsense. KHTML is LGPL. Apple could have used the libraries without contributing anything back.
Well, I can't claim to be an expert on the LGPL, but Wikipedia would seem to be in contradiction with you, and while I don't trust Wikipedia implicitly, I trust it more than random internet guy.
Further...
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_License
So it looks like the LGPL forces them to release the changes made to KHTML, but allows them to link to it from non-free applications (Safari)
As for why other platforms adopted it, perhaps its the fact that one of the big changes that apple made was to abstract the use of widget a bit, to allow for more toolkits than just QT to be used (like, say, theirs?), making it more viable on other platforms.
the LGPL does not allow them to make changes to it and distribute them without giving the source back. Since Apple had to make significant changes to make it work modularly and the way they wanted, they had to give all those changes back.
You are still being imprecise. The LGPL does allow them to make whatever changes they like, so long as the KHTML libraries they are using are used intact. I do not disagree that any modified libraries had to be shared back upstream, but those changes are portions of WebCore, itself a portion of WebKit. There was no requirement that compartmentalized changes, improvements, and additions be shared if they extended beyond the four corners of the KHTML libraries.
WebCore is much more than rewritten KHTML libraries. WebKit is much more than WebCore.
That said, to claim Apple had a choice about how Webkit would be licensed or if their changes to it would be open source is simply not true.
It absolutely is true. There was no obligation to open-source WebKit. There wasn't even an obligation to open-source the entirety of WebCore and JSCore. There was an obligation to share changes to modified libraries.
What's simply not true is that Apple had no alternative. Apple provided WebKit tactically, not out of obligation to disclose it in its entirety and certainly not out of the goodness of their "hearts".
Well, I can't claim to be an expert on the LGPL, but Wikipedia would seem to be in contradiction with you, and while I don't trust Wikipedia implicitly, I trust it more than random internet guy.
In this case, there is no need to make a distinction, because Wikipedia does not disagree with me. Please point out where you feel there is inconsistency.
You make it sound like Apple chose to open-source WebKit. They didn't - they had to, as it is a derivitave of LGPL'ed KHTML.
LGPL isn't the same as a BSD permissive-style license, so they couldn't do the same thing here as they did for the foundation of their OS. LGPL origionally stood for "Library GPL" because it allows other non-free programmes to use the library without being subject to the requirements of the (L)GPL
As far as I know, however, any changes or improvements made to the LGPL'ed programme itself must be distributed Freely, with source, if it is to be distributed at all.
That's incorrect. Changes made internal to LGPL software must be released, it's only external software that links to LGPL that has the right to stay closed.
For what you're saying to be true KHTML would need to be generic enough to be modified by Apple via linking rather than changing any of the internal KHTML code. The changes Apple have made did involve digging into and changing the guts of KHTML. Again, for what you're saying to be true then KHTML would have to be little more than a canvas for Apple to draw upon.
However we know it's not, and that the changes for progress were internal to the software and therefore Apple did not choose to open source it -- it was open source due to the KHTML license.
This is true, other than that Apple approached it as a fork. They didn't take the time to join the KHTML team and win over the developers with strong arguments and robust debate. It certainly wasn't that kind of software development.
Instead what Apple did was divergent, it was effectively a fork, and KDE chose to go with the fork (probably due to the quality of the code). I personally think that what Apple did was acceptable -- it's permitted by the licence. They could have managed the community in a smarter way but then they like being secretive. It's resulted in some great contributions. Overall I think it was a positive thing.
Tabbed browsing, clean mouse gestures, two-handed browsing, single-click image disabling, single-click user CSS mode.. heck, most of the user-friendly advances have been standard features on Opera for many, many years. And half of the really good stuff *still* isn't stock and standard on any other browser.
But, Opera did open its doors to the free download hype as a result of Firefox. So I owe you that much. :)
But.. catch up already would you?
"Apple open-sourced WebKit ..."
Um no. WebKit was always open source. Just because you fork an open source project doesn't mean you get to decide the license, the license has always been lgpl. When Apple released the first version of Safari they also release the source for the khtml changes just as the already existing license required.
LGPL isn't the same as a BSD permissive-style license,
No. But neither is it the same as the GPL generally.
The reason it was known as the Library GPL is that it allowed the non-contributory use of GPL'd libraries by other types of software licensed under terms incompatible with the GPL.
The KHTML library changes would have had to be shared per the terms of the licenses. This requirement, however, does not even encompass all of WebCore, let alone WebKit.
As far as I know, however, any changes or improvements made to the LGPL'ed programme itself must be distributed Freely, with source, if it is to be distributed at all.
Any changed or improvements to the LGPL'd software, which it is a complete program or a library. In the case of KHTML, it is a set of libraries. Those libraries were adopted into the codebase for WebCore--and only those libraries derived from the KHTML libraries would need to be shared.
It does not extend to other libraries written by Apple or any other developer, and it does not extend to products merely containing those libraries. Limiting that "wagon-hitching" (widely, and in some ways regrettably, known as "parasitic") effect of the GPL is the reason the LGPL exists in the first place.
Nonsense. KHTML is LGPL. Apple could have used the libraries without contributing anything back.
Apple couldn't have used the KHTML library without giving back because KHTML uses QT specifically for it's widgets. I suppose they technically could have, but not practically. The only options apple really had were:
1. Not to use KHTML at all
2. Use QT widgets in their browser. They would never do this.
3. Modify (and distribute) a modified version that handles other types of widgets
Apple released Safari 3.1 as a reaction to Mozilla releasing Firefox 3 nearly three months later? That's a rather creative way to spin things.
Not if Apple was reacting to a beta version, trying to get its own improvements out before the next Firefox went final.
A workaround for this is to run Flash inside nspluginwrapper, even if you're on a 32-bit system.
This way, when Flash crashes, it won't bring down the whole browser with it, and all you have to do it reload the page.
This bug is on Ubuntu's bugtracker.
What you're not recognizing is that option 3 refers to the libraries taken from KHTML.
KHTML is a product containing a number of libraries, many of which Apple used in their product. Some of those libraries were modified, in particular as you point out to remove the reliance on Qt. Those modified libraries had to be shared.
Those modified libraries, plus some unmodified libraries, plus some wholly independent libraries, combine together to form a product called WebCore. WebCore's KHTML-based, modified libraries must be shared back per the terms of the LGPL. WebCore's independent libraries need not be, thus, WebCore as a whole need not be open source (but practically speaking, separating it would be more work than it would be worth).
WebCore, in turn, is a set of libraries in a product called WebKit. WebKit is a set of libraries in a product called Safari.
The LGPL does not reach beyond the LGPL'd libraries--i.e., the portion of WebCore that is KHTML-derived. This is the only code Apple is obligated to release under the LGPL (plus their likewise KJS-derived libraries).
That's why we won't see the Year of Linux on the Desktop anytime soon. It looks like whenever it starts working more or less stable, some genius always comes up with a new all-shiny component to add which is either too slow, unstable, or breaks stuff written to existing APIs (see: Cairo, KDE4, and now this...)
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." -Herbert Spencer
This is an AMERICAN talking about comma abuse? Oh that's funny.
What about the Firefox team vs Opera?
I still have no idea why everyone discounts Opera so much when it is functionally similar to Firefox with most of the common extentions.
FUD alert! It is not true. While some of the original people who wrote KHTML are now working on WebKit (but they work for Trolltech), it's absolutely not true that the Konqueror developers given up on KHTML. They're still developing it, although of course integrating stuff from WebKit where needed.
A CC-licensed illustrated horror novel
I have not noticed this particular bug, but I also turn off pulseaudio at startup. So far I have not noticed any problems resulting from it. I have noticed that a few other sites will randomly crash FF, but I am thinking that may be the sites' design and not a FF issue.
How is the web staying healthy, when there is this humongous cloud of smug coming from article. I would never employ a man with such blind arrogance.
/. , have fun modding me down :P
And all this coming from a project that had the chance to "discover" the miracle of multi-threading in 3 major releases, and the future plans for Firefox 4.0 explicitly refuses multi threading, despite the world we are living in is dominated by multi-core personal computers. Have fun waiting on a tab to forever execute that rogue script. I guess solving multi threading specific problems require too high level of software engineering for you guys.
Yea, I dare to disagree with this on
Welly well now that FF3 is so "super fast" it is finally at a level that is bearable on OS X. Safari is still faster in most regards and OmniWebs newest beta of 5.8 kills both in regards to speed.
What more Firefox until version 2 felt so totally alien on OS X that really very few users used it (developers often use it because of firebug, but for private browsing many went with Camino, which is at least implemented using Cocoa to give it a more native OS X feeling).
Now with FF3 it feels bearable on OS X, but still too many details (and that's where the Mac users are picky) make it feel strange, some keyboard shortcuts are untypical for the Mac, pulldown menues in forms still are implemented in the Windows way (with a scrollbar WTF). Font rendering is finally mostly up to par with Cocoa apps (it can finally use real bold Japanese fonts and not the fake bold abortion it used for years before). But it still defaults to select the whole URL in the url field even if you only click once in it. In every other text field in OS X, clicking once places the insert cursor exactly at the clicked position and no highlighting is happening. This alone annoyed the hell out of me until I found you can change the behaviour via display:config and changing some parameters (wow how user friendly...).
All in all, Firefox is a great browser, but still lacking on the Mac. It just shows that it still isn't made to be a real OS X app, a "proper" OS X citizen. I've seen other cross-platform projects do a much better job, while still conforming to the UI guidelines of each OS.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
And what flavor is your anti-Kool-Aid.
You seem to be on a mission to discount any of Apple's efforts.
Apple took KHTML, turned it into a lean, mean HTML machine and now many folks are benefiting from those efforts. Likewise, folks are (or soon will be) benefiting from all the Javascript work recently done.
Apple could have taken Mozilla-code if they wanted to avoid opening up their work via LGPL. In fact, I think there is some bitterness among Mozilla fans because they didn't take that route.
[[Apple has played nice with the Konqueror folks and gone out of their way to help them integrate changes and revise the way the shared code base was developed such that improvements from multiple groups including Konqueror, Apple, and Nokia can all be included.]]
Only after many complaints from Konqueror developers: at the beginning Apple didn't cooperate much.. Apple was probably worried of having a bad image in the opensource community.
Seriously, I understand it's come far in sheer user counts for being trendy, but if you want to talk about browsers ripping off features then I find it curious he failed to mention Opera.
Because everything that people tote about Firefox--albeit in features that you have to plugin yourself--was being done by Opera first and for years before Firefox came along. Mouse gestures, intelligent pop up blocking system integrated into the browser, you name it and those of us had it while using Opera before Firefox was even a buzzword.
And after all these years, Opera continues to reign superior over Firefox in every area that counts: customization, speed, compatibility, portability, innovating new features with subsequent releases. The only thing that makes it difficult is when you hit a site that denies access, only because you're not using either IE or Firefox...despite Opera being more compatible with web standards and the like. Ponder that. Firefox wasn't the solution to any of the web's problems, it's part of the problem. It's an imitator just the same as IE, and dominating the market despite providing an inferior experience. The only boast to be made is that it's better than IE, and that isn't saying a whole lot.
Who needs 2 buttons?
One button should be enough for everyone!
Two months ago, I switched from IE to FF, as IE7 was so unstable as to be very irritating (two-three crashes a week). I've had FF crash on me a couple of times, but since it can bring back the pages you were looking at, it doesn't feel as painful (you can tell I keep a lot of pages open at once :-)
Overall, I'm very impressed. A few pages have issues, but overall rendering is very good.
I don't get it. "Internet Explorer 7 is the best release we ever did"? They're saying that IE7 is better than Firefox 3?
I can see their general point, Firefox drives Microsoft to keep releasing improved versions of IE. Fair enough. But to say that IE7 is better than FF3, joke or not, is not only a weird admission to make, it's also blatently untrue.
The phoenix came before the firebird...
Unfortunately, you're pretty wrong here. KHTML provided the HTML and XML parsing engine, the DOM tree exports, the CSS parsing engine, the layout engine... KJS provided the entire JavaScript system... Basically, KHTML and KJS provided everything.
Apple took this code and removed the KDE specific stuff (which was all sub-classed and derived from QT) and replaced it with non-QT derived "generic classes". (like the STL string class instead of QString, etc...) That was it for KJS, but for KHTML they stripped down and gave it the ability to use what the OS/Toolkit provided widgets - or internally managed and "owner drawn" widgets - and the actual "canvas".
That means that WebCore is a derivative of a pair of LGPL'd products. That means that WebCore has to be released under the GPL or LGPL. Further, since WebKit is, apparently, a derivative of WebCore, that means that it has to be released under one of the aforementioned licenses.
Since none of these changes are really "separate" from the original code (the Widget and canvas stuff are needed for the code to remain functional) Apple had no choice but to license it under the (L)GPL. As they have shown, Apple can and will keep what they can closed - can you get the source to Safari?
Note: IIRC, WebKit and WebCore are parallel products - one isn't built on top of the other, but one was forked from the other. However... It has been a very long time since I looked at either.
KHTML provided the HTML and XML parsing engine, the DOM tree exports, the CSS parsing engine, the layout engine.
Source? All indications are that Apple wrote their own DOM, and that their CSS parsing is not KHTML's (which was one of the problems in adapting changes back to KHTML years back). They also certainly wrote the SVG support, which KHTML lacked.
That means that WebCore is a derivative of a pair of LGPL'd products.
No. WebCore does not contain KJS code. That's JSCore. WebCore contains LGPL'd libraries from KHTML, but it contains libraries that are not part of KHTML as well. JSCore contains LGPL'd libraries from KJS.
Further, since WebKit is, apparently, a derivative of WebCore
No. WebKit is a wrapper, providing API-level access to WebCore and JSCore, as well as integrating the debugging unit (starts with a D...). It is not a derivative work for the purposes of the LGPL.
Note: IIRC, WebKit and WebCore are parallel products - one isn't built on top of the other, but one was forked from the other.
No. WebCore is a component of WebKit.
That's incorrect. Changes made internal to LGPL software must be released, it's only external software that links to LGPL that has the right to stay closed.
You misunderstand. What I'm saying is that Apple could have adopted the KHTML libraries without digging around in them and kept everything else closed.
They chose to dig around and make improvements, thus obligating them to share. Then they did share those changes.
If Apple had wanted to be real dicks about it, they could have stripped out the Qt portions and sent the stripped-down source back to the KHTML developers, simply leaving KHTML be and linking to it as-is. They didn't do that because they honestly wanted to improve the KHTML code, in addition to making it compatible with their OS. They were willing to share those changes as a fair price for free access. They could stop at WebCore and JSCore, but by open-sourcing WebKit as a whole, they lose very little and gain quite a lot, so it makes sense as a tactical decision.
That's an open source success story. But it's not the only way it could have happened. There are plenty of other ways that development could have been structured to avoid sharing even as much as they do. But WebKit is a good platform, and it doesn't hurt Apple's interests to share it. In fact, in an Internet largely catering to Trident's broken-down rendering and runner-up Gecko, which, not to demean it, is feature-rich at the expense of being slow and bulky, getting people to pay attention to WebKit is good for everyone.
Well, if not Opera, there would probably be no FireFox. As obviously FireFox was born as a free opensource alternative to Opera.
So who do we thank?..
Well we can probably thank FireFox for pushing Opera to get rid of those ads it used to have. ;)
I think it is a bit early for that considering that Firefox is still not close to being the "most used" browser in the world.
The reason it was known as the Library GPL
It's not. The LGPL is the Lesser GPL because its requirements on distributors are less than that of the full GPL.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
As a web developer, the death of IE would be greeted with a street party in my neighbourhood. Ever since I loaded up designs in 5.5 only to spend hours re-jigging them I could long live with out it. That said, I suppose you could look at the extra overhead of ensuring a site is IE-friendly and renders the same as more hours work and therefore more money but its hours I could've spent on more (useful) development than css hacks.
jaymz
WebKit project lead since it's creation has been Dave Hyatt. Before going to Apple, he worked at Netscape since 1997 created the Camino web browser (Gecko-based Mac browser) and co-created Firefox. He had a significant amount of experience with Mozilla and Gecko, and yet decided that KHTML was a cleaner and easier codebase to work with. I think that's what really annoys the Mozilla fans.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yeah, but who needs flash video with sound when you have conf files to edit?
Why is Opera never given its due? Opera engineers always come up with the new ideas and inventions, the rest blatantly copy them and fashion them as their own. Most people clearly see microsoft copying from "firefox", but opera being obscure, few notice that everyone is actually copying from opera. and now firefox has the nerve to say theyre the ones making other browsers better.
You're going to want to read up on the history of the LGPL.
Then you're going to want to reread the portion you quoted. "Was known as."
or even competition. I don't view them that way (I don't pay for any of them) - they're just different choices.
And to all those ignorant mods who called me a troll: Opera has been around in fairly significant numbers since about 2000. Even if it had minimal market share, that is the timeframe in which it became noticed by the web cognoscenti. Firefox came out around the end of 2004 (pre-Mozilla came out around the end of 2002).
At the time Mozilla/Firefox was being formed, IE was pretty static, with no significant feature development occurring (IE6 in 2001, IE7 not until 2006). IE certainly wasn't driving feature development in other browsers. Safari didn't even exist in public until 2003.
In addition to the obvious tabbed browsing (no, they didn't invent tabs, but they did popularize them in browsers), Opera has also set the bar for standards support and rendering speed.
Specifically with reference to the article and Mozilla/Firefox, the three most significant UI features of Mozilla/Firefox, tabbed browsing, easy inline find, and custom shortcuts, all appeared in Opera previously.
Yes, Opera has been a significant factor in driving feature development in other browsers, and it deserves that recognition and respect, even if you choose to use something else.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Firefox is great, but I wonder why so many software developers have this annoying habit of adding new features to their apps.
I want a browser to display web pages, offer possibly access to a few other services, and that's it. I don't need tabbed browsing, 'snap-back', or weird toolbars, and I don't want my browser to tell me whether I have buy fresh milk. Just about every browser after Mosaic was completely sufficient and the problem of the latter was only that it opened a new window for each link you clicked. Who on earth needs all those features???
Makey uppy words ftw!
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
Keynote is a godsend, but Pages, though nice, suffers from the same reason I couldn't go OO.o in my Windows days: Table support is abysmal. They are so hard to work with. ONLY Microsoft has gotten this right.
And Numbers?
See, a spreadsheet is a machine. It's not a document. 100% of the terrible spreadsheets I've cursed in my life have been the ones formatted to look good when printed, instead of being a machine that displays and manipulates data, mostly numbers. When I open a spreadsheet, I want to see an entire screen full of boxes. Boxes completely empty, save for the potential they are brimming over with.
Excel and Word are still must-haves, as far as I'm concerned, and actually, now that MS has stripped VB support out of Excel on the Mac, I even find that I run 2003 under Fusion. When things are good, they're good, even if the company that produces them pisses you off.
Okay, that goes at least as much for Apple as well. It'd be so much easier to hate them if OSX weren't so much better than Windows or Linux (ducking now...).
.
The reason why Safari came out with the faster JavaScript is that the faster JavaScript was needed for the MobileMe service's web interface.
It is nothing more than trivially humorous that a FireFox fanboy describes the world as being Firefox-centric.
Having said that, competition, whether imagined (as with Mozilla's "evangelist," Christopher Blizzard) or real, is always for the better.
At my office I am in IT lockdown so to get around it I use portable firefox 3.1 on XP SP3, I get occasional crashes when I use our webmail, it uses Java. I have reported it to mozilla and await their prompt response. The fact is for some people FF3 crashes a lot for them, it is not hating it is just a fact. It does not bother me much as I just shrug and start again and choose to continue my session when the dialog box comes up.
End of line
I would give Opera more recognition and respect if its users weren't constantly whinging about how little respect it gets. Hype about how it's faster, more secure, more standards compliant, easier to use, and has more features than every other browser doesn't help either. If it were really that great, more users would be using it. I've tried Opera many times in the past, and I go back to Mozilla browsers every time, as do many others who try Opera.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Microsoft has an interesting problem on their hands when it comes to development and security for Internet Explorer. Because they have made the operating system dependent on Internet Explorer, you can't just download the latest version and install it, you also need all of these other OS patches as well. The downloads are also a lot larger than Firefox updates. This also inhibits development since Microsoft has to do a lot more testing and take a lot more care in the changes they make since it affects more than just the web browsing experience. Microsoft needs to separate the browser from the operating system if they want to compete with Firefox and Safari. They could possibly keep some integration by providing a light api that any browser could implement. This would help prevent the light api from getting too deeply integrated into the operating system.
IE7 has the security and reliability. It's also quicker than FF and doesn't leak memory like a sieve
In the classic battle of IE7 vs FF2, he's absolutely right.
I tried FF2 a few years ago when everyone seemed unable to get enough of the kool-aid. While superior to IE6 for its tabbed browsing, once IE7 rolled out, FF2 lost its only edge.
Today, I run FF3 with minimal addons. I don't use NoScript, because it turns normal web browsing into a circus of "allow" clicks, and makes UAC look good.
Still though, I refuse to drink either side's kool-aid. Firefox is not the shining gift from heaven some people think it is, and IE is not the complete trash slashdotters generally insist it is.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
And what flavor is your anti-Kool-Aid. You seem to be on a mission to discount any of Apple's efforts.
I wrote that on a Mac, sparky. That doesn't change the fact that Apple LGPL'ed WebKit because they had no choice in the matter, not because of their magnificent charity toward mankind. Who knows - maybe they would've done so anyway if they'd written it from scratch? We'll never know because that's not the route they picked.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Memory leaks do not cause crashes. Memory leaks cause excessive memory usage. If you can demonstrate how to get Firefox 3 to use excessive amounts of memory or crash, I'd be happy to file a bug report.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
If Opera ever loses enough money to go out of business, they could expect a huge check from the Mozilla foundation. Mozilla cannot afford to let anything happen to their R & D department.
It's not. The LGPL is the Lesser GPL because its requirements on distributors are less than that of the full GPL.
As factually incorrect as mr_matticus is throughout the rest of this thread, he's correct here. The LGPL used to be the "Library GPL" until the FSF renamed it to "Lesser" to make it sound less desirable (which I happen to think was a good idea, but that's beside the point).
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I still find Firefox unusable on some sites, because redrawing or scrolling halts the CPU at 100% usage for several seconds. However, this is on Linux, which isn't the majority platform, and not the most bleeding edge version of all libraries, with the result that nobody seems likely to fix it. (I reported the Firefox 3 version of the problem in March. Firefox 2 had problems on a different set of sites.)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=415488 but I don't think they let you link from Slashdot.
What gets on my nerves on companies that use client side Visual Basic (VB) in their web pages. This sort of thing screams incompatibility all over it, since it will only ever work on IE on MS-Windows. When some of these companies are quizzed their response translates to "they could not care less". One company with this attitude is "Project InVision", so steer clear of their time sheet application.
For me, I test my application first with Firefox, followed by Safari and Opera. IE gets treated last because I know its going to be a headache. I don't test with Linux specific browsers, since I don't have access to a Linux box to so, and I feel if it is working in the four major browsers, then there is a chance something is broken in the browser I didn't test with - maybe not a great attitude, but there are only so many hours in a day.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Crashes never hurt Microsoft.
OTOH, years and years of technological stagnation didn't hurt them either.
Perhaps this whole "other options don't have a chance" doesn't have anything
to do with how many bells and whistles you have or how crash prone the system
is...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The problem is that LCDs have a fixed native resolution.
When viewing an image which is another resolution which isn't an integer divisor of the native one,
- either you get the whole display completely blurry (if the LCD attempts to fit the image using interpolation)
- or you get funny irregularly sized pixel (which is ugly too)
(This is also one of the reasons why games look nicer on CRTs - the other is higher refresh rates)
I suppose KiloByte is having problems because he can't set the resolution of the console to match the resolution of the LCD and everythings looks blurry and ugly.
The problem is a combination of :
- less and less graphic card having good console support (my previous 3DFx Voodoo had a nice accelerated framebuffer device, my current Readeon HD is only usable using the VESA framebuffer - and svgatextmode hasn't been kept up to date with modern chipsets)
- nobody bothers to write framebuffer drivers for newer gpus, because writing X+Mesa drivers is hard enough and there's no point in losing time and diluting efforts in writing additional drivers for things that are only used to draw a bootsplash for most users and that can approximately be handled by the vesa driver anyway
- fewer video modes are available in VESA most of the exotic resolutions require hardware specific drivers
- modern LCDs are 16:9 or 16:10 and don't fit the default 4:3 aspect ratio of the few resolutions available in VESA video modes
thus there's currently no way to get a nice console resolution which fits your LCD's native resolution using the "vga=###" or "video=###" flags of the kernel.
Hopefully, with DRI2, as mode settings is moved into the kernel, framebuffer drivers or svga text tools/drivers could use this functionality to setup either the console frame buffer or high resolution svga text modes, thus a single efforts (the main X/Gallium3D/kernel-dri2 driver) can benefit the console too.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Jesus, what he said.
WTF is Pulseaudio FOR? All I know is that I stopped having audio problems in Linux 3-4 years ago, and now all of the sudden I'm having to use this buggy-as-fuck Pulseaudio thing to make some stuff work, but it breaks other things, so I have to edit ~/.pulseaudioconf or whatever with blah blah blah.
Maybe there's a reason for it, but from my perspective it looks like a solution looking for a problem (and causing them when it doesn't find them)
My problem with single button trackpads is that I use gpm a lot to copy/paste in simple ttys or xterms. This uses the middle click to paste. How am I supposed to do that on a single-button trackpad? Something like a three-finger tap? Don't give me strange interfaces. Give me multiple buttons. They are intuitive.
There are some pros to using FireFox. The availability of the Ad-Block add-on is what's caused me to use FF3 over IE7. However, if it weren't for Ad-Block, I'd probably use IE. IE7 crashes less, is compatible with more web-sites, and on my machine, seems to load pages more quickly (JS in FF3 is faster, but total time in IE7 seems to be less). Safari is faster than either of the two. Safari's interface kind of bugs me, but that's probably because I'm not used to it. (I'm not a Mac missionary. Just happens to be what I noticed.)
Firefox 3.0 has been best browser experience for me. And I have used browsers for a long time since the Netscape days. What Mozilla has for me made it very hard to use any other browser, as I compare the others to Firefox 3.0 and see if they match up any way to the standards that has been put on.
..."of a browser full of security holes that Apple refuses to fix but foists on everyone at every possible opportunity despite that no (UK) online banking sites recommend it as safe to use for financial transactions?"
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
But this so-called Location Bar sucks ass.
Please allow us to turn it off or change its behavior.
Safari came out, and then Microsoft decided to pull IE, because Macs had a built-in browser now.
Internet Explorer on Mac OS X was stagnant for a very long time before Safari was released. The Mac IE development team, which had been separate, had been absorbed into the Mac Office development team and no work was being done on Mac IE.
There had been no updates or even bug fixes for Mac IE for over two years before Safari was launched.
If anything, from an outsider's perspective it seems more like Apple developed Safari because they knew that Microsoft had quit developing Mac IE and Mac OS X didn't have a free web browser with the latest features.
FUD alert! It is not true. While some of the original people who wrote KHTML are now working on WebKit (but they work for Trolltech), it's absolutely not true that the Konqueror developers given up on KHTML. They're still developing it, although of course integrating stuff from WebKit where needed.
From the people I've talked to, more effort is going into porting things from KHTML into Webkit, than on developing new features/improvements in KHTML. There are developer previews of Konqueror that now use Webkit. I think most of the community now believes Webkit will replace KHTML going forward. Certainly that is what Trolltech seems to be saying.
Apple has played nice with the Konqueror folks and gone out of their way to help them integrate changes and revise the way the shared code base was developed such that improvements from multiple groups including Konqueror, Apple, and Nokia can all be included.
Only after many complaints from Konqueror developers: at the beginning Apple didn't cooperate much.. Apple was probably worried of having a bad image in the opensource community.
Do we have to go over this again? Have you read the comments by the KHTML developers? Here's what happened. Apple developed Webkit without telling anyone and released the code back as one big dump in a different versioning system. One of the KHTML developers commented that it was going to be a huge pain trying to sort it all out, leading other people who read the forums to think Apple was intentionally obscuring things and numerous unrelated people picked it up and wrote complaints. Then, one of the KHTML developers sent an e-mail to Apple asking if they would help and Apple responded to them right away by going through and commenting things for them with comments specific to what was added where and what the KHTML team needed to reintegrate parts of it. Basically, they went out of their way to help.
So now the KHTML people started integrating some of the changes, but they were unhappy with some of what Apple had done and as a whole decided to intentionally hold off on pulling in some of the changes they did not like as well as other changes that depended upon those. They also had problems with the process because they were used to being the only ones contributing anything major and were not well organized to handle things from others.
Eventually, Nokia and a few others started making major contributions as well, but tended up contributing them to Apple's fork (Webkit) because it was more aligned with what they needed and the Konqueror team realized they were starting to fall way behind on all this free code from others. At this point they've mostly seemed to have decided Webkit is the way going forward.
The problem I have with your post, is it is still based upon that initial round of forum comments based upon someone's complaint being taken out of context, before anyone bothered to ask Apple for a more granular set of their changes and on the KHTML team intentionally deciding not to integrate many of the changes back into KHTML. That version of events was misinformed at the time, but you'd think numerous discussions like this and several Slashdot articles including direct quotes from the KHTML team would have cleared things up.
Apple toke KHTML, developed it so it got passed Acid2 then returned the code back to KHTML as KDE developers demand as GPL rules. KDE team got everything as one big patch and then they grepped the changed from it and improved the KTHML too.
Without KHTML, there would not be a Webkit, because Apple would not have other source to get as good engine (mayby a alternative would be a gecko engine).
Now we all have great browser engine, thanks to KDE, Apple and GPL.
(Apple did not freely open sourced it because it was (L)GPL and so on 'a must' to release)
What about Opera's "Effect On Other Browsers." Afterall, it was Opera who was first to introduced tabbing browsing, first to pass the ACID tests, first to implement sessions, and first to interpret/process spoken commands.
I was going to mod your post up, if only for its pleasant reasonable tone, but there is one thing in your post which I find very wrong:
"Let them compete on quality of product and leave the politics at home."
I sadly think that although this claim is used by many pro-microsoft people on this board (and just to make that clear: I have nothing against Microsoft. I use them every day and am fairly happy), if the claim that the proponents of open source are using politics. I will put simply: Micrsoft has been playing power politics from day one (Remember all the "Linux is a cancer" or the "Get the facts" campaigns?).
I think that Microsoft basically created its own nemesis with its less than decent public attacks on its opponents over the years.
You can't win, Mods. If you Troll me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I've noticed a lot of users, when trying navigate to their favourite websites, just go to google, and type in the website name or the name of the page they visit a lot. With the new address bar thingy i reckon people will be using search engines a lot less to navigate to their favourite web pages.
Not a single fact is incorrect. All the links provided in all of the threads support mr_matticus's story of Webkit. The mods even agree. Anyone who talks about "kool aid" and "fanbois" is the one facing an uphill battle.
But it's not true. There has even been a statement from the KHTML developers that there are no intentions of merging with WebKit.
A CC-licensed illustrated horror novel
"information" huh?....right ;o)
"StatCounter reported in March that Safari/iPhone was ... No. 2 globally, trailing the Nokia Web browser."
Finally, my suspicious are confirmed (sort of).
Max.
Never, ever, ever, have, I read, an article, with so many, horrible, grammatical, errors!!!! COMMA ABUSE NOT FORGIVEN
I can only think of one needing a reboot once while running FF3. I was howwever running Outlook and Word at the same time as well. Both of these have caused this PC to hang up several times. So I am not 100% convinced that I have had even one FF3 crash.
Presumably this means that I am destined for 6+ crashes in the next 24 hours...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
You are right, I mistook his use of tense to be a typo.
But, the rest of that sentence is clearly wrong, to wit:
The reason it was known as the Library GPL is that it allowed the non-contributory use of GPL'd libraries by other types of software licensed under terms incompatible with the GPL.
The LPGL does not effect GPL'd libraries one way or the other, only LGPL'd libraries. Maybe that was a typo. Hard to say now.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.