On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 06:53:26PM -0500, Jordi Guti?rrez Hermoso wrote: > On 15 May 2008 19:40:21 -0400, Luke S Crawford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > "Jordi Guti?rrez Hermoso" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > ... Apple taking code without > > > giving back in a usable way, or not giving back at all? > > > > see Darwin- Apple is giving away a bunch of it's OS-level advances. > > I was thinking more about the KHTML/Webkit fiasco. Looks like the code > is finally finding its way back to KDE, but Apple didn't make it easy > to happen. [...]
I believe what Apple did is fork the code. KHTML had code useful to Apple, but not goals useful to Apple. They decided to call it WebKit (renaming is allowed by the GPL/LGPL) and have been maintaining a separate code repository. As a result, KHTML is used in exactly one environment (Konqueror/KDE) and WebKit is used in all kinds of places (Safari, the Qt library, Adobe AIR, Google's Android, GNOME's Epiphany, etc.). Looks like Apple did terrible harm by devoting resources to improving the functionality and releasing them to the world, eh? Oh, but it isn't getting back to KHTML quickly, you say? That sometimes happens in a code fork. I don't think this counts as a fiasco, sorry. Apple played by the rules and it benefited everyone. (Not KHTML? Actually, since WebKit is part of Qt these days, KDE could just ditch KHTML and use WebKit instead. Whether they choose to or not has nothing to do with it.) Remember that forking is one of the rights the copyleft seeks to protect. > - Jordi G. H. --Greg -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
