Re: Blocking Gmail ads
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 <lsc@prgmr.com> wrote:
> > "Jordi Guti?rrez Hermoso" <jordigh@gmail.com> 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
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