

WebKit project hit its monumental 100,000-th check in. - mariuz
http://ariya.ofilabs.com/2011/11/one-hundred-thousand-and-counting.html

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buster
I really don't like that this site makes it appear as if Apple started
everything... no mentioning of KHTML :(

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wzdd
Or the most interesting part of that early story, which was Apple picking
khtml over the (at the time) more-capable Gecko engine---which turned out to
be a very good decision.

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ootachi
Why was that a good decision?

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tptacek
Because WebKit is such an obviously successful project, is what I read out of
that.

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azakai
Both WebKit and Gecko are obviously successful, so it isn't clear that Apple's
choice was better than the other option at the time. We do know that this
choice turned out very well for Apple, but we don't know if things could have
turned out better otherwise if Apple had picked Gecko.

For that matter, we don't know if things wouldn't have turned out better for
Apple if it had started from scratch. For one thing, doing so would have
avoided KHTML's LGPL license, which requires source code to be shared. That
would have allowed Apple to make its web engine closed source or entirely BSD,
which could have led to very different results than how things unfolded.
Better or worse, it is very hard to say.

Edit: I'm curious, why the downmod?

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tptacek
At a glance, it looks like Webkit is more successful than Gecko, simply
because it powers more browsers and because Gecko has virtually no footprint
in mobile browsing.

We can obviously go round-and-round all day on which is the better engine. I'm
only saying that Webkit was a successful project for Apple. I'm not sure how
productive it is to second-guess it.

(I didn't downvote you).

~~~
azakai
I agree entirely, there is not much point in second guessing Apple. Their
decision worked out very well for them. Safari is an excellent browser and
WebKit is an excellent browser engine.

I do think though that the KHTML/Gecko thing is a pointless debate. For one
thing, both are very good, so I'm not sure what there is to argue. But the
real issue is KHTML/Gecko is a false dichotomy: Apple has huge resources and
amazing engineering talent, so it could have written a __new __browser engine
from scratch, and I'm pretty sure that browser engine would have been awesome.
And, doing so would have given Apple complete freedom to pick the project's
license, either more closed than KHTML's LGPL license (even entirely closed
source, like most of OS X), or more permissive (even BSD, like Apple prefers
in its open source projects). There are a lot of interesting possibilities
there, that we can only speculate about.

So again, I agree second guessing is pointless. But it just seems like
debating KHTML/Gecko is even more pointless, given the other options Apple
had.

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chc
I recall someone from Apple (I want to say David Hyatt) actually explained why
they went the way they did. They looked at assimilating Gecko, but it was just
too large to mold into the product they wanted without essentially throwing
out most of the existing product. But still, starting from scratch would have
ballooned the budget since a Web browser is a nontrivial undertaking†. KHTML
was a happy medium — it was a solid, functional base, but it wasn't yet
overwhelming for the Safari team.

† Think about it. HTML rendering engines are probably the most-used piece of
software around these days, and yet in the almost 20 years since the Web came
about, there have only been about 10 notable rendering engines written for it,
of which only three have had real commercial viability (Gecko, Trident and
WebKit).

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azakai
It does make sense that KHTML was a compromise for Apple as you say. It's
interesting that that was the motivation there, thanks for sharing that!

About Opera, a comment: Opera definitely has real commercial viability. Unlike
the other three you mention, Opera has had to be profitable all its life, and
from the Opera browser itself (not subsidized by other products). Today Opera
makes a lot of money from its mobile browser (but it is in danger from WebKit
now).

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chc
You're right, that isn't fair to Opera. I honestly just forgot about them when
I was writing the postscript. Thanks for the reminder.

