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Technology (Apple) Businesses Technology Apple

Apple Releases WebKit 329

Posted by CmdrTaco from the step-in-the-right-direction dept.
rohanl writes "Apple has responded to recent criticisms from the KHTML developers by providing a live CVS repository (including all history) of WebCore, JavaScriptCore and the newly open sourced WebKit, public mailing list, irc channel and bug database. Details at the new webkit.opendarwin.org"
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Apple Releases WebKit More

Apple Releases WebKit

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  • Dated icon (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @09:33AM (#12745976) Homepage Journal

    Hey Taco, better change the Apple section's "G5" logo to the Intel logo.
    • Yeah.. and will swap Mini for a Apple Pentium 4..

      Sheesh.. I'm still not over this..

      Anyone have download mirrors for the keynote? My connection sucks bumsickle and streaming hangs..
    • I wonder now whether the rumored Intel Mini was actually the Developer's machine Apple's making available. And everyone thought the Intel Mini would run Windows...
      • the apple developers machine looks like a powermac - big and aluminum

  • But WAIT!!! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mitchell_pgh ( 536538 )
    But wait... what is KHTML going to complain about now! On a serious note, I'm happy to see Apple offer their versioning history. A step in the right direction IMHO.

    • Re:But WAIT!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pebs ( 654334 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @09:38AM (#12746008) Homepage
      But wait... what is KHTML going to complain about now!

      Would Apple have done this had they not complained?

      • Re:But WAIT!!! (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by rootofevil ( 188401 )
        Would Apple have done this had they not complained?

        would they they have known it was a problem?

        if a tree falls on a hippie in the forest, does anyone care?

        we can go on like this all day. Grandparents point is that apple is going out of their way to appease a relatively small (even in opensource terms) group of people. Kudos to them.

        • Re:But WAIT!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by masklinn ( 823351 ) <.slashdot.org. .at. .masklinn.net.> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @10:18AM (#12746388)
          Grandparents point is that apple is going out of their way to appease a relatively small (even in opensource terms) group of people.
          For god's sake, are you retarded? Did your parents repeatedly slam your head in a brick wall when you were younger?
          The "relatively small group of people" you're talking about are the ones who created the base core of Safari's rendering engine (KHTML) for fuck's sake. And if you had at least checked what happened, you'd have seen that the K guys had indeed asked (privately, not in public channels) for limited access to Apple's Safari repository and bug tracker before...
        • Sure they would have known it was a problem -- I sent them a feedback email a few days ago asking them to work more closely with the KHTML devs. (And I'm not an involved party other than the fact that I use both Mac and Linux PCs.) Obviously, they listened to what I had to say, and all this has come about thanks to me!

          You're welcome. ; )

          Anyway, the point is that more people care about this than just the KHTML people -- Apple's doing it to appease the whole of Slashdot, at least.
      • Would Apple have done this had they not complained?

        Apple would have been forced to comply with the license as written for the khtml code..

        Oh wait they had already done that.
    • Yes, good step in the right direction.

      But don't worry, the KHTML guys will complain about Objective C++ and the Qt replacement next.

      --jeff

      • Re:But WAIT!!! (Score:3, Informative)

        by JebusIsLord ( 566856 )
        No one who has ever actually used Objective C++ and Carbon would actually complain about it. That has to be the nicest toolkit out there, bar none.

        • Re:But WAIT!!! (Score:3, Informative)

          by JebusIsLord ( 566856 )
          grr I mean cocoa of course. it is damn early.

    • Re:But WAIT!!! (Score:5, Funny)

      by svanstrom ( 734343 ) <tony@svanstrom.org> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @09:51AM (#12746126) Homepage
      But wait... what is KHTML going to complain about now!


      They're going to complain about the code being PPC-centric... no, wait... damn...

    • Re:But WAIT!!! (Score:3, Informative)

      by GweeDo ( 127172 )
      The KHTML developers NEVER complained about this. They complained about the people that were pissy about them not merging the Apple updates fast enough. Your post here is as bad as all the new sites that failed to read the original post and have since mis-communicated the whole freaking thing. Good work.
    • They spend all this time asking Apple to open up, then they respond by putting WebKit on a CVS server instead of a Subversion one.

  • Wait and see first... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by irchs ( 752829 )
    I think we need to wait and see if this is anymore use the KHTML developers before we go proclaiming Apple as the good guys... :)

    Personally I hope it is, as it is a good show of how two groups with different agenda's can benefit from Open Source.

    Jan

    • Re:Wait and see first... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by svanstrom ( 734343 ) <tony@svanstrom.org> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @09:59AM (#12746205) Homepage
      I think we need to wait and see if this is anymore use the KHTML developers before we go proclaiming Apple as the good guys... :)


      Sorry, but that's just bs... the "KHTML developers" picked the license, and Apple gave back as much as they had to according to that license.
      That's it, that's the whole thing; Apple never were the bad guys, because they did what they have to.

      Now Apple is doing even more than they have to, and now you are waiting for the "KHTML developers" to say if they like it or not before figuring out if Apple are they good guys or not???

      Wake up and realize that Apple's doing more than they have to, now it's up to the "KHTML developers" to figure out if they 1) want to use to code or 2) can use the code.

      If they can't use the code, then what would Apple have to do to make them the good guys in your book??? Hire people to teach them and/or do the programming for them?

      • Re:Wait and see first... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jusdisgi ( 617863 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @11:14AM (#12746987)

        Sorry, but that's just bs... the "KHTML developers" picked the license, and Apple gave back as much as they had to according to that license. That's it, that's the whole thing; Apple never were the bad guys, because they did what they have to.

        Bullshit. The fact that they weren't legally required to be good citizens does not mean no one should ever be able to criticize their actions. They took a piece of software from an open-source group, acted like they wanted to cooperate with them, then forked it too far and acted like asses when the KHTML guys asked them to try to work back toward one codebase. They went so far as to tell the KHTML guys to just drop their project and use Apple's version.

        None of this was illegal. It was just a dickhead move.

        Of course, now Apple has done something in the hopes of correcting that, which indicates they also feel they haven't done right by KHTML. Hopefully this will help the situation...overall, I have seen Apple as a halfway decent OSS player. But in this case, I think time will have to tell...the real issue is whether this will help the two codebases codevelop more or not. If it doesn't, Apple will have been the "bad guy" because they will have unnecessarily split development resources and time for a project that could have been cooperatively handled. That's a Bad Thing, regardless of whether it's legally permissible.

        • the real issue is whether this will help the two codebases codevelop more or not. If it doesn't, Apple will have been the "bad guy" because they will have unnecessarily split development resources and time for a project that could have been cooperatively handled. That's a Bad Thing, regardless of whether it's legally permissible.

          Forking isn't a bad thing, it happens all the time... The "problem" is that Apple didn't say that they were going to take the code and fork off, and I don't think they ever inte

    • Actually, by doing this, Apple are doing WAY more than is required by the licence. This makes them 'good guys' for me (on this particular matter), regardless of the use the KHTML guys can make of this. Of course, this could be just a PR move, but it is still more than what they had to do.

      That said, I hope that the KHTML group can make a good use of this. Even with access to the cvs repositories, I don't expect that merging back the changes will be trivial, just easier. I hope this won't be used by the fan

  • Without wishing to sound too fanboyish... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ickoonite ( 639305 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @09:40AM (#12746021) Homepage
    ...good stuff, good stuff. It seems they actually do care about how the open source community perceives them. And it can only do them good to remain on good terms with the Konqueror/KHTML team.

    That said, some of the criticisms of the Konqueror team may have had some validity - specifically, there is little room in the cutthroat commercial arena for the unwavering dogmatism, devotion to absolute technical superiority over immediate user needs, etc. Hopefully the two can forge a way forward together now that Apple has made this (much needed) gesture.

    iqu :)

  • Good show Apple (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @09:41AM (#12746035)
    Despite liking OS X and the now-defunct power-PC platform (though still preferring GNU/Linux on both PPC and AMD64), and having switched a number of people from Windoze to OS X, I have not been shy about being critical, even scathingly so, of Apple when they deserve it.

    The deserved it in no small degree when they made it difficult for KHTML developers to reintegrate their changes into the mainline tree.

    However, I am glad to see they responded to the community's criticisms in such a constructive manner. This is good for everybody. It's good for KHTML, as Apple's improvements can now be integrated cleanly into the mainline tree, and it is good for Apple, both on the PR/Community Relations front, and on the technical front, as they can continue to benefit from developments in KTHML and their porting burden should, at least theortecially, be lessened as their changes make it back into the main development tree.

    Good show, Apple. Few flesh-and-blood people would have the character to admit a mae culpa and change their ways. For corporations, this is even more rare. This doesn't change my skepticism WRT the move to Intel (though if it is a move to AMD64 said skepticism is alleviated, and if the move is a result of supply issues with IBM, said move is understandable despite my skepticism, but I digress), but it is reassuring to see positive movements on other fronts.
    • You know, with this CVS tree, and the move to Intel hardware, how long before we have a Windows port of Safari?

      Nah, the last thing we need is something like Safari cluttering things up. Mac users hang onto it for the same reason most windows users use IE, it's what came with the OS. I cant see anyone switching TO Safari if it wasn't preinstalled.
      • Nah, the last thing we need is something like Safari cluttering things up. Mac users hang onto it for the same reason most windows users use IE, it's what came with the OS. I cant see anyone switching TO Safari if it wasn't preinstalled.

        Web designers could use it to test for Safari compatibility. Mac users could use it on their Windows PC at work, for familiarity. Maybe some people just want a KHTML-based browser. Choice is always good.
        • Web designers could use it to test for Safari compatibility

          Ohhh!

          A GOOD reason for a port!

          Assuming of course that both ports run the same on both platforms.
          • A GOOD reason for a port!

            It IS a good reason - remember the days when everyone coded for IE, and pages looked like shit in Netscape? I'd rather NOT go back to that.

            Just because Safari doesn't have a huge percentage of the userbase doesn't mean web developers shoudln't ensure their code looks good on it.

            Assuming of course that both ports run the same on both platforms.

            They should - of course, in practice, that's not usually the case... :)
            • It IS a good reason - remember the days when everyone coded for IE, and pages looked like shit in Netscape? I'd rather NOT go back to that.

              That would be, like, today I have a lot of sites I would like to use firefox on, but they are borked unless I use IE.

              Back in the day when we did use something called "Netscape", it was more than likely the other way around - broken in IE, but functional in Netscape.

              Your point is right on, though. More (and more standards-compliant) browsers cannot help be be good for
    • Despite liking OS X and the now-defunct power-PC platform
      Odd, my PowerBook G4 just exclaimed: "I'm not dead, yet!"
    • admit a mae culpa

      "When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad I'm better."? Is that a mae culpa? ;)
    • the now-defunct power-PC platform

      Defunct? There won't be an alternative to PPC Macs for a year, and Apple will likely be selling PPC Macs for another year after that. And there will be tons of PPC hardware lying around that's still useful. Does the fact that kernel 2.7 will be released at some point in the future mean that 2.6 is "defunct"?
    • The deserved it in no small degree when they made it difficult for KHTML developers to reintegrate their changes into the mainline tree.

      They didn't make it difficult, they just didn't make it easy either. At least, I haven't heard allegations that Apple purposefully obfuscated code or anything of the sort.

  • Just a reminder (Score:5, Insightful)

    by frankie ( 91710 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @09:41AM (#12746039) Journal
    For the N+1th time, let's remember that:
    1. Previously, Apple was following the LETTER of the LGPL license, and giving back all changes
    2. The KHTML developers were not pleased about the monolithic tarballs, but accepted that it was a valid option
    3. They were, however, annoyed about all the fanboys who complained that KHTML wasn't merging Apple's changes
    4. Apple is now following the SPIRIT of LGPL
    5. Yes, we are in fact through the looking glass, but that was yesterday's article
    Any questions?
    • Any questions?

      Have you been to Hollywood?

    • Re:Just a reminder (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @12:45PM (#12748236) Homepage
      Apple wasn't even violating the spirit of the LGPL. They were possibly violating the spirit of the GPL... but alas these are substantially and philosophically somewhat different licenses, and so with the LGPL they weren'tn doing even that.

      I'm baffled by the people stating in this thread that the GPL "preferred form" clause means that you have to give people access to your versioning system. Have you people read the GPLs? It offers CDs over postal mail as a valid method of satisfying your GPL obligations! It explicitly lists mailing big chunks of code as a valid option for GPL licensees! I mean, actually read these things, people!
      3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

      a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

      b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
      Now if emailing big chunks of tarball on demand is violating the spirit of the GPL then why does the GPL suggest you do that?

  • Balance (Score:5, Funny)

    by allanc ( 25681 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @09:44AM (#12746060) Homepage
    I guess after switching to x86, Apple felt it needed to do something not-evil to balance things out.

    • As opposed to... what evil did they do anyway?

      • Re:Balance (Score:4, Insightful)

        by vrai ( 521708 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @10:40AM (#12746616)
        Well - a publicly traded company made a deal with another publicly traded company that will increase both their revenues! Also it allows the client company to produce faster, cheaper computers. What bastards eh?
    • OT, but seriously, will someone explain exactly what's evil about that anyway? (Rating: -1, Troll)

      Apple are a computer company. Not a "PowerPC chip powering the computer" computer company. They've never been afraid of major changes (witness 680x0 to PPC, OS 9 to OS X). If they reckon they can ultimately produce a better product or attract more customers by using Intel processors and they can minimise the pain to existing customers in doing so, why the hell not? (Rating: -1, Flamebait)

      I seriously doub
      • Problem: all of the new fat binaries will take up twice as much space on my already crowded hard drive.

        Ok, that's about it.

        Personally, I'd love to see Apple release OS X for non-Apple x86 hardware. Not because I want to buy cheaper hardware to run OS X on--I just want to see what Bill Gates' reaction would be. Destroying Apple's entire hardware business would almost be worth it for that alone.

        • I just want to see what Bill Gates' reaction would be.

          http://www.ubersoft.net [slashdot.org]

        • >>Problem: all of the new fat binaries will take up twice as much space on my already crowded hard drive.

          Well, just as I use a freeware tool to remove all of the extra foreign languages (1.5GB savings!), someone will find or make a tool to remove all of the foreign-processor code. Or, you can do it yourself. Remember that a Mac app or library is just a directory with the "real" executables inside it. Trash the appropriate binaries, and voila! Come to think of it, the savings won't be *half* because a

  • All of you zombies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SamBeckett ( 96685 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @09:59AM (#12746206)
    Bitching about the "SPIRIT" of the GPL, LGPL, whatever, are retarded. Seriously. Look, if the developers wanted to be dicks about it they could have (and should have) released their KHTML shit under a license that explicitly stated their desires.

    SPIRIT schmirit.

    Their behavior boils down to "Wah, I offered my friend a lollipop and he took it."

    • Re:All of you zombies (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lemming Mark ( 849014 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @10:09AM (#12746303) Homepage
      This whole mess started when Zack Rusin blogged saying (basically) -
      * don't keep bugging us about when Konqueror will do what Safari does because it's not as simple as taking Apple's patches and applying them
      * don't keep saying how great it is that Apple are giving us these features

      He explicitly said that it was fine for Apple to behave as they were. He just asked that people didn't keep giving Apple credit for doing things that actually needed to be done independently by the KHTML team.

      The mess started when multiple news websites and bloggers misreported this as an anti-Apple flame and subsequently seemed to base their articles on each others, not the original post.
    • The "spirit" should be taken to mean "in some helpful way". If they wanted to, they could bulk-mail printouts of the code to people (for the cost of materials, of course), and that'd be within the letter of the LGPL as well.

      However, that's certainly *not* the spirit, and it is a good distinction to make. The spirit is something along the lines of "share and share alike" and make it convenient for others when they help you out.

      The distribution method shouldn't be written into the GPL - what're you going

    • Re:All of you zombies (Score:5, Informative)

      by snorklewacker ( 836663 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @11:10AM (#12746938)
      Their behavior boils down to "Wah, I offered my friend a lollipop and he took it."

      No, that's slashdot's behavior. Most of the KHTML developers really wish slashdot would keep their damn uninformed blathering to themselves, and while they're at it, get a little informed and stop demanding that KHTML support Safari features within 1 day of implementation because "they're the same codebase, right?"

      No one but slashbots are griping incessantly about the licensing.
  • This is great. I'm really looking forward to building webkit myself and dropping the new version into Safari.
  • Not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but why doesn't Apple open up Safari? I would love it if all the energy that goes into Safari modifications went into Safari development itself.

  • Not a zero sum game (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ChrisF79 ( 829953 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @10:06AM (#12746269) Homepage
    I think this problem highlights the fact that Corporate America doesn't seem to understand that if they treat relationships with open source developers as a non-zero-sum game, both parties can benefit. There is definitely a synergy that is created (or should be created) when open source teams up with corporate entities and this relationship needs to be nurtured further for the most bang for the buck.

    • Re:Not a zero sum game (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jtshaw ( 398319 ) * on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @10:45AM (#12746669) Homepage
      What your saying requires that the corporate interest has the same goals in mind for the product.

      Apple took khtml and extended it the way it felt it needed to for Safari. Meanwhile, the khtml people were changing and extending it there own way, which happened to be a bit of a different direction. This happens all the time, and it isn't anyones fault.

      Many times it becomes very hard to backport code after forks, regardless of who forked the code. The only way to fix that is to restrict development by others to a similar path as your development, which shits on the "spirit" of the GPL just as much if not more then what people were complaining about Apple doing in the first place.

      When you release code under the GPL you have to know that it is totally possibly somebody might fork it and create patches that are useless to you. That is the nature of the beast and all part of the OSS development environment. If you can't deal with it, then don't use the GPL.

  • Posting from CVS WebKit... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dr. Sp0ng ( 24354 ) <mspongNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @10:49AM (#12746710) Homepage
    It's noticeably faster than the version that ships with Tiger (and yes, it passes Acid2 [webstandards.org] :)

  • What?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jpsowin ( 325530 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @11:03AM (#12746853) Homepage
    You mean there is nothing to complain about now? Wait, what about that Intel thing? They can't get off the hook that easy!

  • [As Cies Breijs said]

    My congratulations to all parties. Apple for beeing cooperative, and for giving back. To Zack Rusin http://www.kdedevelopers.org/blog/14 [kdedevelopers.org] for sharing his opinion and reasoning, which openen up this issue.

    If would be 'cool' if KDE-Konq and OSX-Safari use the same codebase for HTML-rendering and running JavaScripts. It would be 'cool' is KDE and Apple coders would work together on this.

    Yet... if this will not be the case it already is a big help that both parties can view each othe

  • The best they could do at the time (Score:4, Insightful)

    by injustice_sucks ( 689484 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @12:22PM (#12747923)
    Doesn't it seem logical that the tarball they released was the best they could do at the time? I bet if you look through the CVS repository they just released, you'll see some Intel specific stuff, maybe even just a check-in comment. That would have blown their big secret. Which, incidentally, is amazing they managed to keep that secret for 5 YEARS!

  • From previous discussions: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NilObject ( 522433 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @02:41PM (#12749916)
    It's been said before but I think it's insightful enough to say it here:

    If they weren't happy with Apple following the license to the letter, they were using the wrong license.

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