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Open-source divorce for Apple's Safari?

malebolgia   on 12 May 2005 - 19:04 · 36 comments & 3742 views

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Two years after it selected open-source rendering engine KHTML as the basis of its Safari Web browser, Apple Computer has proposed resolving compatibility conflicts by scrapping that code base in favor of its own.

In an e-mail seen by CNET News.com, a leading Apple browser developer suggested that architects of the KHTML rendering engine--the heart of a browser--consider abandoning the KHTML code base, or "tree," in favor of Apple's version, called WebCore. KHTML was originally written to work on top of KDE (the K Desktop Environment), an interface for Linux and Unix operating systems.

One thing you may want to consider eventually is back-porting (WebCore) to work on top of (KDE), and merging your changes into that," Apple engineer Maciej Stachowiak wrote in an e-mail dated May 5. "I think the Apple trees have seen a lot more change since the two trees diverged, although both have useful changes. We'd be open to making our tree multi-platform."

News source: C|Net News.com

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(1 reply) #1 on 01 Jan 1970 - 00:00
#1.1 vettimdorr on 12 May 2005 - 23:39
Did they expect it to be handed to them on a silver platter? If they wanted better contributions, they should have required it in the licensing. Apple followed their rules (and they could have done worse), so it's not their fault at all. Apple's priorities should be on the product they are making with KHTML and not on the KHTML people.

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