>Oh, so these features are comparable in effort and scale to an entire web browser
Didn't Apple take the KHTML (Konqueror was a full fledged browser) code and then had to release their code because it was GPL. I remember reading about a complaint from the KHTML that Apple was releasing the code as a big blob and this was hindering KHTML integration.
> Didn't Apple take the KHTML (Konqueror was a full fledged browser) code...
WebKit has vastly evolved from the original KHTML library, to the point of being almost an entirely different product. The KHTML team has been pulling changes from WebKit (http://trac.webkit.org/browser) for many years now.
Of course a product would evolve in 9 years, that doesn't mean that the credit for the full browser goes to Apple. If so, then why did they have to fork KHTML in the first place? Of course, KHTML benefited too, because of the LGPL/GPL licensing, but that doesn't change facts now.
So, saying that Google took Apple's full browser is not really true, Chrome mostly took Webcore, they have their own JS engine and their own UI chrome(!), and WebCore has a lot of roots in KHTML
Wow, you're attacking my name instead of actually participating in the conversation. I'm sure you could, you know, glance at my account and determine I'm not any kind of troll. I have no idea what my username has to do with anything here at all.
The point is, in three different places you shrugged off the Chrome team's contributions to WebKit, yet acted like Apple is the night in shining armor because they happen to "own" WebKit. Can't they both work on it, both receive credit and both be happy without fanboys needlessly going out of their way to argue about a competitor that competes in a nearly completely unrelated field?
Besides the original point has gone completely undiscussed. It might be shocking but I'm betting the WebKit, iOS and Apple's executive steering committee are all vastly decoupled. It is possible for the WebKit team to make advances and for the iOS team to not adopt them for, gasp, political purposes. For example, the accelerated javascript engine, additional HTML5 controls that have been simply and for reasons unknown not enabled in iOS.
That has nothing to do with my ability to be thankful for Apple's stewardship of WebKit. I'm quite thankful to be honest. I love that Google and Apple can both build a better web engine while competing with each other. I just hope that they both embrace that superior engine for the sake of the open web, and some of Apple's actions have called into question their intentions about the mobile web in iOS. That's all I'm saying.
edit: Uh, I generally try to keep my, yes, homo, eroticism off of the Internet. I apologize if you were exposed to any, that's probably not a pretty sight.
>You're attacking my name instead of actually participating in the conversation...
Yes, that my point, and it's in much the same way that you're questioning my motives (a form of argumentum ad hominem) instead of... actually participating in the conversation.
Didn't Apple take the KHTML (Konqueror was a full fledged browser) code and then had to release their code because it was GPL. I remember reading about a complaint from the KHTML that Apple was releasing the code as a big blob and this was hindering KHTML integration.