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kovidgoyal · 01-26-2012, 01:51 AM

Sigh. Apple did not develop webkit, webkit started as KHTML which was the HTML rendering engine of Konqueror, which is why it is open source (LGPL licensed), not because Apple wanted it to be.

If Apple cared about the public good, they would have implemented their textbook solution as an open, interoperable, standard rather than trying to acheive a monopoly by vendor lock in. They could still have been highly profitable and still have acheived market dominance without the vendor lock in. In fact it would have been a lot easier to convince school systems to adopt their solution if it was open. But, that would have required them to have a little more self confidence than they have displayed in the past.

01-26-2012, 01:51 AM	#60
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,484 Karma: 28005164 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Sigh. Apple did not develop webkit, webkit started as KHTML which was the HTML rendering engine of Konqueror, which is why it is open source (LGPL licensed), not because Apple wanted it to be. If Apple cared about the public good, they would have implemented their textbook solution as an open, interoperable, standard rather than trying to acheive a monopoly by vendor lock in. They could still have been highly profitable and still have acheived market dominance without the vendor lock in. In fact it would have been a lot easier to convince school systems to adopt their solution if it was open. But, that would have required them to have a little more self confidence than they have displayed in the past. Last edited by kovidgoyal; 01-26-2012 at 02:43 AM.