Google Overtook Apple In WebKit Code Commits | Hacker News Reader

Google Overtook Apple In WebKit Code Commits

techcrunch.com

57 pointsvladocar12 comments

"For the first time this season, Pittsburgh made more rushing attempts than Denver. Now, the usual caveats apply, Denver might make significantly more yards per carry, for example. But, nevertheless, this graph clearly shows that Pittsburgh had more rushing plays."

What constitutes a commit varies between organizations. More than that, look at the area under the respective graphs. Apple has already made a HUGE number of commits. Presumably they've achieved many of their strategic aims. Google has barely scratched the surface, if we're to believe that raw commit numbers matter at all.

Apple's trend line is going down. Should I infer from that that Apple no longer cares about Webkit?

Apple doesn't commit to Webkit as a public service. They also don't commit as a race against Google. They'll commit precisely as needed to achieve their business goals. There is nothing interesting implied by the relative numbers of commits between Apple and Google.

Its interesting in the sense that it's rare to see many relatively large and competing companies actively making commits to the same open source project.

"They'll commit precisely as needed to achieve their business goals. There is nothing interesting implied by the relative numbers of commits between Apple and Google."

To hackers interest in business models/goals... or interested in the future of a project such as Webkit... there certainly could be something interesting here (i.e., more than just corporate egos), if only something like:

• Perhaps Google will lend energy toward developing aspects of Webkit that Apple has neglected.

• Perhaps the potential of Webkit is looking even greater as two mega-players in the digital realm are now supporting its development to roughly equal degrees.

Apple has huge spikes just after each of the last 2 iPhone releases, and large dip before the lastest release.

Apple has been very silent on the WebKit mailing list for a few months prior to the iPad annoucement.

It won't be too surprising if Apple has a few patches queued up that they will commit when iPad ships to customers.

I really hate to see TechCrunch giving credence to the notion that the number of times someone commits to a given codebase is somhow representative of the actual contribution to the project. Granted, the author does say: "The graph, while it shows commits, doesn’t weigh more important ones versus less important ones." but he then goes on to say that "[the graph] does clearly show that in late 2009, Google surpassed Apple as the company that now contributes the most (again, in terms of commits) to the project." Ignore the parenthetical, and it feels like the author is ignoring the issue: commits does not equal code quality.

After all, and I know that I'm over simplifying the point, (I think this is safe to say) but didn't Apple build out most of the core functionality -- the rendering engine, while what has been going on for the past couple months to a years is just adding features and extending what the base browser is? You can't determine that type of input based on commits alone.

Edit: Clarify core functionality.

Sort of.

Remember that WebKit comes from the KHTML/KJS work, so they had a rendering engine capable of taking webpages and rendering them to some degree from the start. Compatibility is loads better now than it used to be, but the web looks substantially different now than it used to as well.

It's good that they clarify that this is only commit counts. I guess I'm not too surprised since Google, as a newcomer (relative to Apple), surely has a whole set of features and ideas it wants to implement that Apple hasn't considered before.

In fact, the source blog explains that a lot of the work had been to make WebKit work better with Google web apps.

http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/10/going-u...

I see this more as a testament to the greatness of open source. Who cares who contributed more commits? What to take out of it is that open source prevails, even in a competitive environment — it makes me feel hopeful about things.

a very interesting graph: one that shows the number of code commits to WebKit

Except the graph is of commits/day, not overall commits. This means even less than the way TC wants to advertise it. Integrate the lines and it'll be a long time before Google touches Apple's contributions in the way this story implies.

In fact, TC's coverage is flat dishonest by stripping any mention of scale and then zooming in on the overtake point. It's never any surprise to conclude that TC is sensationalist lying, but when they post numbers it casts hard light on the truth of the matter.

Only one thing comes to mind.

http://badusure.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/featuresbyver...

(google image)

Now that we've established that the number of commits only gives us limited information about the contribution of various people/groups, can anyone familiar with the webkit codebase give us a "state of the union" about who's actually improving Webkit most these days?

What have been some of Google's biggest contributions in the past 6 months? Apple's? RIM's?

Give me commit access and I can overtake them both with a tight 'for' loop.

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