Steve Jobs On Android
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Real: "Our Harmony technology enables consumers to securely transfer purchased music to digital music devices, including...iPod..."
Apple: "We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod, and we are investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCA and other laws."
To me, that was the day Apple turned evil.
> The name and project 'WebKit' were created in 2002 when Apple Inc. created a fork of KHTML and KJS.
After a fairly huge amount of work on the part of WebKit contributors, you can see that Apple's move was both not stupid and also generous. WebKit development rapidly outstripped every other engine, and it's still on the leading edge today. It's open source software, with a mostly BSD license.
That's not how I remember the reaction of the (few) people familiar with both KHTML and Gecko.
* Gecko code was a mess and difficult to separate, integrate. KHTML was cleaner, and already intended to be pluggable, just missing some edge-case features. * KDE/KHTML devs had to fight to get Webkit's source opened, and when they finally did, all they got was code dumps that were impossible to integrate back into KHTML
It's gotten a lot better, and Apple's Webkit devs have become much more open, but from what I understand, it was a huge ordeal to get them to abide by KHTML's GPL.
Some features were backported, but you can see today that WebKit is farther ahead than the KHTML fork, and receives a lot more attention.
If it was as crappy as suggested then you'd have to ask why Apple would have picked up a LGPL project rather than start from scratch.
I also remember them being less than great open source collaborators at first.
That wording is also more TechCrunch's than Steve's.
Steve's words:
> Well Chrome is not... you know. And it's based on webkit, work we did at Apple.
> Almost every modern browser is based on webkit... Nokia, Palm, Android, RIM has one... and of course ours.
> We've created a real competitor to IE. In the mobile space it's #1.
(link: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/01/steve-jobs-live-from-d8/)
While that still takes more credit than I'd care to see, "work we did at Apple" definitely is a softer statement than "Apple 'created' WebKit". Even though the word "created" does come up a couple of sentences later...
Steve: We took a tiny little open source project, and we
created what's called "WebKit" out there, and we did an
interesting thing for Apple: we put it in open source.
Turns out this thread was a lot of hubbub over nothing, as I suspected. Unless someone wants to gripe about KHTML being described as "tiny little".
He's acting like Apple had a choice about the licensing of someone else's work.
Stop fishing for perceived slights. This is petty, and a waste of the internet.
But what Jobs said - 'we put it in open source' - implies that it KHTML wasn't already OSS.
The "interesting thing for Apple" is that they chose to put their efforts into an open source project in the first place. Apple, the company that likes to control its software as much as possible. This is all he's saying. Don't read anything more into it than that.
> Steve: We took a tiny little open source project, and we created what's called "WebKit" out there, and we did an interesting thing for Apple: we put it in open source.
which doesn't serve any value beyond simply saying:
"We took a tiny little open source project, and worked on it."
Steve adding 'we created what's called "WebKit" out there, and we did an interesting thing for Apple: we put it in open source' makes no sense - it's either:
- redundant (KHTML was already LGPLed, so obviously Apple's patches would be)
- implying Webkit was something 'created' by Apple that Apple had choice over their licensing with.
To me it seems the latter, which is somewhat disingenuous. You obviously disagree. Invoking spiritual beings is unnecessary.
Let me break it down a bit further. WebKit is an Apple-initiated project. It is the web counterpart to Apple's native UIKit framework. If they wanted to, they could have made WebKit closed source, eschewing the use of KHTML entirely. They were in no way obligated to use KHTML as a starting point. And for a company like Apple, you can be sure the decision to tie themselves to the LGPL was not undertaken lightly.
In choosing to use the LGPLed KHTML project as the basis for WebKit, they chose to put WebKit in open source. They did exactly what Steve Jobs said they did, no disingenuity required.
Sure, maybe he could have ordered his phrases more clearly, but he's speaking off the cuff here.
Yes, I understand what you're saying - Apple made a choice about what product to use and was aware of the licensing implications.
Apple got to make one choice: use KHTML or something else. As soon as they chose KHTML, the choice of licensing was made for them. Saying 'we open sourced it' implies Apple made the choice to open source it. They did not. They were obligated to by the fact the people who made the code licensed it that way.
Linksys got to make one choice: use Linux or something else. As soon as they chose Linux, the choice was made for them.
Job's already mentioned that Apple chose to use an OSS app. Saying they 'chose the licensing for it' is wrong: they didn't, someone in the KDE project made that decision. Apple abided by the rules, they didn't create them.
Let's say we form a company to develop a web layout engine. We haven't made anything yet, and we're wondering if it would be better to make our layout engine closed source or open. We decide to go with open. Why? Because we're fed up with having to support slow, non-standards-compliant browsers for our web apps. If our fast, standards-compliant layout engine is open source, maybe more browsers will use it, and web development will be less sucky for us in the future.
It turns out that there's already some great open source code called KHTML that we can build on to create our engine, and it's licensed with the LGPL. Well, that's no problem, because we decided our layout engine was going to be open source anyway. So why not fork it? We don't have to, but it's good code, so we might as well. Thus, our open source layout engine ends up being based on KHTML. But it was not our decision to use KHTML that made our engine open source. We decided that it was going to be open source, irrespective of whether we decided to use KHTML.
Likewise, Apple chose whether or not WebKit would be open source, irrespective of whether they decided to use KHTML.
You seem to be making the argument that Apple just decided to base WebKit on KHTML without much concern for the licensing implications, and inadvertently ended up "stuck" with a WebKit that must adhere to the LGPL. Hence, Steve Jobs is disingenuously suggesting that WebKit was intentionally open source. And what I'm saying is, given Apple's long history of tight control over its software, not to mention their willingness to rewrite their software from scratch, that assumption just isn't credible. Whereas they have credible, self-interested motives for creating an open source layout engine, just like Google has credible self-interested motives for making Android open source.
No.
I'm saying 'we used something OSS! Then we decided to make it OSS!' is either nonsensical or misleading.
>I've always gotten what you've been saying.
Clearly you haven't.
OTOH, if you think I've misunderstood or mischaracterized anything you've said, you haven't said so.
Anyway, I give up.
He's saying that because KHTML's LGPL was going to force them to open source WebKit in any case, it's either nonsensical or misleading for Steve to say that Apple "put it into open source".
I didn't remember that LGPL wasn't commercially "safe".
Which I'd have to give to them completely. KHTML wasn't going to compete with IE on its own.
To nitpickers like us, they can say that they did not create it, but to a regular reader/listener it sounds like they did.
6:49PM Walt: How's your relationship?
6:49PM Steve: My sex life is pretty good.
I'm guessing he's down to about 120lbs. More pics here: http://d8.allthingsd.com/speakers/steve-jobs/#slideshow-1-32 I know it's a touchy subject, but holy crap. I did a double take when I saw the pictures of him. He is not a well man.
As I write this on my iPad, I wonder how long it will be before I'm not allowed to type certain words on apple "soft" keyboards?
Steve stance on the reasons for disallowing apps also concerns me. It would ok if he does this to create a monopoly (which is really what the store is, for all intents and purposes), but what scares me is that he claims he does it for "people"
... And Walt and Sara, just like last time, didn't think that was an important enough issue to press upon. Kudos for asking about the gizmodo issue though
>7:14PM Walt: Can I talk to you about a somewhat different subject, which is curation? You are a retailer of a lot of content, and of apps. And there's been a lot of controversy about your app store rejecting things, sometimes you backtrack. I don't know of any law that any merchant whether it's you or Walmart that says you have to carry something you don't want to carry. But isn't there responsibility with that? You become big, you have the most apps. You've talked in some things you've written about protecting the consumer... but isn't there a downside of you guys acquiring all this power and you saying no to some cartoonist or some political candidate? Don't you have a problem there?
>7:16PM Steve: Well let first say we have two platforms we support. One is open and uncontrolled -- that's HTML5. We support HTML5. We have the best support for it of anyone in the world. We then support a curated platform which is the app store. It is the most vital app community on any platform. How do we curate this? It's a bunch of people, and they come into work every day. We have a few rules: has to do what it's advertised to do, it has to not crash, it can't use private APIs. And those are the three biggest reasons we reject apps. But we approve 95% of all the apps that are submitted every week.
>7:18PM Walt: So what happened with this candidate?
Steve: We had a rule that said you can't defame other people.
Kara: Determined by your app people.
Steve: Yes... and political cartoons got caught in that. We didn't think of that. So this guy submits his app and he gets rejected. We didn't see that coming. So we changed the rule, but this guy never resubmitted... then he wins a Pulitzer Prize, and he says we rejected him. So, we are guilty of making mistakes. We're doing the best we can, we're learning as fast as we can -- but we thought this rule made sense.
>7:19PM Steve: We're doing the best we can, we're fixing mistakes. But what happens is -- people lie. And then they run to the press and tell people about this oppression, and they get their 15 minutes of fame. We don't run to the press and say "this guy is a son of a bitch liar!" -- we don't do that.
>7:20PM Kara: So in terms of publishing these rules more clearly...
Walt: I talk to developers all the time, but they express to me that they're confused...
Steve: 95% are approved within 7 days...
Walt: So you don't think it could be better?
Steve: I do, but I want to remind you.
Can you imagine that have your own shop in which you want to sell a lot of toys to kids. Why should a local porn dealer have the right to sell the porn in your store?
Jobs has the right to select what he wants to sell. You have the right to select where and what you buy.
Whenever I hear such arguments they smell me to people who are actually porn dealers unsatisfied with their own shop who think they have the right to demand from a shiny shop over the street to sell their goods for them.
Great point in light of Google's last IO announcements along the lines of we discovered we can use the internet to sync Android.