> and there isn’t enough charity in the world to pay them without advertising
And yet the KDE team was able to build the best browser in the world (Konqueror) while being funded only by charity and charity-like governmental development grants.
And yet the KDE team was able to build the best browser in the world (Konqueror) while being funded only by charity and charity-like governmental development grants.
So even if Konqueror is still "the best browser in the world", that is meaningless to this discussion. Building the chrome around an existing engine is almost trivial compared to developing a 100% independent browser engine.
Back then, the web was simpler and so we had many different engines. Today, we really only have two. All other attempts have failed - even Microsoft couldn't compete. The only reason Mozilla is still going is because of their head start and Google money. If Apple hadn't picked up KHTML and turned it into WebKit and Google developed their own thing, KHTML would be even more dead than Gecko is today.
I would argue it was more complex, trying to get something moderately advanced to render the same between many browsers became a massive chore compared to today.
It's the same situation as RISC vs CISC - for a programer, CISC is "easier" to write for (== it does more work for you), but for a chip designer, RISC is much simpler to design and implement.