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Comment by voodoomagicman | Hacker News Reader

"Apple could have kept both closed and innovated on them"

Webkit is based on GPL code from KDE, so Apple had no choice but to release the source.

They didn't have to start http://webkit.org and run it as a public open source project. They did far more than simply comply with the GPL.

After a big PR scandal.

Originally they just threw useless code patches back at KHTML to minimally comply with the license (LGPL, iirc).

There was no scandal and only GPL "enthusiasts" would be mad at someone for complying with the license... only not in the style they might want. Reality is, they're just bigots who hate Apple and are looking for any excuse to bash them. Really, you're not fooling anyone.

When you look at how much effort and time Apple has put into WebKit, I think Apple could have written WebKit from scratch without spending too much time on it.

Remember, Apple had experience web engine developers on the team from day 1. They knew exactly what was needed and how it should be done.

There's also the work that Apple did on LLVM/Clang, as well as Grand Central Dispatch. They weren't obliged to release that.

They kinda were. I don't know all the in's and outs, but as it was explained to me, GPL v3 is not very attractive for them since they're shipping devices that are closed ecosystems. The specific issue has to do with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

The purpose of using LLVM was so that they could stop relying on the GPLed gcc. The reason GPL is not attractive is because it restricts freedom. It limits people from using GPL software.

Webkit didn't need to be based on that open source project, and could have been done from scratch by Apple.

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