No Penguins On Today’s Safari?
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Moments ago Apple announced that Windows users can now download and run their popular Safari web browser. That's right, more Apple software on Windows boxes. Safari is a pretty cool browser, and I do use it on my MacBook Pro. But where's my Safari for Linux? Why wasn't today's announcement about open sourcing Safari?
For those who aren’t familiar with the history here, Apple based its original browser on the KHTML rendering engine in early 2003. A lot of folks greeted this news happily at first, and some hoped this was the beginning of an open source browser from Apple, or at least some major open source contributions from what is clearly one of the most innovative companies in the industry. Sadly, two short years after selecting KHTML as the heart of Safari, Apple proposed dumping KHTML in favor of its own proprietary code base (May 2005).
Fast forward to present day: Safari still contains KHTML code via WebKit and now the popular Mac browser has been made available for Windows. Which leads me back to my question: Why not open source? At least give us a Linux version. Don’t you think people would use it? What's the story Steve? Is there some compelling business reason you don't want to open source Safari?
Just today you said, "We would love for Safari's market share to grow substantially.” It seems to me that a strong open source strategy with the browser's code would be a very good way to compete in the market. You have a ton of fans that use Linux at work and Mac OS at home. Converting them to Safari users at work would take little more than making the option available, which can't be that technically difficult or require that much of an investment from Apple.
Microsoft’s got 78% of the browser market to Apple's 4.9%. Firefox has 15% or so, but you'd catch them easily, thanks to the popularity of iTunes on Windows. Open source is your answer to start bridging the gap between Safari and Internet Explorer. Sure, Apple has a sordid history with open source in general, especially when it comes to Safari. But there are thousands of users and developers that would forgive and forget in exchange for some open source love from Apple.
An open source Safari would chew up Internet Explorer’s head start, build goodwill among developers in the community, and put Apple on top of Browser Wars 2.0. If you really feel it's too much trouble to release a Linux version, make the code available to those of us willing to port it to the fastest growing platform in the world in our spare time. Cause that’s how open source works.
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Why not Steve?
Apple and Open Source Zen
It is also a bit tenuous line I think to equate Open Source with success.
To say Firefox is successful because it's open source detracts from the true quality of Firefox (and feels almost like an insult); Firefox isn't popular because it's open source, it's popular because it's *good*.
Taking the opinion that Safari will become even more successful if it adopts an all-encompassing open source strategy is nice and all, but not even feasible (Apple would have to open source a lot of closed-components that make their applications work cross-platform as well).
Safari will succeed now by being on both platforms, by being Acid2 compliant (http://webkit.org/blog/?p=32) and by being a kickass browser, open source doesn't hurt at all (I'm all for it), but it's certainly not the browser holy grail
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This would be sweet.
Well....
Just like KTHML was wrapped into code to become the Konqueror browser in KDE.
As the development continued there were quite some bad words between Apple and the original KHTML developers which lead to hot emotions.
But today many important developers of the KHTML engine (and KDE in general) are also WebKit developers: Lars Knoll (the original creator of KHTML), Nikolas Zimmermann (a creator of KSVG2), Rob Buis (the other creator of KSVG2), Zack Rusin (Qt Ninja) and George Staikos (another Qt Ninja). Some of them even got review rights.
Actually there are just two or three KHTML developers who are still pissed of because of the bad past who do not want to contribute to WebKit - the others do.
The result is that WebKit might even be supported as a kpart plugin in KDE4 - at least work has already been started in the KDE 4 svn. This would mean that users could switch between khtml and WebKit as the cores just as they wish.
To also add my two coins about your question:
As pointed out above the interesting core of Safari is free - WebKit. That part might become part of KDE some time in the future, and there is also a Gtk wrapper available (development version).
There is simply not that much need to bring Safari to Linux - as a proprietary product not too many people would adopt it, and since it does not integrate with Gtk/Gnome or with Qt/KDE the question is why to open up at all.
Having said that however I totally agree with you that Apple does not use the Open Source opportunities at all - it tries to keep everything as closed as possible. I have no idea why they do not try to welcome Open Source as a part of their system and actively supporting and also advertising it. Yes, I know apple.com/opensource/ and such a likes, but this is far away from using the advantage of openly supporting Free Software and the projects behind this.
Also, one of the main problems of Apple regarding the Open Source thing is that they try with all forces available to battle open standards: ODF, Jabber/Jingle, OGG, etc. are all not supported, and new "standards" created by Apple are normally not open.
That's sad somehow, and I don't understand that...
Camino
Good browsers for linux? Opera, Firefox, Galeon, Epiphany, Konqueror, links2 (with images enabled). I don't think Linux needs another browser.
Safari - Why Bother
Divide and conquer does not mean divide your self!
Keep up the good work!
AJ
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Maybe OSS would have helped the stock...
Konqueror
Konqueror?
Why safari?
Because we have Firefox, but if you need KHTML you can still use Konqueror.
But, you know people are just to stupid... why you don't say that you need Konqueror on Mac or Windows?
It's called Konqueror
apple is no friend of open source
It's starting to run on Wine...
Actually, one could try to run Safari for Windows on Mac OS X by using Wine, too... that would make an interesting benchmark for Wine.
Thank GOD
Iam really glad that there is no LINUX verion. It looks like a real crap.Personally Firefox is the best
Ganesh.
Huh?
Besides, Linux doesn't need another browser and Apple is not a friend of Open Source to begin with, so this is a dead-end cause from the first step.
You miss the KHTML developers' intent
What's that, the overlap between the 1% of people using Linux at work (for web browsing, not servers) and the 5% of people using OS X at home?
"A lot of folks greeted this news happily at first, and some hoped this was the beginning of an open source browser from Apple, or at least some major open source contributions from what is clearly one of the most innovative companies in the industry."
KHTML is licensed under the LGPL. If they wanted everything that used it to be completely open source, they would have licensed it under the GPL. That's the entire point of the LGPL. The KHTML developers WANT people like Apple to have closed source shells around their library. Why should Apple have to do more, even if the developers themselves make it clear (by their choice of license) that what Apple does is fine?
Besides, I think that you requesting the source for Safari is an implicit recognition that proprietary development works better. If open source was the panacea you put it out to be, Konquerer (which is more general purpose but shares the KHTML base) would be 100x better than Safari and all of this would be unnecessary.
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