

- #APPLE IOS WEBKIT APP INFREQUENTLYNOTED ANDROID#
- #APPLE IOS WEBKIT APP INFREQUENTLYNOTED SOFTWARE#
- #APPLE IOS WEBKIT APP INFREQUENTLYNOTED CODE#
However, the source code has yet to be released." Prior to today's 60-day delayed release, that is. Harold Welte of GPL Violations writes that " it cannot be a simple oversight, as multiple inquiries have been made to Apple by interested developers.

#APPLE IOS WEBKIT APP INFREQUENTLYNOTED SOFTWARE#
We know these versions of the software have seen changes in the WebKit software, but until today, Apple hadn't uploaded any of those changes to the main source repository, although it continued to upload other modifications. until recently.Īpple released iOS 4.3.0 eight and a half weeks ago on March 10, followed by several point releases to take us up to version 4.3.3, where we stand today.

Many of Apple's competitors have contributed further changes and improvements, which are shared by everyone who uses it. It's also used by Nokia in the Symbian Series 60 smartphones, by HP in the Palm smartphones and so on.
#APPLE IOS WEBKIT APP INFREQUENTLYNOTED ANDROID#
It's the engine behind Chrome as well as Safari, for example it has found its way into their mobile cousins on Android and iOS. Since then, WebKit has grown and prospered. Safari is made up of WebKit plus the user interface and some other bits and pieces, such as the JavaScript engine Nitro. It made a heap of improvements to KHTML, and it was calling the new software WebKit. So, when Apple announced Safari at WWDC in 2003, it also announced it had taken a shortcut - it started with the open-source KHTML software, which was the core-rendering engine in use by the KDE Linux desktop project. Writing a new rendering engine from scratch is an enormous undertaking. By far, the biggest is the rendering engine, which is responsible for receiving web pages and images and figuring out how they should be displayed to the user. Modern web browsers are made up of a few big chunks. This code release, while certainly welcome, comes 60 days after iOS 4.3 first became available for download from Apple's consumer-facing servers this timeline cannot possibly be reconciled with any reasonable definition of 'simultaneous,' unless Apple is in possession of a TARDIS.Īpple's sluggish code drop, in a couple of ways, is notably worse than Google's seemingly similar reticence. Not now Turn on Turned on Turn onĮerily, just as Proffitt brought light to bear on the issue, Apple's opensource site released the source for projects included in iOS 4.3.3 (thanks to reader Jan for the heads-up). This means that when Apple took the project and built upon it, WebKit was also required to be under the LGPL - and hence, under the letter of the law, any user of an iOS device should be entitled to a copy of the source code.You can disable notifications at any time in your settings menu. The people who wrote KHTML, however - some of them bedroom programmers working on their own time, remember - didn't want to get ripped off, so they licensed it under the LGPL. Most of Android is under the first type of license, which is why Google could choose to not release the Honeycomb code. The details of how these work are very complicated (and often maligned), but the overall principle is actually quite simple: If you give someone a copy of a program licensed under the GPL or the LGPL, you have to also give them a copy of the source code if they ask for it. The GNU Public License (GPL) and, a close cousin, the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL). These include the MIT, BSD and Apache licenses, amongst many others. Often the only requirement is that you continue to credit the people you took the code from.
