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Posted Feb 3, 2009 2:29 UTC (Tue) by dkite (guest, #4577)
Parent article: Apple's touch-screen patent

Maybe time to isolate Apple where they interface with free software. Cups
and webkit are two projects that come to mind, and there is a certain level
of cooperation if you could call it that.

Actually I hope they sue. I hope they push this real hard and there are
long battles in court. They can then join Lotus (among others) in obscurity
and ponder over the stupidity of trying to use courts to gain a competitive
edge and suppress innovation.

And maybe the all things Apple worship that intrudes even into the free
software world will be expunged.

Derek

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Posted Feb 3, 2009 3:07 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (2 responses)

Interestingly, CUPS and WebKit are places where Apple has a lot of
control. They now own the copyright to CUPS. And while WebKit was derived
from KHTML, it evolved so much at Apple that KDE had trouble reintegrating
Apple's changes.

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Posted Feb 3, 2009 15:08 UTC (Tue) by Chousuke (subscriber, #54562) [Link] (1 responses)

On the other hand, Webkit is great software, and it's now integrated into Qt as well. My guess is that it will replace KHTML entirely, rather than merging with it.

I agree that Apple could have been more cooperative, but in the end, we have a great, free rendering engine (and a javascript debugger); not solely thanks to Apple, of course, but I feel they deserve some credit for being the driving force behing KHTML's rise from obscurity[1] in the form of Webkit.

[1] I have no data to back up my claim about KHTML being obscure, but I honestly can't think of it as anything other than "the Konqueror engine".

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Posted Feb 3, 2009 21:54 UTC (Tue) by dkite (guest, #4577) [Link]

You miss the point totally. This isn't about what we get from Apple.

It's what they get from us.

Patches, testing, etc. Even acceptance.

Derek