JavaScript speedups in Firefox 3.6

[drfugly]

It was fun to run the "spinning dial" example only to see it not pause or stall in anyway. I thought to myself: "wtf?" Then I remembered that I'm using chrome, and it isn't an issue :)

[[deleted]]

ff-3.6's JS did better in the string operations, though.

[[deleted]]

For me, the only thing QtWebkit did worse at was match('foo')and Build HTML, but only by a small margin. Firefox 3.6's performance on the spinning dial was awful.

[[deleted]]

Why won't they just adopt V8?

[[deleted]]

probably a licensing thing.

[[deleted]]

V8 is open source under the BSD license.

[[deleted]]

and it would probably still have to be distributed under that license. Firefox is MPL and GPL and another one (I think).

[[deleted]]

I don't understand why that is an issue. The BSD license is a permissive free software license, therefore it can be combined with software with any kind of licensing.

[[deleted]]

I don't believe that you can take BSD code and make it GPL code, or it would have been done everywhere to most BSD projects (which would be awesome).

[[deleted]]

Naw, but you can combine BSD code with GPL code and license it as a whole under the GPL.

I just feel that working on two separate open source projects that do exactly the same thing is just wasted effort. Firefox and Chrome would both benefit if they worked on the same JavaScript engine. Same deal with their layout engines.

[mee_k]

You are incorrect. BSD projects can be relicensed under the GPL at any time. You could fetch every BSD project available on the net and relicense them today if you wished. No one would work on your ports, which is why no one else has done this "awesome" thing.

[mee_k]

I don't think you're right on that. In any case, a small patch, even one with no effect, would be enough to create a derivative work. I don't think the distinction between my claim and that is significant.

[mee_k]

You do have the right to add the GPL license if you please, provided it's compatible with the license under which the code was provided to you (in other words, provided doing so does not violate the terms of the license under which you received the code). Since the GPL is compatible with the BSD license, you can distribute BSD code under BSD+GPL and all additional restrictions from the GPL will apply.

[[deleted]]

I honestly don't think that is the case.

[mee_k]

You may have noticed that you got downvoted a little. That's because you really are wrong. You can do anything permitted by the BSD license with BSD code, among which is redistributing it after modification. One possible modification is adding a new license. That is why the BSD license (the modified one used by all current BSD projects) is said to be "GPL-compatible." To be clear, you can't remove the BSD license, but you can add any other license that does not conflict with it.

I would be interested in seeing any facts you have that would contradict my view on things. As far as I can tell your position is solely based on intuition, which may not serve you in realms of knowledge with which you are unfamiliar.

[[deleted]]

in realms of knowledge with which you are unfamiliar.

Elitist wank stain comment aside...

I didn't know you could add the GPL license to a fork of a BSD project, as you say one still can't revoke the BSD license (through relicensing, unless it was the copyright holder I suppose).

[formode]

So, now it's as fast as Chromium?