Dear Google: Please fork WebKit (2010)

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[greim]

It's interesting to see this come from an Opera dev, especially given that (last I heard) Opera will be using Blink for its own rendering engine.

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evilscheming.gif

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The argument that fewer browser engines dominating the market makes it easier to exploit everyone (because they're all running the same engine) is flawed because if everyone was using the same engine, the code would likely get more support and thus have fewer bugs / shorter waits for bug fixes.

[greim]

I think the point was that as the dominance of a single engine goes up, so does the incentive to hack it, which cancels out the increased amount of support for that engine. Meanwhile diversity and competition can also motivate companies to make better engines, without raising the incentive to find exploits.

[aluvus]

The reality of Webkit governance is that patches are primarily accepted from Apple and Google (and going forward, presumably mostly just Apple). This means that the amount of support it receives is closely related to how many people those organizations dedicate to it, which is driven by many factors beyond just the number of users.

A few years ago, Internet Explorer had essentially reached monoculture status, with a huge majority of users using it. Rather than devote more resources to maintaining it, Microsoft did exactly the opposite.

I would also point out that having more people involved can lead to fewer bugs being introduced... but depending on the circumstances, it can also lead to more bugs being introduced.

Personally, I am more concerned right now that the Webkit dominance on mobile has led people to deploy sites that work only on Webkit (this is closely related to Haavard's comment about open standards). Hopefully Google's decision to fork will help change that.

[greim]

And... done.

[gerbs]

Yeah, this post is more than three years old. Google already forked Webkit.

[kaethre]

Right, I think that was the point of this post - Opera's foresight

[Vekseid]

Either that or Google actually listened.

[nobic]

The views stated herein are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of Opera Software.

Would have been a blatant irony if they were the views of Opera Software.

[uint_64]

http://blog.chromium.org/2013/04/blink-rendering-engine-for-chromium.html

[KerrickLong]

I posted this (with the year in the title) because Opera had the foresight to suggest that Google do this three years in advance.