It is difficult to explain why I make this entry, but let’s say, that I quickly want to say something here for some reason, which might be of interest for you as well if you’re interested in development for Safari, WebKit, or both.
According to my understanding of the two technologies, it outlines as this:
Safari is a web browser that is bundled with Apple’s operating system, Mac OS X. In the current system, Leopard, Safari 3 is included. The web browser itself has a trademark and is distributed under a proprietary license, meaning that Apple has access to the source code, but not the general population. Or in Wikipedia’s words:
License: Proprietary EULA
To be found under the screenshot of the browser here.
WebKit is the underlying foundation, written by Apple, which also incidentally powers their own web browser, Safari. It is a framework that functions as rendering engine. This engine in turn is based on KHTML, the web engine of Konqueror, KDE’s file and web browser. Both, KDE (and thus KHTML) and WebKit, are Open Source. Or in Wikipedia’s words:
License: Engine under GNU LGPL
To be found under the screenshot of the browser here.
There’s also something, like this:
Safari uses Apple’s WebKit for rendering web pages and running JavaScript. WebKit consists of WebCore (based on Konqueror’s KHTML engine) and JavaScriptCore (based on KDE’s JavaScript engine named KJS). Like KHTML and KJS, WebCore and JavaScriptCore are free software and are released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Some Apple improvements to the KHTML code are merged back into the Konqueror project. Apple also releases additional code under an open source 2-clause BSD-like license.
Meaning, Webkit is freely available to anyone who wishes to contribute to it.
So the equasion that builds up from this information, is:
Safari = Browser, Closed, code not available
WebKit = Open Source, Open, code available to anyone
Just because the WebKit is open, does not mean the browser is as well.
I’m writing this entry because it’s very hard to talk to someone, when he doesn’t believe the truth. *sigh*
To everyone else, correct me if I’m wrong… but I’m fairly sure I got it right this time around.
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