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by saagarjha 2470 days ago
WebKit was certainly started at Apple. I just checked and the paper for LLVM was actually published before Lattner joined Apple, so I guess it's not quite true that it was "started" there (though, of course, most of its development has happened there).
3 comments
masklinn 2470 days ago
> WebKit was certainly started at Apple.

webkit was a fork of khtml, so the webkit name started at apple but the actual underlying project not really.

Clang, on the other hand, was actually started at Apple.

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zeusk 2470 days ago
but if my memory serves right, what enabled clang - LLVM, was developed at UIUC.
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masklinn 2470 days ago
That's correct. LLVM was started at UIUC, Apple later hired Lattner with the intention of making LLVM production-ready (in part as a replacement for the GNU toolchain), and ultimately to replace the GCC frontend by a custom / dedicated one.

The Clang project is part of the LLVM ecosystem, but is a major effort in its own right, so I think it is right to give credit where credit is due, in the same way e.g. the Rust compiler uses Rust as a backend, but credit for it doesn't to to the LLVM project.

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pjmlp 2469 days ago
Apple did not hire Lattner for clang, that was started by him as a kind of submarine project until it was mature enough to show to management.

He mentions this in some of his interviews.

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masklinn 2469 days ago
> Apple did not hire Lattner for clang

I didn't write that they did? Though I can see where my wording would be misleading.

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erk__ 2470 days ago
Well the name webkit started there, before that it was KDEs khtml and kjs. So it is one of the things that is technically true.
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teppifk 2470 days ago
> WebKit was certainly started at Apple.

This is an extremely disingenuous statement. WebKit was forked from KHTML and everybody knows this. It "certainly" sounds like you're trying to rewrite history (and you make a similar assertion elsewhere in this thread)..

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saagarjha 2470 days ago
> This is an extremely disingenuous statement. WebKit was forked from KHTML and everybody knows this.

If “everyone” knows this, is it really disingenuous? In any case, I feel this is quite similar to saying Blink started at Google.

> It "certainly" sounds like you're trying to rewrite history (and you make a similar assertion elsewhere in this thread)..

I’m not. I have a very similar comment in response to a very similar correction elsewhere.

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teppifk 2469 days ago
I say it is disingenous because it is completely counter to what can be found on something as mainstream as the wikipedia page.. one does not have to dig deep.

If you want to dig deeper, the mailing list archives are available for all, and I think given the contribution KHTML made to Webkit initially it is poor form to diminish its role.

"Blink started at Google". It's all context. As someone mentioned, it's technically correct but in the context of this discussion thread which is about open-source origins and contributions, saying Blink "started at Google" comes across as dishonest. Blink started at google with a fork of Webkit, which itself was not created in a vacuum at Apple.

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