[jefftk]

On the other hand, Safari's WebKit being open source allowed Google to build Chrome on the same engine. Years later, Chrome's Blink engine being open source meant the same for Opera, Brave, and Edge.

It is hard for individuals to run and maintain custom forks, but the benefits of open source in terms of preventing lock-in are substantial.

[pjmlp]

The same WebKit that now breaks the mobile Web and it being open source is completely irrelevant.

[jefftk]

That Apple locks down iOS very tightly is a separate problem.

WebKit on Mac continues to be usefully open source, and I believe performance improvements that Apple has made for Mac Safari have been incorporated into Firefox, Chrome, etc.

[pjmlp]

Firefox doesn't use WebKit, and no it is not a separate problem because it shows how being FOSS isn't enough.

[jefftk]

Firefox does not use WebKit (and at this point neither does anyone else), but they can look at patches to WebKit to understand how Apple improved Safari's performance. Because Apple produces the hardware, the OS, and the browser, the choices they make in the WebKit implementation are highly informative.

> it shows how being FOSS isn't enough

This is true for every app on iOS: even if you have the source code, you can't necessarily run a modified version, and so you're missing one of the main user freedoms that FOSS should guarantee. I wish Apple would rethink this, but Safari is still usefully open source.

[pjmlp]

No they cannot unless they want to contaminate their development, as far as I recall the licenses aren't compatible.

It is true for any commercial application with source code available since there are computers.

If the user freedoms were of any value as you mention, WebKit and Bink would use copyleft licenses.

[jefftk]

Just because you can't literally copy the code from one place to another doesn't mean you can't learn from it. I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is it's fine to learn what series of system calls they're making and look at their optimizations.