[gcp]

I don't know how committed they are to it.

Extremely, especially in this context. The reason why Opera is switching (web compatibility issues if you're not the dominant implementation) is exactly the reason why Mozilla would fight a switch with tooth and nail - and remember that unlike Opera they cannot care for profit when doing so.

Here's an extensive reply from a Firefox developer: http://www.quora.com/Mozilla-Firefox/Will-Firefox-ever-drop-...

I wonder what would have happened if Microsoft, Mozilla or Opera had open sourced their browser engine with WebKit.

I have no idea what you mean.

[mtgx]

He means that there are different parts of a browser you can focus on and innovate there. If the rendering engine was 'out of the way", and didn't have to worry about that part, they could focus a lot more on other stuff.

Right now Microsoft has to focus on making Trident catch-up with webkit, and it's still 2 years behind webkit in HTML5 features. Go to html5test.com and see how far IE10 is. It's more behind than Chrome 10 was when IE9 launched 2 years ago.