[psadauskas]

For quite a while, Apple were jerks about contributing there changes back. The patches they submitted to KHTML were huge, undocumented, and full of OSX-specific code. It tooks many months of griping by KHTML, GPL advocates and the community before Apple opened up thier KHTML fork as a CVS repo, and some time later, simply open-sourcing Webkit itself. But at the beginning, it was quite a fight to get Apple to acknowledge Webkit's open-source roots.

The KDE project has now dropped KHTML and switched to Webkit.

[cookiecaper]

This is inaccurate, KDE still uses KHTML. I've certainly seen the point argued back and forth amongst KDE developers, but all versions of KDE still use KHTML, and I assume it's still maintained somewhat. KHTML and WebKit aren't just interchangeable pieces of Konqueror, see http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3998 .

thiago from #kde informs me that "the guy [who claimed that KHTML is gone] is completely wrong", "[KHTML] is happily in use and cannot even be dropped yet".

I was also informed that "there are plans [to change to Webkit], but they're slowgoing" and "nothing concrete has happened yet". If anyone has access to an official announcement to this effect, I'd appreciate a link, because last I knew there were just developers bickering back and forth about which to keep.

Also, I assume that with WebKit SFX would become the KDE browser's JavaScript engine instead of KJS, and that would be nice. KJS is much slower in my experience.

[psadauskas]

I stand corrected on the last point. Someone needs to tell Ars and update Wikipedia:

In July 2007, the Ars Technica website published an article announcing that the KDE team would move from KHTML to WebKit.[13]

( From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#cite_ref-arsunfork_12-0 )