Apple Delays Release of LGPL WebKit Code

jfruhlinger writes "Ever since Apple forked the KHTML project to create WebKit, the rendering engine at the core of Safari, the company has been a good open source citizen, releasing the code back to the community after updates. But that suddenly stopped in March, with no code releases for the last two updates to the iOS version of the browser, for reasons unknown. This might remind you of Google's failure to release the Honeycomb source code. But at least Google announced that it was holding the code back, and Android is under a license that allows for a delay; the LGPL'd WebKit isn't." Update: 05/09 21:21 GMT by S : Reader Shin-LaC points out that Apple has now released the relevant source code.

Re:It's right here

[OverlordQ]

No, no it's not. That's WebKit, not Apple's version of WebKit.

Re:download page

[Pieroxy]

No, it doesn't matter. Legally, under the GPL, they are required to distribute (upon request)....

Has anyone requested it?

Note to Apple fanboys:

[Beelzebud]

Saying "Google does it too!", doesn't make it right.

Re:It's right here

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the article this is about WebCore not WebKit. Apples version of webkit is webkit. Webcore is licensed under BSD and LGPL. If apples changes where to the parts that are BSD licensed then they are under no obligation to release anything.

Re:Make no mistake about it:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why have they bothered with all this then? http://opensource.apple.com/ [apple.com]

Most of the packages for Mac OS X are not even GPLed, so Apple would not need to release any of the code for them.

Re:download page

[Mr. Slippery]

One of the big issues companies have with FOSS is software patients.

Patents are not relevant here. If there were a patent issue, they couldn't use it at all, closing the source has no effect.

Found it.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.opensource.apple.com/tarballs/WebCore/WebCore-955.66.tar.gz
Also see:
http://www.opensource.apple.com/tarballs/

Re:Simple Explanation and Jumping to Conclusions

[Jonner]

Am I the only to see a very simple explanation that the author has missed?

Apple's own iOS 4.3 source download page [apple.com] references the unreleased sources of JavaScriptCore and WebCore.