Turns out Safari Reader is based on Open Source project Readability(downloadsquad.com)

Turns out Safari Reader is based on Open Source project Readability

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/06/08/think-safari-reader-looks-familiar-thats-because-apple-used-op/

13 comments

Keep looking for Apple drama. Because it's not like almost all of Apple's browser stack is itself open source, or like one of Apple's arch-competitors is using Apple's open source code to compete with them. They must just not get the concept.

papachito16년 전

> or like one of Apple's arch-competitors is using Apple's open source code to compete with them

WebKit is based on KHTML though from KDE, so not entirely Apple's. Not to mention that chrome uses V8 which is not JScore from Apple but full Google's code.

tptacek16년 전

Have you kept up with what Apple's done with WebKit since 2002?

(Yes, clearly Google has contributed a lot of open source code too).

m0th8716년 전

I don't mean to discredit Apple's contributions, but your comments seem to suggest to me that WebKit remains open source for benevolent reasons.

They built the project on KHTML so they wouldn't have to start from scratch. And because KHTML is under the LGPL, WebKit will have to remain open source unless they removed all KHTML-related code, which I'm sure is not worth the investment.

naner16년 전

WebKit was closed from 2002-2005 (except for the LGPL components). WebCore and JavaScriptCore are LGPL, everything else is BSD.

http://dot.kde.org/2005/06/07/apple-opens-webkit-cvs-and-bug...

This isn't to suggest Apple is benevolent. There are plenty of good strategic and practical reasons for this decision.

papachito16년 전

Have you kept at what KDE's done with WebKit before 2002 and what Google and many others have done with WebKit?

tptacek16년 전

Nope! What's your point?

jarin16년 전

Apple acknowledged them in Safari, and the Readability guy is happy about it ( http://twitter.com/arc90/status/15670524396 ).

Drama averted.

cmelbye16년 전

This is just over dramatic link bait.

There's probably nothing legally wrong with what Apple did

Since when is using open source code while properly attributing the authors "probably legal"? Last time I checked, it was most certainly legal and encouraged even.

pohl16년 전

Would it be asking too much to wait for the authors of Readability to do the complaining? The referenced tweet seemed positive about the discovery of the attribution.

ronnoch16년 전

Their blog says "we couldn’t be happier that Apple has chosen to leverage our own Readability as a native feature in the Safari browser."

http://blog.arc90.com/2010/06/10/why-we-built-readability/

tectonic16년 전

Somewhat self-promotional, but I have become the defacto maintainer of a Ruby port of Readability.

http://github.com/iterationlabs/ruby-readability

lancer38316년 전

I find it hard to believe that the guys from Arc90 didn't know that it was Readability the second they saw it; maybe it's because I've used Readability for a while, but I just knew the second that I saw that familiar look and feel of the title and text that it was Readability powering it.