Twenty five years ago today I started the #Safari and #WebKit projects at #Apple Computer.
Which means Safari is now old enough to rent itself a car. But let's not speculate about my age.
I'm still sad I can't use Safari on my Windows PC. Alas, I lost the battle to keep it there. But at least WebKit's DNA seeded or influenced most browsers we use today.
And I'm proud of that impact. Along with the wonderful team I built who made it all happen. Here's to another 25, friends.
Cheers. 🥂😊💖
@lisamelton I was a Safari for Windows user! Until I couldn't be, of course.
(My main machine was a Mac, but we had a couple of windows boxen for specific tasks, you know how it was.)
@lisamelton ...and from the day it was released I have not stopped using it. There simply is no better browser for me and the way I use my system(s).
Thank you, Lisa!
You are much loved and appreciated for this gift to us all (and many other things)! ❤️
@metaning No, I haven't commented on Orion publicly. And I don't intend to. They don't need a distraction from me.
I don't meddle with Web browsers anymore. I'm a game developer now.
@lisamelton no one can ever take that accomplishment away from you.
I sometimes wonder if being able to complete that feat subconsciously gave you the extra boost of courage you needed for the hard work of transition. I like to think so. 
@kimlockhartga Thank you! 💖 And you're correct, even our Fascist government can't take that away from me and my team. ✊️
If that effort and its success gave me courage, I sure wish I had transitioned sooner. Instead, I waited over 10 years after retirement to begin my journey. 🤦♀️
One thing it *did* was harden my resolve and focus when I finally did transition. And I'm forever thankful for that. 🥹🏳️⚧️
@eliasp I've spoken and written about this numerous times. And the complete answer is too long for a toot.
The TL;DR is that Mozilla code (at the time) was bloated and slow. Licensing Microsoft Internet Explorer wasn't politically viable. Licensing other browsers wasn't feasible or the technology sucked for various reasons, just like Explorer.
It was truly a choice between basing our effort on KHTML and KJS or writing a browser from scratch. And I knew better than to attempt the latter.
@TheEddieShow Guilty as charged! 🤓
@eliasp Also, the KHTML and KJS code did not suck. It was rather incomplete and raw, but it was well-written and something I knew could be a project my browser-inexperienced team could learn on.
It wasn't until I lured David Hyatt away from Mozilla, after he started Firefox, that we really began to change KHTML and KJS.
@lisamelton
it's not because they weren't planned that the consequences didn't follow.
But I still remember the anger when it come to light you had forked an important opensource project.
@iinavpov and she was totally rightful about doing so, otherwise KDE should've chosen a different license which doesnt allow forking (which is the very fundamental idea of OpenSource).
No one is obliged to return contributions (although it might be a nice thing to do so) to the original project.
@eliasp
It was legal, not rightful.
And a year of secret divergence backed by considerable resources is very much a hostile fork going well against the social contract.
And indeed safari is a very marginal browser to this day, though WebKit was wildly "successful". LGPL makes sense because contributions are what you do when you want the thing to actually develop.
What Apple did was what you do when you want to spend resources to kill a public good.
@eliasp Thank you! Yes, forking is allowed and even encouraged in some cases.
Did I want to do it in secret for 18 months? Hell no!
And I didn't want to just throw tarballs over a wall when we went public, which I had to do at first. That went against everything I learned and believed after working on Mozilla, LAME, Nautilus and other projects.
That's why I fought so hard to make WebKit a real Open Source collaboration.
And I didn't want KHTML to die. I was a KDE user, too.
@lisamelton
Yet, KHTML died. Konqueror is no more.
Open source projects are about collaborative work and community much more than the code.
I'm sorry, but when a company wants to kill/take over an open source project, this is *exactly* how you do it.
Had this not happened, there might be today another real alternative to Firefox for people caring about privacy.
In any case, it was 25 years ago. just not something to celebrate.
@eliasp
@lisamelton
You mistake me saying anything about intentions. I didn't. You only know what you intended.
Merely about consequences.
But I don't remember reading Lars being ecstatic when learning what has happened in the ML. Quite the reverse.
We even have a couple of examples. The clean room browser engines that have been popping up like Arc and Servo have been going for years and years and aren't fully compliant engines yet. Standards compat is hard to catch up to esp since they're moving forward at the same time.
@bigolewannabe Yes, but the people who hired me at Apple wanted a Web browser and Web library in one year.
I knew that was impossible, but I figured they wouldn't fire me if I took 18 months. Which is exactly how long it did take before we unveiled the public Beta in January of 2003.
Only a fool would write everything from scratch with pressure like that. And I was no fool.
That's not to disparage the work by the Arc and Servo teams, but they didn't have the constraints that I did.
@eliasp Thanks. Fixed.
@mkoek Indeed. But some nerds got wind of me hiring David Hyatt before our WWDC unveiling and thought Safari would be based on Firefox.
So, when Steve flashed a 20-foot-high slide with the words, "KHTML and KJS" on the stage, someone in the audience a dozen rows behind be shouted, "What the fuck?!?"
It. Was. Epic. 🤣
Googolplex let us know that David Hyatt has been hired by Apple. According to Googolplex: David Hyatt has been hired by Apple. David is the creator of Chimera and many parts of Mozilla. He was an employee at Netscape/AOL until Apple offered him a job. To read more about this read his weblogs...
@mkoek Oh yeah, that was one of many times that "rumor" was repeated.
TBH, I didn't think we could keep the truth quiet.
@iinavpov And you know this because you worked on KDE 25 years ago, right?
@lisamelton
I was a user (still am), and I was on the mailing lists, yes.
Also, then KDE had a good light fast browser, and after, it didn't.
Yes, I'm still angry about it 25 years after.
It was not a good thing you did.
@mkoek @eliasp @lisamelton @bigolewannabe
Legal is not the same thing as right. Forking is almost always hostile. Siding with Apple against and open source project is not a good look.
@mkoek @eliasp @lisamelton @bigolewannabe
This is not at all about legal.
It's about negative interactions between the corporate world and open source projects. There's nothing wrong for a corporation to use OSS, it's good even. Commercial software is not evil per se! There's nothing *illegal* about embracing-extinguishing projects. But it's wrong. Not good. Nothing to be proud of.
That exactly what I meant and yes. I'm not disparaging those teams either. Browsers engines are HARD. Doing them right takes a long time. Doing them well takes even longer. The edge cases and have edge cases.
@bigolewannabe LOL! Indeed. 🤣
I used to quote Ernie Hudson's line as Winston Zeddemore in Ghostbusters when detailing some of the egregious HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Web server behavior I've encountered from working on Netscape Navigator in the 90s and then Safari:
"I've seen shit that'll turn you white."
And, yeah, it's just that scary.
@bigolewannabe In a prior life, I was tasked with filling out CSS support for a mobile browser. I got about 95% of the way through and then had to go tell my boss that I’d have to rewrite his layout engine if he wants the last 5%.
@lisamelton Now if we can just re-instil the notion of any changes must make the app faster…
Thanks again, for all the amazing work. :-)
@lisamelton thanks for your hard work.
Happy anniversary
Ariadne Conill 🐰
Lisa Melton
The Eddie Show 📷🎧❤️
BoxOfRain
Jan Lehnardt 
thethuthinnang
Solarbird 
post-Gundam cryptography
((Jann Gobble)) 🏳️🌈
Matt Godden
Wiredfire
Mark Malowany 🇨🇦
tylercheung
Leo Ringqvist
Kim Possible 
Elias Probst
Nemo
Matt Boehm
Mark Koek
Steven Huang
ChefExperte
CM Harrington
Carolyn
David Nicolas
Jeri Dansky