Brutkey

Jens Finkhäuser
@jens@social.finkhaeuser.de

@oblomov@sociale.network @cstross@wandering.shop @jwz@mastodon.social The line is straight when you know the route it took, seemingly coincidental otherwise.

But as the HipCrime Vocab defines "coincidence": you weren't paying attention to the other half of what was going on.

And, err, though I'm in danger of exhausting my quote quota, the proof is in the proverbial pudding.

Jens Finkhäuser
@jens@social.finkhaeuser.de

@oblomov@sociale.network @cstross@wandering.shop @jwz@mastodon.social As you will note by some research, in April 2005, so before the publication of WebKit, there was already discontent in the KHTML community in how Apple was developing WebKit as a fork.

How can that be? They complied with the letter, but not the spirit of the GPL. https://web.archive.org/web/20050428230122/http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/1001

Jens Finkhäuser
@jens@social.finkhaeuser.de

@oblomov@sociale.network @cstross@wandering.shop @jwz@mastodon.social by the way, @lisamelton@mastodon.social might have some views.

Jens Finkhäuser
@jens@social.finkhaeuser.de

@oblomov@sociale.network @cstross@wandering.shop @jwz@mastodon.social @lisamelton@mastodon.social At any rate, Dave Hyatt was a former Mozilla dev who switched to Apple and started Safari, and so this entire thing.

He was also representing Apple at WHATWG from what I understand.

Jens Finkhäuser
@jens@social.finkhaeuser.de

@oblomov@sociale.network @cstross@wandering.shop @jwz@mastodon.social @lisamelton@mastodon.social And then we know how much Google pays Apple yearly since, well... neither 2004, the WHATWG start, nor 2008, the Chrome start, but... did you guess when?

2005.

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-apple-iphone-search-engine-safari-deal-20-billion-2022-2024-5

It's all coincidence until it isn't.

Google's enclosure of the web has over two decades of history, back when their motto was still "Don't be Evil".

Jens Finkhäuser
@jens@social.finkhaeuser.de

@oblomov@sociale.network @cstross@wandering.shop @jwz@mastodon.social The WHATWG position paper is from 2004: https://www.w3.org/2004/04/webapps-cdf-ws/papers/opera.html

The working draft cited there edited by Google. Full authors at the bottom:
https://whatwg.org/specs/web-forms/current-work/

XHTML 2.0 specs have been sitting in decision limbo since 2002, when it was finished: https://www.w3.org/2007/03/XHTML2-WG-charter

Jens Finkhäuser
@jens@social.finkhaeuser.de

@oblomov@sociale.network @cstross@wandering.shop @jwz@mastodon.social The last bit of glue, which I can only give you second hand from personal acquaintances I shall not out here, is the frustration in XHTML WG about Google and Apple blocking adoption with ever more spurious reasons.

There's probably an archive of minutes somewhere.

Jens Finkhäuser
@jens@social.finkhaeuser.de

@oblomov@sociale.network @cstross@wandering.shop @jwz@mastodon.social The public archive of XHTML starts in 2007, but the private part requires membership.

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xhtml2/

Jens Finkhäuser
@jens@social.finkhaeuser.de

@oblomov@sociale.network @cstross@wandering.shop @jwz@mastodon.social I mean, there's also that Mozilla Corporation was launched in 2005, and crypto turd Marc Andreessen decided that was a good moment to heap praise on the new CEO https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1972656_1972712_1974235,00.html

Tumultous times, which weren't all dark. Firefox started making waves after this.

So here's another thing to contemplate.