[webkit-dev] Announcing WebKit2

[Adam Treat]

On Friday 09 April 2010 06:24:51 am Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> Given what proportion of overall maintenance work on WebKit I done by
> Apple, I don't think anyone is entitled to veto us adding a new API

Whaa?  Who is talking about veto of Apple's work?  Rather, I am suggesting 
that it would have been helpful if people in the broader community had a 
chance to review and discuss the patches before they were summarily landed.

To be clear, I have not had a chance to review the patches (I'm actually 
pretty excited by the ideas and I've no doubt the work is technically 
excellent given the people involved) and see what is going on before they were 
pushed into the tree.  It just would have been nice to give the *community* 
more of a heads up and a chance to have a look and offer opinions.  This isn't 
about 'Apple' and 'veto' so much as it is about a significant new piece of tech 
being added to WebKit without going through the common procedure where a bug 
is opened a patch is attached webkit-dev is notified and people have a chance 
to discuss and poke a little.

It just felt a little rushed especially so that the new stuff is being landed 
with style errors.  I normally wouldn't quibble with style issues, but others 
have and new ports have been required to fix any and all styling issues before 
landing.

> layer. I also recall that when the Chromium API layer was added, no
> one asked permission, you just let us know that it was coming. Which
> is fine - API layers are pretty low cost, and I hope no one would
> argue against a major contributor including theirs. What's more, this
> is really a parallel version of existing well-maintained API layers. I
> do not like the implication that Apple should have to ask permission
> for what we do with the WebKit API on Mac OS X. We do not ask the Qt
> or Gtk developers to explain all their API choices.

Again, I think it'd be good to get away from 'Apple' vs 'Others'.  The 
community as a whole has some fairly common procedures for landing large 
changes like this.  This just felt a bit rushed.  And no doubt I was a bit 
taken by the name 'WebKit2'.

Cheers,
Adam