[webkit-dev] Changes in QtWebKit development

[Sam Weinig]

Allan,

Andreas and Benjamin make good points, care to respond?  (Being an active member of this community means responding on this mailing list). 

-Sam

On Sep 14, 2013, at 3:24 AM, Allan Sandfeld Jensen <kde at carewolf.com> wrote:

> On Friday 13 September 2013, Benjamin Poulain wrote:
>> 
>> This is sad.
> 
> Yes :(
> 
>> 
>> When "modules" of Qt are put on "maintenance", it is basically a synonym
>> to "it's unmaintained, just let it die". I am very unexcited about
>> having one of those in the tree along the live development from everyone
>> else.
>> It is unfair for all the ports who put real efforts in the WebKit
>> opensource project.
> 
> Previously modules put in maintenance in Qt were already dead because we had 
> lost the developers during business transitions. This is different, QtWebKit 
> is still being actively developed and we still have the developers, even if 
> the primary focus has changed.
> 
>> Realistically, how much development will go in QtWebKit/Linux? Why does
>> it stay in WebKit trunk if the two other ports are "maintained" in a
>> branch?
>> 
> Staying in trunk is the best way to still be part of the development of 
> WebKit, and WebKit is still our main web api, and will remain so in the next 
> release of Qt. As long as we ship WebKit as a major part of Qt, we also want 
> to be active in project and contribute back, even if we are forced to scale 
> back our commitment.
> 
> We are keeping QtWebKit/Linux in particular because it is the easiest to 
> maintain and requires the least amount of Qt specific code (most is shared 
> with GTK, EFL and Nix) and QtWebKit/Linux has use cases beyond just being part 
> of the official QtWebKit releases. WebKit has a number of advantages over 
> Chromium especially on embedded linux, using less memory, having better JIT 
> support of smaller architectures (MIPS, old ARM, etc), more customizable 
> feature set, and a more powerful API on the WebKit1 side that is not easily 
> duplicated in a multiprocess design. Those use cases are all outside the stock 
> QtWebKit releases though.
> 
> That said, in all likelihood the Qt port will not remain part of WebKit 
> forever, but leaving will not be Digia's decision alone to make. For now I 
> will continue working full time on WebKit, my coworkers are still bug-fixing 
> in WebKit whenever necessary, there are still several developers from 
> Cisco(NDS) using the Qt port of webkit, and we still have a handful of 
> developers from the university of Szeged working on the port as well. So some 
> 5-10 developers, though the majority are not Digia employees any more.
> 
> Best regards
> `Allan Jensen
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