RIM's Torch acquisition leaves Apple in control

It was announced Monday that smartphone maker Research in Motion had acquired Torch Mobile, a provider of browsers and other applications based on the open-source WebKit project. Though Webkit has become the unofficial standard for mobile browsers, as Don Reisinger reports, it seems to be a largely Apple-controlled open-source community, one that has the potential to leave RIM, Palm, Google, and other WebKit users constantly playing catch-up to Apple.

Is WebKit open source? Absolutely. But is it truly an open, level playing field for RIM and other would-be competitors to Apple? Likely not.

Yes, there are other developers from Nokia, Torch Mobile, and Google involved with the project, but Apple controls the project, if by no other means than sheer numbers. Apple employs the majority of WebKit developers (30), with Google coming in second (19). Torch Mobile? It employs just eight of the WebKit development team members.

More pertinently, Apple employs far more of the WebKit reviewers than anyone else, which gives it much more control. Most of the other participants are committers, which are important but not equal in control to reviewers.

I've even heard that WebKit is not accepting outside contributions at present, though I have not yet been able to verify this.

Not that you need to look too deeply to see Apple's grip on the project. Just look at the logo:

WebKit logo

Look familiar? It should. Here's Apple's logo for its Safari browser, which is based on the WebKit project:

Safari logo

Coincidence? Um...no. After all, the WebKit blog is called (get this): "Surfin' Safari. Think the blog is going to change its name anytime soon to "Surfin' RIM"? Don't hold your breath.

As the proud owner of four MacBook Pros and three iPhones, I'm not bashing Apple. I love what it produces.

But if part of RIM's interest in Torch Mobile was influence in the WebKit project, it could have saved its money. WebKit, for better or worse, is largely an Apple project, with serious support from Google. For everyone else, WebKit may be the best game in town, but it's Apple's town. It almost certainly will result in a better Blackberry browser for RIM customers, but not one that RIM has as much control over as it would like.

There are some technologies that make less and less sense as proprietary software. The browser is one of them. With Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome actively gaining at Internet Explorer's expense on the "desktop," it would be nice to see a truly open-source project--open in source, and open to outside involvement--standardize the mobile browsing experience, too.

There's Mozilla's Fennec, of course, but its development has been slow. WebKit may be the best option for RIM and others, but it would be an even better option if Apple took its hands off the wheel to open up the project further.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

[ebarroca]

Hi Matt,

I don't know if WebKit is not "truely" open source or not. Well, from my standpoint it seems really open source, with very good collaboration (apple, google, nokia at least).

Having employee from a company on board of an open source project is normal (and, I believe, a good thing). It's the case for most Eclipse's projects. Same for Apache's ones.
I don't think we can say Eclipse IDE is not a truely open source project because it's controlled by IBM's employee. Same for Linux, mostly controlled by RedHat employee. And 80% of popular open source projects, I believe.
Somebody has to pay for the bred. :-)

I think the big difference is the umbrella under which those projects are taking place : Eclipse Foundation, Apache Foundation, Apple, Google, etc.
I think defined governance and strict rules foster cooperation, but it's not the only case we get a "true" open source project. For infrastructure components with strong cooperation across the industry, I think Apache, Eclipse or Mozilla are awesome. They give a neutral place where everybody can lay down its sword and start to work on the component in the interest of the whole industry. But it's not the case of all projects (ex: linux, gwt, etc.) and it does not make it untrue open source.

Or neither of our respective companies do "true" open source (and I don't believe it's the case) ;-)

Cheers,

EB.

[MyRightEye]

It's funny how Apple once had the worst browsers, and now has the best.

[stigmattaman]

Safari's still not that good. The iPhone's browser is best in class though.

[odubtaig]

The iPhone browser being Safari...

[myles taylor]

I never knew that Apple had some much control in the webkit world. I think that as it grows though that control will slip. If a bunch of other companies have a small piece of the pie, there will be less of the pie left for Apple

[polomartin]

Hi Matt

I could`t not agree more.

I wonder what this new player will have under its belt. Check www.get-a-watson.com and tell us if you know anything about this.

Thanks
Polo

[gnarlyswine]

wow - what a trully balanced apple advert , i mean article.
Seriously how about some objective journalism , this is pathetic fanboy suck up at its best.

"As the proud owner of four MacBook Pros and three iPhones, I'm not bashing Apple. I love what it produces." more gushing than a Hannah Montana fan.

RIM will find a way to make it their own. It is open source after all.

[gkent1]

Apple has really spurred development of WebKit. Without their manpower and dollars supporting it there probably would not be good WebKit browsers yet. Anything that frees us from Internet Explorer is a good thing. Competition has also motivated Mozilla to improve their browsers.

[rbethell]

This article seems to fundamentally fail to grasp how exactly open source works. Open source's most important characteristic is "open." That means that if RIM wants to get some sort of competitive jump on the others, it can fork out Iris' copy of the engine, do some neat stuff away from the control of the project, and then offer it back to the project.

In fact, this is exactly how WebKit came about, which is a fork of the old Konqueror KHTML code.

So in short, you're really missing the point. Open means "free" - including "free to modify." By definition, nobody cedes or has control.

[moil4gold49]

Is RIM gunning for "more control" of a browser, or are they just shooting to get a much better browser on their devices.

They are currently behind, this will help them catch up to the best-of-breed mobile browsers. "Control" isn't part of the motivation, and as others have commented, isn't much of an issue anyway.

[arifsaha]

Not sure what Matt Asay means by "real" open source. By definition, a free open source software means nobody has absolute control on its development, regardless how many people they throw into the project. If at any time RIM is not happy on where WebKit development goes, RIM can at any time fork the project, create their own version, without consequence whatsoever other than the possibility they may have to take care of that fork themselves. That is real free open source software.

BTW, as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit the license is LGPL & BSD-styled. These are common FOSS licenses.