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.
Mozilla just released the beta test version of Fennec, its mobile Firefox browser. The beta version is still slow and has a ways to go before it can compete with Apple's iPhone-ized Safari browser, but these are forgivable shortcomings, given its beta status.
No, the real problem with Fennec is that it's available only for one platform: Nokia's N810 Internet Tablet. Who cares about that device?
Seriously, while the rest of the world is experimenting first on the iPhone, why is Mozilla futzing around with a niche platform like Nokia's N810? I don't know a single person who has one, developer or otherwise. Even if Mozilla makes Fennec sing, who is going to care?
More to the point, who is going to help make it sing? Mozilla's desktop Firefox browser has been impressive in its innovations, in part because it marshalls a massive community that enables Mozilla to take advantage of resources otherwise beyond its small staff.
I solicited comment on the choice of platform but have yet to hear back from Mozilla on the matter.
Yes, as CNET reports, there are emulators for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows to help developers get a head start on other platforms. But it's not the same. And, frankly, it's not really useful: Mozilla should be targeting the top platforms for its Fennec releases, not an obscure Internet tablet.
Early on, Fennec (nee "Minimo") was available only for Windows Mobile devices, which further rendered it irrelevant to the crowd most likely to help develop it.
Sure, Apple is unlikely to welcome a competitive browser to the iPhone, but Mozilla is used to swimming against the current. You don't achieve 20 percent market share on Microsoft's Windows fortress unless you know how to build and deliver compelling value.
Ben Feldman, a software developer, noted to me in a Tweet that
Mozilla already said there won't be iPhone or Android versions because of inability/restrictions on running code they need to use. If I remember correctly, it had to do with restrictions on run non-SDK code, and Android is all Java at the moment.
So maybe it's Apple that's to blame.
If so, Mozilla needs to up the public pressure on Apple to open up the iPhone to this sort of development. Firefox is the best browser for personal computers, even better than Apple's Safari. iPhone users shouldn't have to slum with Apple's iPhone-enabled version of Safari if (or when) Mozilla creates something better. Put the pressure on, Mozilla.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
Mozilla has shaken up the desktop browser market with its innovative approach to add-ons and superior performance, earning itself 21.53 percent of the desktop browser market in the process.
While Mozilla has long lagged in mobile browsing, that seems set to change, if this video demonstrating gestures and other features of Mozilla's rapidly developing mobile Fennec browser is any indication:
Fennec Gestures and Chromeless browsing from Felipe on Vimeo.
Mozilla seems set to embrace and extend its own desktop experience with Fennec, giving even Apple a run for its money in mobile (and seemingly shuttering Microsoft's Windows Mobile efforts completely).
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
Years ago, Mozilla introduced its mobile equivalent of Firefox, then-called Minimo. Minimo unfortunately largely died of boredom within Mozilla. In early 2008, however, Mozilla resurrected Minimo as Fennec, and the heavens rejoiced (though even the heavens couldn't get it installed on [Name your mobile device of choice]).
As recently announced by Mozilla, however, Fennec just hit its second alpha release, with the option to download and install the mobile browser on Mac, Linux, and Windows desktops for testing purposes. (If you want to install it on your mobile device, you're going to need to have a Nokia N810 device on which to install it.)
Alpha 2 has made significant improvements to Fennec's performance (e.g., Faster panning and zooming plus improved responsiveness while pages are loading) and ease-of-use (e.g., Bookmarks, tabbed browsing with thumbnails, etc.)
But Ars Technica picks up on one of the best new "features" of Fennec:
As Fennec development continues to move forward, the value and significance of having the complete Firefox stack in a mobile environment is becoming increasingly apparent. Developers have already started creating innovative add-ons for the new browser that increase its functionality in various ways. For example, the TwitterBar extension allows users to post to Twitter directly from the Fennec address bar. An early Fennec port of Mozilla's Weave framework is also underway.
Like Apple's iPhone rendition of Safari, Fennec may well prove to be most disruptive when replicating and extending the desktop experience in a mobile device. This is where open-source Fennec could leapfrog its proprietary competition, including the iPhone's Safari.
Just as Mozilla's desktop Firefox set the pace for what a desktop browser can be by tapping into a disparate, global community of hackers with their own assumptions as to what a browser should mean so, too, can Fennec become the mobile browser's innovation leader by letting users define the experience, not any single company.
Much as I love Apple, I almost never use its Safari browser. If Mozilla can get Fennec right, I suspect I won't be using Apple's iPhone browser, either.
While the world rightly awaits Firefox 3.0 with anticipation, it's actually the mobile Firefox browser Fennec that I am looking most forward to seeing. According to the head of Mozilla Europe, we should be seeing Fennec in September, with a beta release later in 2008.
The problem? It won't run on my iPhone:
For the iPhone, Apple's licence can not install software to have an interpreted language. But Firefox includes JavaScript, which makes it legally impossible to carry on the iPhone....For Android, Webkit is integrated into the OS, and only Java applications can run. And Firefox is not written in Java. So that's why [Fennec will not run on Android]. However, in both cases, things may change in future, but it does not depend on Mozilla.
It will be hugely disappointing if Apple forces the world into its Safari browser. I like Safari and used to prefer it (until CNET forced me to use Firefox, much to my belated delight), but I'd prefer to use Firefox on my mobile device, just as I do on my Mac. Long term, Firefox is going to be where the innovation is.
In sum, the news is bittersweet. Mobile Firefox is coming, but it's deployment will be hobbled (for me) by Apple.
Mozilla has started making noise about the mobile browser market, and just turned up the volume a bit more by joining the mobile Linux trade group, LiMo Foundation. It's not all that significant in and of itself, except that it clearly demonstrates that "Minimo" (now called Fennec) is finally set to break free of its Windows Mobile shackles.
Finally.
Mozilla has shuffled around mobile for several years now, initially with Minimo. Mozilla has finally decided to get into the mobile market in earnest, however, with Fennec.
If Fennec proves to be even a shadow of Firefox's potential, the world will never be the same.
Access to data, sites and applications on the Internet shouldn't be limited by the type of device being used, and Fennec will make that possible, said Mitchell Baker during a keynote speech at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.
"The key to the Internet should be the same. The core is information: What can I get to and what can I do with it?" she said.
Mobile has been fraught with problems since its inception, largely due to corporations carving up their petty niches for profit. With a true, community-developed mobile web platform and entry point, however, we may yet see a rich convergence in mobile, one where a particular mobile device is not an inhibitor to the web, as it has been (giving rise to the need for mobile open-source providers like Volantis).
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