You are right, I incorrectly conflated Webkit with KHTML. It is really KHTML that I had in mind.
I seem to recall that OS X ultimately picked up -- sigh, I'm getting old; was/is it the Open variant? -- BSD when Apple's own kernel efforts became too unwieldy. Yes, portions of the "higher" ecosystem are in more significant degree Apple -- and NeXT -- productions, but the root of it all, so to speak, became BSD. Unless I'm wrong -- corrections welcome.
How many of us remember, with the "walled garden", a few years ago a number of... "appeals" reaching Jobs personally, who not entirely infrequently intervened to override a bureaucratic decision made by the organization? That is a significant factor with this walled garden. Whatever else one thinks about him, Steve had really good taste in these matter. The walled garden worked as well as it did, in once sense, because ultimately it was Steve's garden.
With Steve's passing, that oversight passes to a fairly walled off organization. And we all know, or should know, how well organizations do with such decision making, over time. And have at least a nagging intuition about the coincidence of increased secrecy with increasingly bad decisions.
This is one aspect that, I think, bothers a lot of people about Steve's passing, whether consciously or sub-consciously. Steve developed an organization that worked very well for Steve and with Steve at the helm, the ultimate arbiter. With him gone, it's not at all clear that this direction -- and effectiveness -- can continue.
I seem to recall that OS X ultimately picked up -- sigh, I'm getting old; was/is it the Open variant? -- BSD when Apple's own kernel efforts became too unwieldy. Yes, portions of the "higher" ecosystem are in more significant degree Apple -- and NeXT -- productions, but the root of it all, so to speak, became BSD. Unless I'm wrong -- corrections welcome.
How many of us remember, with the "walled garden", a few years ago a number of... "appeals" reaching Jobs personally, who not entirely infrequently intervened to override a bureaucratic decision made by the organization? That is a significant factor with this walled garden. Whatever else one thinks about him, Steve had really good taste in these matter. The walled garden worked as well as it did, in once sense, because ultimately it was Steve's garden.
With Steve's passing, that oversight passes to a fairly walled off organization. And we all know, or should know, how well organizations do with such decision making, over time. And have at least a nagging intuition about the coincidence of increased secrecy with increasingly bad decisions.
This is one aspect that, I think, bothers a lot of people about Steve's passing, whether consciously or sub-consciously. Steve developed an organization that worked very well for Steve and with Steve at the helm, the ultimate arbiter. With him gone, it's not at all clear that this direction -- and effectiveness -- can continue.