Poll: Should WebKit be the only browser engine?

1 points by pcwalton ↗ HN
People seem divided over whether WebKit should be the only browser rendering engine. It's open source, so it can be forked and has contributors from multiple companies.

5 comments

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In absence of any feasible mechanism for eliminating browser engines other than WebKit, what use is "should"?
People seem divided over whether Reddit should be the only community site engine. It's open source, so it can be forked and has contributors from multiple companies.

People seem divided over whether the US Constitution should be the only governing document for nations. It's not copyrighted, so other nations can use it and has contributors from multiple states.

People seem divided over whether the Bible should be the only holy book. It's public domain, and it's been forked many times and has contributors from many nations.

Do you see the problem here?

Apparently I'm doing a good enough job of hiding my bias that you thought I was advocating the opposite of what my opinion is. :)

(Full disclosure: I work at Mozilla.)

Suppose the other browser engines somehow died out leaving WebKit as the only browser engine, and then WebKit was forked: we would be back to having multiple browser engines.
Joe Hewitt's counterargument was that there would be less divergence in that case than the situation today.