Tragedy of the WebKit Commons

Re:Tragedy of the WebKit Commons by tolmasky on Wednesday February 13, 2013 @10:19PM (#5217464)

1. Just because a bug is fixed and accepted doesn't mean it will make it into a shipping browser anytime soon.

2. Even if it were to make it into a shipping browser quickly, there is no guarantee any reasonable amount of people will run that upgrade anytime soon.

Hitting browser bugs really sucks for this reason. The bug has to be worked around no matter what, since there will probably be people running that bug for a long time (this has gotten much better with things like Chrome's auto-update which is why if you talk to people from that team they are such big believers in it). Regardless, you have to remember that the jquery team is providing a product to clients. If a client's site is broken because jquery hits a bug in a browser, the priority is to have that site work asap. Its unacceptable to say "Oh we fixed the bug in webkit, Safari users will see it whenever the new Safari ships which we have no idea when that is since its an apple secret. Bug closed." The best response is "Fixed in new jquery version whatever, just update the script on your site". And once you've fixed the bug for your own concerns, it just doesn't make sense to then spend time fixing it in WebKit as well vs. spending those resources on fixing another jquery bug.

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Re:Tragedy of the WebKit Commons by takluyver on Thursday February 14, 2013 @06:11AM (#5218922)

That's perfectly realistic, but it's the same 'tragedy of the commons' that the jquery developer is bemoaning in browsers. They stand to benefit (eventually) from fixing Webkit and improving things for everyone. But in the short term, their time is better spent focussing on their own project, and hoping someone else fixes Webkit.

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Re:Tragedy of the WebKit Commons by trafficlight on Wednesday February 13, 2013 @10:47PM (#5217575)

So, moral of the story is don't fix bugs because it might take a long time to make to the end user?

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Re:Tragedy of the WebKit Commons by tolmasky on Wednesday February 13, 2013 @11:04PM (#5217644)

There is no moral, its just an observation of realities. From these circumstances judgement calls are made on a case by case basis. Maybe someday when all browsers have auto-update like Chrome it will absolutely make sense for everyone to focus their efforts on fixing bugs in the engine vs. writing workarounds. That is not the reality we live in today.

I mean, I could argue that people shouldn't work around iOS bugs and should instead apply for jobs at Apple and fix UIKit itself so that everyone can best benefit from their labor. But that's absolutely absurd. It's also more than a little unfair to judge members of the jquery team for not going into a project like WebKit that's millions of lines of C++ and acting like they're coming up with excuses for "not fixing bugs". This is a symbiotic and healthy relationship, browser vendors benefit from groups like jquery that make those bugs livable today through workarounds so that their products can be more usable in the immediate and they can focus on the "real" fixes for the future.

And don't forget that there are people who are running old OSes that would require buying a new computer before being able to upgrade their browser.

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Re:Tragedy of the WebKit Commons by clhodapp on Wednesday February 13, 2013 @10:59PM (#5217616)

No, it's that even after bugs are fixed in widely-used libraries, they will still exist in downstream projects and in the wild for quite some time. Given that jQuery exists to paper over implementation quirks (including upstream-fixed bugs) between real-world browsers, jQuery needs to worry these bugs long after they are fixed in the core library code.

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