I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but Webkit was originally a fork of KHTML, which is LGPL, so they were required/forced to release it under the same license.

And based on the their upstream contributions[1] it doesn’t look like it was a gesture of goodwill.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Split_development

> I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but Webkit was originally a fork of KHTML, which is LGPL, so they were required/forced to release it under the same license

No, they were forced to release parts of it under the same license. There was a lot of original Apple code that could be separated out easily and released under any license they wanted (or kept proprietary) as long as they released them as object files so could modify and relink in the modified LGPL parts.

The parts that Apple was not required to release under LGPL they released under BSD.

The well-known fact that WebKit has an origin story in KHTML is completely irrelevant to the point being made. Apple was the one who put substantial engineering effort into making the mobile web work well, and released their work with the most open licenses they could.

OK, I'll give them credit for strong-arming the web into giving up its addiction to Adobe Flash. That was a win for the open and standards-based web.

That credit should probably go to Google, and to a lesser extent to Firefox (which at least tried).

Google used the strong weight of Youtube to make sure all web browsers implemented a replacement, a long and tiresome process that took the better part of ten years. They bought companies and gave patents away along the way.

I'm not sure exactly what Apple did. Please enlighten me.

Apple kept Flash off the iPhone, at a time when nearly all web video was in Flash, and when iPhone was the phone to have. There was much gnashing of teeth, but Jobs and Apple stood firm, and demanded the world come to them (which is their way, but in this case what they were doing was for good and not evil).

It definitely wasn't just Apple. Google and Mozilla certainly played a huge role, and I definitely consider them much better web citizens than Apple (Mozilla best of all, obviously), but a lot of sites switched to HTML5 video only because they wanted to be watchable on iOS devices.

Google and Mozilla definitely plaid a supporting role but the iPhone was the main act because it was the device which executives wanted to use. In addition to web video, that also pushed HTML5 in general because all of the IE-only internal apps didn't work on the CIO's new pride and joy.

Apple didn't keep Flash off the iPhone specifically. They made a blanket ban against all scripting languages when they realized they needed native apps after all and opened the App Store.

Adobe could have struck a deal there, given Apple their 30% and only allowed blessed scripts through the App Store. But they didn't. I would be surprised if there weren't neogiations about this, but in the end Adobe refused.

(Other scripting languages budged, which is why you can find Unity games in the App Store, but not Adobe Flash games. Unity was also banned at the same time Flash was.)

So if anyone kept Adobe Flash off the iPhone, that honor should probably go to Adobe itself.

What replacement did you mean? Google removed H.264 support from Chromium, and announced that they would remove it from Chrome.

The Nokia N80, launched in 2006, came with a Webkit-based browser. WAP had mostly died in the smartphone market long before the iPhone came along, in no small part thanks to Opera Mini & Mobile.

For the first couple years, you're right, but they've coasted on that success for far too long. They've been dragging their feet on fixes and features since then. The fact that they haven't been as bad as MS in the IE6 days is hardly worthy of praise.