I remember this... it was just a fork. Projects get forked. It's unfortunate from some perspectives, but from other perspectives you can understand why forks happen.
When you have a long-running fork, especially one that is so active, merging it naturally becomes a nightmare. This is expected and ordinary.
The Linux kernel gets forked by Android vendors and others all the time. A lot of the changes never make it upstream, for various reasons. At least the story ends a bit better for KHTML / WebKit.
Every single Apple patch to GitHub projects is done by the same single indistinguishable user account. This isn't just "some long-running fork". It is Apple culture to actively prohibit contributions to open source projects unless 5 managers sign off on it.
They really don't like people "poaching" their employees/wildlife. Remember they illegally collided to stop other large tech firms with Apple board members from cross recruiting.
No, it’s usually just overzealous lawyers. Remember that Apple is still a pre-dot-com company and — like Microsoft — retains vestiges of those attitudes.
When you have a long-running fork, especially one that is so active, merging it naturally becomes a nightmare. This is expected and ordinary.
The Linux kernel gets forked by Android vendors and others all the time. A lot of the changes never make it upstream, for various reasons. At least the story ends a bit better for KHTML / WebKit.