> as a contributor to WebKit you have the complete ability to drive it in a direction you wish (often for the better)
Not really. Follow the internal WebKit politics and you see a lot of conflicts. For example, Google wanted to push multi-VM support (for Dart) and Apple blocked that.
> WebKit is already a de facto standard
On mobile. Mobile isn't everything.
Also, should we have said "ie6 is already a de factor standard and given up"?
> I think one this is clear already: WebKit has completely and unequivocally won mobile at this point. They are nearly the only rendering engine used on the vast majority of mobile browsers, including the soon-to-switch Opera Mini/Mobile browsers too. There is no reason to worry about a slippery slope, the slope has already been slid down. In order for any other browser to remain relevant in the world of mobile (which, you must admit, is quickly becoming the only world we live in) they must keep feature parity with WebKit.
Again, this is utterly defeatist. Even if it were 99% true, should everyone give up?
> At this point it’s honestly a business/engineering decision for Mozilla and Microsoft (as it always has been).
No, Mozilla is a nonprofit and the decision would also regard whether it is good for the web, or not. I'm surprised to see John Resig not realize that - he used to work at Mozilla.
edit: And regarding the main point: jQuery worked in a space that was not standards-based. There were multiple JS libraries, and they fought for market share. No one tried to develop a standard that there would be multiple implementations for. Comparing jQuery to WebKit is odd.
> as a contributor to WebKit you have the complete ability to drive it in a direction you wish (often for the better)
Not really. Follow the internal WebKit politics and you see a lot of conflicts. For example, Google wanted to push multi-VM support (for Dart) and Apple blocked that.
> WebKit is already a de facto standard
On mobile. Mobile isn't everything.
Also, should we have said "ie6 is already a de factor standard and given up"?
> I think one this is clear already: WebKit has completely and unequivocally won mobile at this point. They are nearly the only rendering engine used on the vast majority of mobile browsers, including the soon-to-switch Opera Mini/Mobile browsers too. There is no reason to worry about a slippery slope, the slope has already been slid down. In order for any other browser to remain relevant in the world of mobile (which, you must admit, is quickly becoming the only world we live in) they must keep feature parity with WebKit.
Again, this is utterly defeatist. Even if it were 99% true, should everyone give up?
> At this point it’s honestly a business/engineering decision for Mozilla and Microsoft (as it always has been).
No, Mozilla is a nonprofit and the decision would also regard whether it is good for the web, or not. I'm surprised to see John Resig not realize that - he used to work at Mozilla.
edit: And regarding the main point: jQuery worked in a space that was not standards-based. There were multiple JS libraries, and they fought for market share. No one tried to develop a standard that there would be multiple implementations for. Comparing jQuery to WebKit is odd.