Apple’s Safari team launched the WebKit Open Source Project Web site this week. The site provides source code access for the software Apple uses to create its Safari Web browser. The project will hopefully assuage the concerns of open source code advocates who felt Apple was taking too proprietary an approach with the development of its browser, which uses technology originally developed from the open source world.
The new Web site provides programmers with Concurrent Versions System (CVS) access to the source code for WebCore and JavaScriptCore, the Apple frameworks based on the open source khtml and kjs projects. Developers can review the complete history of the project, with all patches past and present, according to the Safari team.
Also available is WebKit, the Objective-C Application Programming Interface (API that wraps WebCore. It’s available in the same CVS repository, according to the project leaders.
“There are many exciting projects that you can contribute to,” said the Web site. “Come help us improve Web site compatibility, write documentation, test WebKit on your hardware, help implement new standards like SVG and MathML, or help enhance our existing standards support for technologies like CSS and the DOM. The code is all here, live and ready to be hacked on!”