&gt;<i>WebKit was a fork of KDE&#x27;s KHTML engine, and so had to be open source from the outset.</i><p>On the other hand it didn&#x27;t have to be a fork. They could have gone for the NIH way, and make their own totally controller rendering engine.<p>Especially given that Apple&#x27;s WebKit additions totally dwarfed KHTML.