I have spent enough time explaining that Konqueror is not merely a file manager with a web page bolted onto it. Now Apple has provided a rather convincing demonstration for me: Safari uses KHTML and KJS as the basis of its rendering engine.

The obvious reaction is pride. A small, portable engine built by the KDE project was good enough to become the foundation of Apple’s browser. That says more about the quality of the code than a dozen benchmark charts could.

The practical implication is more interesting. Web authors who previously tested only Internet Explorer and Mozilla now have a commercial reason to care about KHTML behaviour. Fixing a standards bug in KHTML can improve two browsers, and work done by Apple can potentially flow back to Konqueror under the LGPL.

“Potentially” is doing some work there. Apple’s first published changes arrived as large patches against old snapshots, which are not pleasant to merge. Source availability is not the same thing as easy collaboration. A patch the size of a small moon is technically useful, but it does not make the maintainer’s afternoon better.

Still, this is a very good problem to have. KHTML now has another serious user, more testing, and engineers being paid to improve it. KDE should be friendly but firm about working in manageable changes. If both sides manage that, Konqueror users may benefit every time Safari improves, and the web gets another standards-minded engine instead of another collection of browser-specific tricks.