Apple Releases iOS 4.3.3 WebKit Source Code Two Months Late

Apple, knowingly bound to simultaneously release the binary and source code for WebKit because of its ties to the GNU Public License, has finally delivered the goods roughly two months late, much to the dismay of developers.

AppleInsider points out to a report by Harald Welte of GPL Violations who highlighted the two month delay in releasing the source code for WebKit in iOS 4.3.

Apple released iOS 4.3 in March and iOS 4.3.3 last week, but continued to garner bad press over the still unreleased source code.

The Cupertino-based company only released the WebKit code for the iOS 4.3.3 late Monday, prompting speculation that Apple had actually waited for complaints to arise.

These speculators cite Apple’s move to wait for as much as six months to release open source components of iOS 4.1.

One way or the other, the well-informed John Gruber felt it was necessary to step in and note that the delay may have had "something to do with the introduction of the Nitro JavaScript engine for MobileSafari, and the security implications of granting MobileSafari — and only MobileSafari — an exception to the system-wide ban on marking memory pages as executable."

Indeed, Apple introduced the Nitro JavaScript from Mac OS X in iOS 4.3, advertising much-increased performance over the previous versions of Mobile Safari.

While it is always tempting to speculate on Apple’s reluctance to play by the rules, or the company’s will to abide only its own, Gruber’s theory seems fairly plausible.

Moreover, things aren’t always this simple when it comes to code.

For instance, a recently found security issue may have prompted the delay, with Apple being forced to keep the information under tight wraps until the problem was addressed.

Either way, the code is out now. It’s available on Apple’s open source site.