Rather silly article...
"vulnerable to the capricious whims of a single corporate entity"
Yep, that's why WebKit (on iOS), IE 6 and even Netscape before it, sucked. Because you have / had a rendering engine, with no competition, and *controlled by a single corporate entity and closed off to the world*.
It particularly sucks that you have a platform like iOS, where you are *forced* to use that closed off rendering engine.
But, do these arguments really apply to an open source rendering engine? One where a Google, a Mozilla, a Microsoft, an Apple, etc. can all contribute to the development?
"innovation" isn't so cool when it creates fragmentation, and you are seriously underestimating the cost of all these browser incompatibilities - even significant and relatively simple sites have problems. Try tracking a parcel delivery via Royal Mail, using Safari.
I'm not saying that the possibility of people creating alternative browser engines is bad. And I do think that a *closed source* corporate controlled monoculture IS a bad thing.
But you're not going to convince me that a single true open source rendering engine, contributed to and used by all the main players in a diversity of applications, is worse than the fragmentation and incompatibilities that we have now. And I'm saying that from my experience as a *user*, not from my web development.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
