I see this as a win for open source software. (Or "free software". I never know.)
Opera never open-sourced its rendering engine Presto, keeping it as a jewel of sorts. On the other hand, Apple always shared the WebKit code, so Google could come, fork it and make it better.
Opera thought that keeping Presto proprietary will give them advantage in the market. Instead, it made it obsolete and irrelevant.
I totally agree with you here, but I just need to correct you on something. Webkit is based on KHTML, which was available with the LGPL license. Of course, it's much more Webkit than KHTML at this point, but it isn't so much that Apple shared the Webkit code as they wisely forked a mature open source project and followed its license ;)
Opera never open-sourced its rendering engine Presto, keeping it as a jewel of sorts. On the other hand, Apple always shared the WebKit code, so Google could come, fork it and make it better.
Opera thought that keeping Presto proprietary will give them advantage in the market. Instead, it made it obsolete and irrelevant.