Extremely, especially in this context. The reason why Opera is switching (web compatibility issues if you're not the dominant implementation) is exactly the reason why Mozilla would fight a switch with tooth and nail - and remember that unlike Opera they cannot care for profit when doing so.
He means that there are different parts of a browser you can focus on and innovate there. If the rendering engine was 'out of the way", and didn't have to worry about that part, they could focus a lot more on other stuff.
Right now Microsoft has to focus on making Trident catch-up with webkit, and it's still 2 years behind webkit in HTML5 features. Go to html5test.com and see how far IE10 is. It's more behind than Chrome 10 was when IE9 launched 2 years ago.
Extremely, especially in this context. The reason why Opera is switching (web compatibility issues if you're not the dominant implementation) is exactly the reason why Mozilla would fight a switch with tooth and nail - and remember that unlike Opera they cannot care for profit when doing so.
Here's an extensive reply from a Firefox developer: http://www.quora.com/Mozilla-Firefox/Will-Firefox-ever-drop-...
I wonder what would have happened if Microsoft, Mozilla or Opera had open sourced their browser engine with WebKit.
I have no idea what you mean.