Try to find KHTML code in modern Webkit. I'd be surprised if it's more than 5%. By that standard, Firefox uses the same engine as Netscape Navigator did.
Original architectural decisions can constrain and push development in a certain direction. An analogy might be made to evolution: one's phylogeny constrains the space of available organisms available in a given timespan.
5% might not sound like much, but I'd want something comparative. How much code in the 3.8 kernel is shared with what Linus released in 1991? I suspect it's similarly low, but we still recognize them as the same project.
The reference prompted me to curse Google for not giving me any good results to "how long does it take for 50% of the atoms in your body to be replaced."
More important than lines of code, how much foundational architecture do they share? Code is just an implementation detail, architectural changes are more feasible in a new codebase.
A similar thing has happened in Gecko. Probably modern Gecko browsers share similar amounts of old code as modern WebKit browsers share of old KTHML code (that is, very little in both cases).
Right, that was my point. It doesn't really matter where it started, whether it's entirely original or not. Otherwise, IE10 should be considered a bad browser, which it isn't.
