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I'm thinking they didn't put enough resources into ZFS?

From http://zfs.macosforge.org/trac/wiki

Where is .zfs? I can't find my snapshots

Your snapshots are there and working correctly there's just no .zfs directory yet since I'm still porting that functionality. You can use 'zfs clone' to work around this for now if you'd like to browse your snapshots. You can see an example and get more info off of the Known Issues and Features page

Even the BSD folks have more than one developer working on the ZFS BSD port. Although I must commend him for not using "we" to make himself sound bigger than he is.

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If you read the linked page (from Google cache), you'll see that this feature was slated for Snow Leopard Server, not the consumer version. I do not recall Apple ever advertising fll ZFS support as a feature for the consumer verison of 10.6, and neither does Wikipedia.

(Yes, consumer 10.5 does have read-only support for ZFS from the command-line; I imagine this would be still present in 10.6. In any case, it's not like this project is a secret, as Apple has released it open-source.)

Sure they have http://zfs.macosforge.org/trac/wiki#ZFSDocumentation you just don't know where to get apple's current head of their zfs implementation.

The Known Issues and Features in the Works page for ZFS on MacOSforge explains the situation pretty well. Integrating ZFS into MacOSX isn't just a matter of creating a device driver. Time Machine, Finder, Spotlight and other core OS products needs to support ZFS features explicitly, since ZFS behaves a lot differently from HFS+.

The Known Issues and Features in the Works page for ZFS on MacOSforge explains the situation pretty well. Integrating ZFS into MacOSX isn't just a matter of creating a device driver. Time Machine, Finder, Spotlight and other core OS products needs to support ZFS features explicitly, since ZFS behaves a lot differently from HFS+.

A Mac is not "the most unfree of unfree". The source to the Darwin kernel, the userland programs, Safari (Webkit), and a number of other programs are freely (gratis and libre) available here and here.

Now, it's not the source to all the apps, and it's not the source to the Quartz/Aqua window manager, but it's still a hell of a lot more than you'll ever get from Microsoft.

Apple's port too :) http://zfs.macosforge.org/trac/wiki/

  I mean they do a great work but it is basically not ready for prime time. For OS X, Prime Time means at least time machine support, data write/read (including all metadata, even Finder flags) support, Disk Utility GUI support and at last, boot support. Of course, don't forget no kernel crashes should happen and it should handle massive abuse, uptime and even sleep without any glitches. If a Mac doesn't sleep when no programs running, it is generally taken to service by end user.

Things go really complex when your potential ZFS loving users are professionals doing things with Resource (metadata) enabled files (e.g. Photoshop) and expect exact (not 99.9) feature compatibility with HFS+. If ZFS really rolled out in Leopard (10.5) release, there were even people asking for commercial, high end disk utility (like Disk Warrior) support.

What ZFS needs is a very practical use and the proof of how modern it is. Time Machine of OS X is the best thing to prove it to end users. Adding new disks easily when space runs out, snapshots etc. If there is one company which can make ordinary users say "Wow, I really need it" for such a high end filesystem, it is Apple.

I was actually expecting ZFS on XServe/RAID/OS X Server but I forgot the files stored on them are generally Apple Client files too.

Nonsense, CUPS was open source before Apple.

Exactly. Thank you.

That said, Apple has both benefited from and contributed to open source projects. Aside from adopting and supporting open source technologies like CUPS and WebKit, Apple has initiated projects including launchd, calendarserver, Darwin streaming server, etc.

W

They mentioned streaming video a couple times. Anyone know if they're talking about streaming static files, or if we can finally stream LIVE video from standard servers like, oh, I don't know, maybe QuickTime/Darwin Streaming Server?

Recently more of X11 got added into macports, but I prefer to keep an eye on http://xquartz.macosforge.org/ so I have added +system_x11 to the end of my variants.conf file.

It is not perfect yet in 1.7, but works quite well most of the time:

http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2009-January/013494.html

Recently more of X11 got added into macports, but I prefer to keep an eye on http://xquartz.macosforge.org/ so I have added +system_x11 to the end of my variants.conf file.

It is not perfect yet in 1.7, but works quite well most of the time:

http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2009-January/013494.html

X11 is/was often broken and needed XFree86 compiled instead of Apple's X11. This might have been dealt with in all cases now.

You pretty much have to install XQuartz to get X11 programs working nowadays. Even applications not installed via Fink or MacPorts like Gimp needs it. But it sure beats having to compile it yourself.

The rationale for a 64-bit build was a 40% performance improvement.

Ignorance, insane optimism or some single special case application?

There is quite a bit of GPL licensed software in Mac OS X. Your can download the sources for that part of OS X here:

http://www.macosforge.org/

The sources to the BSD part of Mac OS X is there as well. And some of Apples own developments on top (launchd - Apples answer to init, cron and inetd - for example). launchd is pretty cool btw.

Well you can get all the sources here:

http://www.macosforge.org/

And especially zfs and launchd could be interesting to Linux and BSD. But then the Linux community suffers heavily from Not-Invented-Here syndrome.

He could use ZFS, if he doesn't like the AFS.

"Is Linux getting too old for you?

Someone else pointed this out..

Are you interested to see what other systems such as OpenSolaris have to offer?

Oooh, what features might those be?

OpenSolaris has some great features, such as ZFS and dtrace, which make it a great server OS â" but how do you think it will fare on a laptop?

ZFS? How about for Linux, or Mac OS X

DTrace? How about:

$ uname
Darwin
$ which dtrace
/usr/sbin/dtrace
Apparently Linux has no equal, but I've been a Linux sysadmin for many years and didn't have dtrace before, and even now that I have it on my Macbook, I still haven't even learned how to use it, but I understand it can require programming in a C-like language. No thanks. I do programming in Shell, Ruby and Perl, usually in that order. I don't want to relearn C, since I never really liked it to begin with.

ZFS and DTrace aren't compelling reasons to use a particular OS on a workstation (laptop OR desktop) anyway. Userland utility is what uh, users want. Mac OS certainly delivers for both the typical user that wants their browser, IM and music, but they're never going to install Solaris anyway. So your target audience can either pick the "newcomer" who isn't that new, or stick with what they're already using, and use it to get some actual work done, instead of screwing around with other OS's.

http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/wiki/Releases

They're waiting for xorg to stop sucking.

Afterall, if you really want to gain ground against an evil closed-source monopoly that charges too much for it's products, it makes perfect sense to switch to another company that even more protective of its source

So, where is the "less protective" Microsoft analog of this big tarball, I wonder. (In case you were wondering, that link is the Darwin kernel, as explained at MacOSForge.)

You can read ZFS on a standard Mac OS X 10.5 installation. You can even write ZFS if you download some files from Apple: http://zfs.macosforge.org/trac/wiki/?page_id=5

Google is hard... let's go shopping!

Uh no:

http://zfs.macosforge.org/trac/wiki/faq

You can download it (also there may or may not be a R/W version on the Apple developer site) and pretty much everything even snapshots work.

Here are the known issues:

http://zfs.macosforge.org/trac/wiki/issues

The real big issue the last time I tried it is that Finder does not work too well with ZFS and you get gajillions of what look to be mounted discs.

Uh no:

http://zfs.macosforge.org/trac/wiki/faq

You can download it (also there may or may not be a R/W version on the Apple developer site) and pretty much everything even snapshots work.

Here are the known issues:

http://zfs.macosforge.org/trac/wiki/issues

The real big issue the last time I tried it is that Finder does not work too well with ZFS and you get gajillions of what look to be mounted discs.

I was referring to MacFUSE itself, not what it does -- it is a native pluggable filesystem. Without such support in OS X, MacFUSE wouldn't be possible. (Being an add-on itself is its goal: many interesting research-level filesystems are written to the FUSE interface, which runs code in userland, rather than to several OSes' individual kernel interfaces.)

But if you don't like that example, try Apple's own ZFS kext.

It seems apparent that you aren't a kernel programmer, but could you at least find one with even a passing familiarity with OS X before claiming it doesn't have a feature it obviously does have?

10.5 client includes readonly zfs support. The mac ZFS development is available here

ZFS was good enough for me.

For usable X11, install the latest Xquartz.

They are working on it but nobody reports issues. Telling Slashdot "X11 from Apple sux, it can't use services" is not the way to go. You say "X11.org can't use Services, I have an idea how to implement them". It is not like Cocoa, it is completely open source.

I am not a developer of any kind, I try my best as end user to report issues I spot.

http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/xquartz .

It is not a bad X11 (as they moved to x.org) , in fact Apple made possible and lot easier for X11 apps run in average end user desktop by integrating it to launchd subsystem. If you type "xmms" from command line, X11 launches in rootless window and opens xmms. It is that easy. I use Kopete as my instant messenger since I installed Leopard (thanks to finkproject.org ) and various tools like Koffice.

Real issue with X11 apps could be the thing that most of them are coded with Linux in mind. Those Fink and Macports guys spare a lot of time to make them compile in a true Unix/NeXT environment on a OS which even openly warns its own core tools like Finder.app NOT to use depreciated functionality (from system.log). That is how Apple expects people to code on the OS X. They warn politely first, a bit serious later and it basically refuses to launch even with a informative crash.

Uh that's because :last-child is an Acid3 test

http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/webkit-unassigned/2008-January/061575.html

See that the bug is listed as acid3 bug... couldn't find a better reference quickly on webstandards.org

Try downloading this.

From the http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/zfs/wiki/issues page: The trash does not empty on a ZFS volume. For now, you can workaround this by simply manually removing items from the .Trash directory Regardless of the benefits, the FS needs to handle the basics before I'd consider trying it out.

This reads like a nerd's unsubstantiated wet dream.

An absolutely, positively, amazing feature set. I can't wait until it's stable enough for production use. After 7 years of staying away from Apple products, I'm going back to the Mac.

They would not do it because that would imply that they're close enough to compare. That's what I find impressive, that Gutsy & Leopard are both strong enough to ask that question. I know I'm showing my bias here, but I find it absurd that all you're paying for is the GUI interface. You can download darwin, which is the kernel for mac. And before someone says it, I know that to some users, the GUI part is all that there is.

CalDav is the wave of the future, with most calendaring clients supporting it (but not MS), and many servers commercial and otherwise also supporting it (Zimbra). The real coming out party was the commercial release of both OSX Server 10.5 and the client, which have both ends. But guess what, the server is open source: calendar server can be gotten and put on any platform. If you want something today, Zimbra or OSX Server are there for the taking. RedHat has a Messenging product coming out based on Zimbra for this exact purpose.

Oh yeah, Bonjour is totally undocumented:

- Zeroconf, the internationally standardized RFC 3927 upon which Bonjour is based, isn't documented at all

- Nor are Multicast DNS (mDNS) and DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD), the open standards which make up Apple's Bonjour implementation

Apple also has nearly no Bonjour end user, developer, or technical overview documentation, and certainly doesn't make the source code, or even a binary Windows version, available.

And yeah, products like iTunes, Apple TV, local host discovery, all HP and many other network printers, and similar totally don't use Bonjour, so it's ok to block it.

The lack of documentation alone might make one want to block it!

Not only that, but the submission is wrong. That Tom Yager Infoworld piece that is linked was Yager's reaction to the fact that Apple hadn't yet open sourced the Intel kernel, and ran it under the sensationalist headline "Apple closes down OS X".

Except for the fact that at WWDC, they announced that the Intel kernel would continue to be open alongside PowerPC, as it always had.

Anyone is welcome to see for themselves. At the same time, Apple also launched Mac OS Forge, Apple's clearinghouse for its open source projects. Granted, Darwin as an OS is essentially dead, and has been for some time. But Darwin as the core of Mac OS X is alive, and many key components, including the kernel, are open source on both Intel and PowerPC.

And, no, Apple did not do this in "response" to Yager's article or anything similar. Yager just wasn't patient enough to find out what was actually going to happen, and assumed that since he hadn't seen any new Intel kernel source releases before WWDC that Mac OS X must now be "closed" - but he was wrong.

Does Apple do some of its open source stuff for PR or because it's to its advantage? Of course. One would hope that would be obvious. If you don't think Apple is giving back enough to the community, that's another valid, albeit subjective, opinion. I'd advise people to look at some of the Mac OS Forge projects, however.

So, the submission is wrong in both spirit (irritating Microsoft) and in fact (OS X now being "closed"; or any more closed than it has ever been).

Not only that, but the submission is wrong. That Tom Yager Infoworld piece that is linked was Yager's reaction to the fact that Apple hadn't yet open sourced the Intel kernel, and ran it under the sensationalist headline "Apple closes down OS X".

Except for the fact that at WWDC, they announced that the Intel kernel would continue to be open alongside PowerPC, as it always had.

Anyone is welcome to see for themselves. At the same time, Apple also launched Mac OS Forge, Apple's clearinghouse for its open source projects. Granted, Darwin as an OS is essentially dead, and has been for some time. But Darwin as the core of Mac OS X is alive, and many key components, including the kernel, are open source on both Intel and PowerPC.

And, no, Apple did not do this in "response" to Yager's article or anything similar. Yager just wasn't patient enough to find out what was actually going to happen, and assumed that since he hadn't seen any new Intel kernel source releases before WWDC that Mac OS X must now be "closed" - but he was wrong.

Does Apple do some of its open source stuff for PR or because it's to its advantage? Of course. One would hope that would be obvious. If you don't think Apple is giving back enough to the community, that's another valid, albeit subjective, opinion. I'd advise people to look at some of the Mac OS Forge projects, however.

So, the submission is wrong in both spirit (irritating Microsoft) and in fact (OS X now being "closed"; or any more closed than it has ever been).

...and assuming that the iPhone uses WebKit, isn't the WebKit developer site sufficient?

Apple do publish the modified kernel source code, though. And they have contributed a few interesting things as open source, such as launchd and the upcoming Darwin Calendar Server.

They have also, of course, released their modified version of KDE's KHTML as open source (WebKit), as well as their changes to GCC and other GPL licensed projects.

So they do release source even when they're not forced by the license. Presumably to gain goodwill. Just freeloading would probably hurt their chances of appealing to the Linux/BSD using market.

Apple do publish the modified kernel source code, though. And they have contributed a few interesting things as open source, such as launchd and the upcoming Darwin Calendar Server.

They have also, of course, released their modified version of KDE's KHTML as open source (WebKit), as well as their changes to GCC and other GPL licensed projects.

So they do release source even when they're not forced by the license. Presumably to gain goodwill. Just freeloading would probably hurt their chances of appealing to the Linux/BSD using market.

Exchange IMAP integrated into the domain. And yes, you can use calendars and share calendars, e-mail and more using IMAP (that's what the protocol was made for, that's how Microsoft did Exchange). There's also other good alternatives to Exchange that are free if you really need all that functionality, but I have seen few implementations that are more than sending/receiving e-mail and appointments (which currently Mail and iCal work very nicely together in a 'domain', sending out invites, accepting appointments into the calendar). Next version, they should have an even better alternative. The current Apple Server also has iChat server and check out this for calendaring: http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/calendarserver . The difference between Exchange and the rest is that Exchange packs everything, even the stuff you might not need all together as does the client (Outlook). The rest of the world keeps their stuff separated.

Terminal Server VNC/ARD/X (there's even alternatives to that, again for free)

SMS Workgroup Manager and ARD have all that functionality (remote control, patch management, software distribution, and hardware and software inventory), you can also patch your local images for netboot without actually booting them and then use netboot for all your clients instead of having a local disk.

WSUS Update Server sits in Apple Server

Where do you get the idea Safari changes are released in "large dumps"? You can get nightly builds of Webkit.

Apples intent is to leverage open source but they have given back, and a lot. They have helped with GCC changes. They have (as noted) helped build Webkit from KHTML. They released launchd as open source, along with a lot of other stuff.

They also don't demand that you use their platform to run their media - "thier media" is really AACs, an open standard. The stores songs run on Windows as well as Macs, but using the Apple iTunes tool to rip music you can rip to either MP3 or AAC.

They are doing better supporting open source, and open formats than many give them credit for.

I'm not really that worried about Google myself unless people started storing everything on the Google servers. But I think a few accidental deletions (as we have already seen happen with email accounts) teach a lesson very quickly about the primary place to start user data.

Look at the XNU source code - it's in Darwin, and you can see info here. XNU is portable, obviously. An in-house team at Apple could have ported it to ARM. And there's no reason that Apple could "dual-license" the source *to themselves* and use something like a BSD license.

But none of that matters. It's all just speculation until the device ships. No one knows.

Why isn't this article titled "iPhone Not Running OS X ???" It's not fact, and phrasing it as such doesn't make it so.

The story about it being some conspiracy is just typical slashdot banter, and no Apple wouldn't release the source code just because the slashdot crowd moaned about open source. http://kernel.macosforge.org/ has the kernel source and pain-in-the-arse-free instructions for compiling. (If you knew what you were doing, it probably wouldn't be a pain in the arse anyway.)

Also the kernel is primarily for business users who actually need to adjust it for task specific optimisations, home users never need touch it.

But remember according to microsoft it's a matter of national security to show your kernel source code, so please apply your tin foil hats while reading any source code.

Apple may not have an official corporate blogging outlet like some enterprises, but some Apple employees do in fact blog in a (sometimes quasi-)official capacity.

Dave Hyatt's (now WebKit's) Surfin' Safari is one notable example of success, with Apple engineers being able to directly blog and communicate with end customers. It has now become a blog for all of WebKit, where other WebKit contributors - some within Apple and some not - can post as well.

Mac OS forge (and the hosted sites within it) is another recent example: Apple engineers, blogging, on servers owned and hosted by Apple. This wouldn't have happened a few years ago, and was a result of responses to community concerns about Apple's interaction with the open source community. (And no, it's still far from perfect, but the interaction is increasing, and that's a good thing.)

Both of these examples of Apple blogs are also open for comments, something some corporate "blogs" don't allow.

So are these "official Apple blogs" in every sense of the phrase, or in the vein that the article is intending to discuss? Maybe not, but it represents a lot more openness than Apple ever used to exhibit in this context. And anything greater than zero is "more open". Will Apple ever open up blogging to just anyone or blog about futures and abstract ideas? Unlikely. But there are notable exceptions to the blanket statement that "Apple doesn't blog".

Maybe there is something that lets that happen right now and if so, I'd love to hear about it.

CalDAV is the standard upon which the Hula calendar was based, so that's a name for what you're looking for. Conveniently, the next version of iCal (included with Leopard) supports it, and the server portion is open source, in case anyone was going to start crying about that.