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Apple Announces Darwin 1.0
Quite a number of folks have written in with announcement from Apple saying that Darwin 1.0 is released. It's got the BSD core that's been discussed before, along with Mach 3.0 - and here's to hoping that Apple will open up all OSX, at least in some fashion or another.
OFFICIAL UEO DOCUMENT FOLLOWS
As the captain of SeaQuest, DSV, I'd just like to express my sadness at the release of Darwin. As you know, Darwin was getting a little old, and I was tired of him and Lucas always screwing up our plans. So, last Thursday, the senior officers and I finally reached the decision to release Darwin.
Capt. Bridger
Seaquest, DSV
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It's got the BSD core that's been discussed before, along with Mach 3.0
Thanks to Mach 3.0's inovative microkerel design, I've gotten the closest shave ever!
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
On the one hand, it's fair enough that Apple graphics (perhaps nee NeXT) are Apple's, but there are rumblings that Apple wants to get "medieval" over this. There has been a "reaction of silence," as well as more vigorous reactions.
The distressing part, described in this article, is that it appears that access to the OPENSTEP API may not be as open as everyone would wish to believe. To wit,
Of course, the most distressing part is this message purported to have come from Steve Jobs, where the salient bit reads: From: Steve Jobs Sent: Monday, April 03, 2000 10:19 AM To: Lucas C. Wagner Subject: GNUstep Lucas, As you may know, Apple owns the Cocoa and OpenStep APIs, and will not feel great about others using its intellectual property without premission. Best, Steve
Open is as open does. If Apple winds up suing anyone over GNUstep, I'd say that tells you how committed they really are to "open source."
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
..and here's to hoping that Apple will open up all OSX.
I was listening to Eric Raymond at the Geek Pride thing last weekend. On one hand, I was impressed with how he's obviously given his pitch to skeptical audiences and how that made him sound much more convincing than the the preaching to the choir that one normally hears here. On the other hand, I couldn't help thinking, "OK, we've heard the theoretical arguments now. And what has it done for anybody in reality?"
If I were at Apple, I'd be waiting for somebody - anybody - to demonstrate that free development can really be more profitable than proprietary work. (Note that a stock valuation greater than the worth of Belgium isn't profit. Note also that I'm talking about open sourcing a product for which the company makes the primary investment, not taking existing GPL software, packaging it and maybe paying somebody to improve it.) Until I saw that, why on earth would I risk Apple's current profitability to be the first to test out ESR's theories?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
now, that's a high-octane statement, so please give me a chance to put it in context before hauling out the flamethrowers..
according to the documents ESR has written, which are arguably the core of the Open Source manifesto, developers have a responsibility to the project from which the code comes. the coin of the Open Source realm is respect for the primary developers, and participation in the project for which the code was originally written.
now, i've never seen anyone say, "if Apple opened their GUI, i'd work to improve the Mac OS." it's always, "if Apple opened their GUI, we could port the good parts to Linux." that's not participation, and it's not respect. it's pillage.
that being the case, i'd suggest everyone take another look at _The Magic Cauldron_, section 6, where ESR discusses reasons to keep source closed:
"The real question is whether your gain from spreading the development load exceeds your loss due to increased competition from the free rider."
in the case of Apple opening the source to its GUI (and all its other crown jewels), i submit that the Linux community shows significantly more interest in causing Apple increased losses through competition than it does in helping spread the development load on Apple's own projects. until that changes, it seems to me that Apple's most rational choice is to keep the source for those projects closed.
if we want that code opened, we have to do more than sit around saying how deserving we are. we have to convince Apple that the community will give enough back to compensate for the inevitable jerks whose only response will be "thanks.. sucker! hey everybody, look what i've got!"
Apple took a lot of heat when they first opened Darwin because people (no less than PMS) considered it "a cynical attempt to leverage the community for free labor." i think there's a risk that people who want Apple to open the GUI and Quartz (and the Sorensen codec, for those of you who want a Linux QT player) may be doing the same thing in reverse. they're shouting 'Open Source' to cynically leverage free work out of private companies, with no intent to repay the original developers, even according to the standards of the Open Source community itself. they want easier competition, not a chance to participate.
i don't think the idea of Open Source can legitimately be used to force someone into a disadvantageous position. if we're not willing to put up a critical mass of developers who'll work to Apple's benefit, i don't think our own standards give us the right to demand more than we're getting.
Seriously, though, the next few months will be very hard on a lot of Mac system admins, I suspect. Most of the ones I've had to deal with are people who got roped into doing it part time (since most places only have a few Macs, and even places that have a lot -- like certain government institutions -- still get by with one or two dedicated Mac techs, if that many). They know enough to install system software, but next to nothing about tuning a system, or knowing what needs updating and what should be left alone (or thrown away), and why having multiple copies of Acrobat Reader is not a good thing, especially when they're different versions.
People like myself, who saw the writing on the wall years ago, and who already had some Unix experience, will (hopefully) be in high demand as the complexity of the Mac OS goes up with OS X's release. But I fear many companies will balk at the thought of having to suddenly train and support their Mac staff. "But I thought they were easy to use!" Yeah, easy to use, but you still have to know how to administer them properly.
I suppose the benefit is that suddenly there will be a lot more people looking for Unix knowledge, and a lot more people trying to get it. I just hope Apple can find a way to support those of us who support them, by offering more training (the new AppleCare program is a start) or even...shudder...some kind of certification program, to separate the gurus from the weenies. Not that it's worked especially well with the MCSE...
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
I was elated when Apple announced the original Open Source Darwin initiative. I never would have guessed they would go for it, and I think it is a Very Good Thing.
Getting everything together for a public release is a very non-trivial task. I know the hassles we go through, and darwin is 100x the size of our codebase.
After all that work, including pressing CD's, it was met with a fairly resounding silence.
The darwin mailing lists were dead. It sometimes seemed like there were a grand total of a dozen people with darwin installed.
It was looking like this might go down as a large example of how going to the trouble of Open Source doesn't get you anything but hassle.
It didn't help that darwin was basically unusable by itself, because all you got was a single very slow text console with messed up key bindings. Not exactly a happy development environment.
(most of the active development work is done in the usable environment of OS-X server)
The general response that interested people gave as to why they weren't doing any development with darwin was that "everything is going to change in the next release" (the driver architecture was massively reworked).
Well, the new release is here now. There is still the problematic issue that you can't run ANY current gui on darwin 1.0. OS-X server and the developer seeds of OS-X client are both out of sync with the darwin codebase. All the excuses won't really go away until the next OS-X client release.
A couple months ago, I took on the porting of X windows to Darwin, so it could actually be considered halfway usable by itself.
I released the patches to get X windows running under MacOS-X server, which was basically the same core as the earlier darwin release.
I was then given the same excuse as other people -- why bother porting to the native darwin video and input drivers if everything is going to change soon?
As of now, I am actively feeling guilty about not finishing it. Everything is there for me now, I just need to find the time.
I had been spending my weekends on either GLX or darwin X server work after Q3 shipped, but my R&D "research" has shifted to "development" faster than I expected, and the past few weekends have been monopolized by new engine work. I'll get to it within the next month, but if someone wants to pick up first, feel free...
It may turn out that many of ESR's arguments just don't pan out for Apple, as far as having outsiders improve the core codebase. Even so, releasing the source will benefit Apple by giving application developers the "ultimate docs" on the OS.
I think Apple deserves a lot of credit for the step.
John Carmack
Very good. I like it. Personally I would probably prefer it over the GPL on first reading, I'd have to print it out and compare it clause for clause to really judge. But at first glance here are the benefits:
No royalties
Source MUST be included if you distribute it, whether modified or not
The license to use the code is automatically terminated if you violate it.
You can distribute it ON YOUR OWN, you do have to register mods but are not prevented from distribution
Apple does get full rights to use any of your code, but you still have full rights to distribute. Mods made for apple specifically are under whatever license apple wants, but personal mods are still under this one. Modifications are REQUIRED to be documented clearly.
This is a great thing. You could take Darwin and port say BASH, other necesary GNU utilities and throw X on it to make a full OS. The license specifically allows you to mix it with code from other licenses, with the sensible provision that code under the Apple license is clearly marked as such. I would have to look at the GPL more carefully, but Apple seems to have made a far better balance between the interests of the otiginal developer and the interests of OSS developers in the real world than the GPL does