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How Can I Promote Open Source On The Macintosh?
Chris Buskirk asks: "I have been working with Macs most of my life. I have since expanded my view to Unix, and Linix. I also do NT for Pain and Profit. I have been a part of the Slashdot community for the past year now, and I have become convinced that open source is the best way to produce software. This week open-source software advocate Eric S. Raymond kicked off the 15th annual MacHack conference. Mac Week is covering the keynote address , and almost all of the responce to the article is negative. Surprisingly this is a departure from the recent mood among the Mac community which has been changing with the advent of OSX.
So the question becomes, How do I convince a Mac geek to become an Open Source Mac geek?" I hope that OSX is the spark to ignite the fires of Open Source on the Mac. Or at least bring it the visibility it deserves.
" Most people view Mac users as idiots. There has always been a constant myth that there are no programs for the Mac. However I dispute that claim as I have always been able to get any type of program I have wanted for the Mac, and usually for free. The Mac has always had a large and talented freeware/shareware communtiy, and I would think that this community would be very prone to embrace the open source movement. Once this base of programmers is secured, I would think larger companies would start to follow suit to one degree or another."
I've always thought the best way of promoting open-source software was to create it and release it.
If you do this successfully, it demonstrates the viability of open-source software on your platform. It also gives weight to your advocacy of the open-source model, since you are willing to put forth considerable effort towards that end.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Since the financial reward of Mac programming is generally (yes, a generality) less than that of Windows programming, wouldn't the barrier to adopting open source for the Mac be far less than the IBM world? (But maybe more than the UNIX/Linux world?)
Like in any other businesses, there must be a demand for something beforce a it will do something about it. Get all your friends together, advocate, and hopefully earn more fallowers. When your voice is loud enough, and only then, will big companies listen. Most of the PC companies are too stubborn, lets hope Mac companies are a little more open minded.
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
There used to be a lot of freeware around. People also used to swap various hypercard stacks around and hacks that added features to hypercard (think excel, but much much cooler, a sort of graphical scripting language, but actually cool for the time, especially if you weren't a programmer, but there was fun stuff for programmers in it too).
I used to see a bit of source swapping and such going on as far as actual programs were concerned. There was always a bit of, "this is mine, I wrote it, I'm not going to enforce the fee, but it's there" penis-size contest going on there too, which a lot of people would be reluctant to give up, but all and all, I would think that there will eventually be a strong vein of mack open source hackers. Of course, the issue of the closed platform has always been what sort of drove hackers away from the platform. I like my PC because there is a lot more freedom for me to tinker with it. Even now, yeah, there's more slots, more hardware is supported, it's not quite like being able to say, "this board, this processor, this drive, and I'll put it all together over-night." Even the trouble that people have gotten into for extending the macintosh has driven many away. I must say, I love the SMP performance in the newer processors, but the Mac developers have never been a real, "Open up our box and screw with it," kind of team.
Eh...
Hey... why? I think this... i'm a MacUser for several years... and i see more most finnished software than form Windows and Other platarforms... i never had problems using mac... i think the key of future of sowftware will not selling software, but yes will be doing support.
---- EoF
Apple Sauce? Useful for calculating Apple Pi.
promoting open source is as easy as writing something useful, and letting people out there know it's for free. Everyone searching for a tool will appreciate having this great useful find. (if you deliver junk for free, however, that's usually when people say I don't need an orange peeler/pencil sharpener!) Catch my drift?
CAD, kicked, good
The idea that companies will base their business strategies around selling support for their software (witness all the Linux companies) is kind of scary. Why? What incentive do they have to create high quality, easy to use applications? None. An easy to use or configure application means that their sole source of revenue is effectively dried up.
That's probably the biggest thing going for commercial apps. Companies expect to earn their money selling a product that doesn't require much support. There's actually money to be made as a result of the development process itself.
Sadly the Linux conferences seem much more like the big PC shows rather than the more intimate feel of the Hack - I think it's more like Usenix was back in the mid 80s
If you look at all the proprietary operating systems, their community is very different from
:-)
the BSD/Linux community.
Even the BeOS-community which seem to be rather
enthusiastic is still mostly closed source.
They have some OS apps, but the sophisticated ones, the ones that compete with Gimp and Kword,
is mostly commercial.
I'm not really sure that OSX could change this
for Mac.
OSX while opensource at the core, is still highly
proprietary in the areas that are really visible
to the user (User interface, tools, etc.).
Also consider who is likely to be buying a Macintosh. Considering the price, it is probably
mostly graphics, music and video -professionals
for the good stuff (G4's), and "average Joe" for the iMacs.
This doesn't create a very big base for an OSS-community. The windows market is HUGE,
but the windows OSS-community is remarkably small.
If Apple can release some sort of API that makes
software easily portable between the MacOS and
BSD/Linux, this whole situation could change.
Finally, I just want to say that I'm not trying
to bash either MacOS, Apple or their users.
If someone gave me a brand new G4, I would be
more than thrilled, but the price of them makes
sure that I'll probably stick to cheap x86-hardware.
MacOS X for x86? Hmm
Yeah, the demise of Hypercard has been a real low point in the history of Macintosh. HC used to be the best amateur-hacker environment around, and it also attracted a lot of people to the Mac. The Mac is not the same without it. It seems like HC fell out of favor just when the Web came around-- maybe because HC failed to very integrate with the Web, or maybe because html offered another easy outlet for part-time geeks.
Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised, except for all the others. -Winston Churchill
..with current mac developments, according to most of the reactions I've read to his talk. His comments to the effect that, Macs have good GUIs but need a better OS seem uninformed given the state of OsX development.. I think the negative reaction came from Mac developers who are well ahead in their OsX development who didn't appreciate being told to suck eggs by someone who hadn't done their homework. As well, Raymond's discounting the idea of the GUI as just a nice widget for users comes across as ignorant; the Mac interface (which followed PARC and led Windows) has set the standard for usability, which should be the FIRST priority of an OS, not just an add-on (with respect to projects like GNOME). It may be that the windows and mouse interface needs a replacement (i think so) and maybe the OsX Aqua interface goes some way to a rethink; maybe not. I prefer something like touch screens still, over voice access (i can type a CLI about ten times faster thanit would take to to explain it), but how do you deal with the messy fingerprints?
--
Suggested Reading: The Bizarre Cathedral by Eric S. Raymond and the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
But it isn't true.
Besides. The GPL makes an exception for linking
against so called "system libraries".
This means that non-GPL-programs can link against
stuff like glibc.
GCC is GPL. It exists for BeOS, Solaris, Irix, etc, and they are all proprietary.
On the opposite side, Linux has plenty of
closed source applications, like Applixware,
Compupic, etc..
That's not necessarily true. Darwin is a very good first step for a large corporation. At least Apple is much more open about their OS than Microsoft has ever been. Microsoft is probably the worst at promoting nothing but proprietary crap.
On the plus side for open source is Darwin. The fundamentals of the BSD kernel are open sourced allowing a lot of space for people to manuever with OS X. It looks promising.
Apple has always had a loyal following and a disproportionatly large amount of freeware/shareware companies doing great things for it. There are some fantastic shareware games for the Macintosh. I think the Mac is probably waiting for a push toward open source. Maybe Mac OS X will be that shove.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
When I was just using macs I thought of open source stuff as just geeky stuff I didn't care about. I think if someone could have properly demonstrated to me the advantages of the model as it pertains to product quality I might have been converted faster.
Right now, when I think of the dream mac OSS initiative, it would be an open source alternative to Photoshop which would eventually surpass the quality of Adobe's program. Maybe you coul explain to people "Look, Dmoz.org kicks yahoo's ass because they have a zillion people all helping, imagine how fast a great free photoshop could be created with all the smart mac folks out there?", and then explain how great Apache really is, and why it could only have been developed using OSS. I know that right now that would totally convince and excite me, but I can't say if it'd fire up a mac guy. Mac programming is a completely different culture far removed from Open Source.
I guess though the trick really is to get a critical mass of mac programmers not just interested but excited about the possibilities of open source. If you can convince them what great work could be done with open source, you've got em!
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
And I've wondered this myself. Frankly, I get pissed off when I see someone ask $5 for an AppleScript that I could write in 20 minutes. There are a few open source Mac programs out there (Gerry's ICQ, Mactella...), but it's mostly stuff that has its origin on other platforms.
Why haven't I written anything myself? Well, I haven't been in the game too long, and I haven't yet gotten past the "I wish there was a program that did this..." stage yet, and I just don't have a lot of spare time. If I was going to write an Open Source program, it would probably be for Linux or Mac OS X. Memory management on the Mac is kind of painful (damn handles).
What would it take to get me to write for Mac OS? Well, I wouldn't bother with Mac OS 9, since it's on its way out. Mac OS X is appealing, but it would really help if Cocoa was cross-platform (I know it is, but Apple won't license it for Windows any more). I think Mac OS X will see a major increase in the amount of open source development, especially since a large portion of the OS is open source.
If you're interested in evangelizing open source to Mac developers, perhaps you should start with the one major open source success story on the Mac platform - John Norstad's NewsWatcher.
Since John Norstad released the code to NewsWatcher under a very permissive (BSD-like) license, it spawned a long list of feature-enhanced derivatives: YA-NewsWatcher, MT-NewsWatcher, WS-NewsWatcher, Value-Added NewsWatcher.
(And NewsWatcher and its derivatives are still the best news readers on any platform. Nothing compares on Unix or Win32.)
--
Let's say that you're correct, and that in general, there is far more money to be made in Mac software. Does this even more so raise the barier of entry to open source software on the Mac?
Goddamit, sorry about the italics. I stupidly closed the italics tag with a /A tag. At least it wasn't a blink tag :-)
Jason McIntosh has created a catalog of Mac open source software boasting 149 titles, which I consider pretty impressive for a platform usually considered barren of open source.
--ianAs an attendee of MacHack for several years, I would not take the tension between Eric Raymond and several other other attendees to reflect all Macintosh developers in general. Eric made many points, which everyone agreed with, but when it came to discussing the economics of open-source vs. closed-source proprietary applications, people questioned whether Eric defend his views in the marketplace.
The Macintosh community is on the verge of a transition from the old MacOS 9 to the new Mac OS 10 (X), which is unix based, but developers are just now getting their hands on the API's released at WWDC. When MacOSX is shipped with new machines, beginning early next year, probably January, I expect that many apps on MacOS9 will be "carbonized", so they will run well with the new OS. So far, Apple has placed OS Core, Darwin, under open-source licensing, and has a team of 4 people overseeing the project.
I would expect that other projects, e.g. web browsers, will be ripe for open-source, but remember that Apple will still use a lot of proprietary graphic libraries, from Quartz to Quicktime. In addition, much of the NextStep frameworks will be available via the Cocoa libraries, but be prepared to learn Objective-C
in order to use it.
Unfortunately, it looks like that C++ will not have an open framework available, outside of Metrowerks's PowerPlant. Most new apps will be written in Java or Objective C if they use Cocoa, and will use the Carbon frameworks, if they use C++.
I expect the transition to MacOS X and Unix will take at least 3-6 months for most conventional apps, although the effort to make a Carbon app will be less than expected. If open - source projects want to be successful, they need to mobilize their resources quickly, and work effectively with user groups.
As for tools, most of Apple's tools are based on gcc, and the other GNU tools, with GUI based IDE tools built along side. If you to get involved, sign up for a Select developer membership, sign your NDA for now, and apple will get you all the tools you need to get started. Codewarrior remains an important tool for Mac, but Visual Studio has very little value on the present or future platform.
The advice I have is to remember the golden Rule when dealing with other developers, as everyone has mouths to feed and bills to pay.
I have a little site that lists, describes, and links to a bunch of open-source projects available for the current MacOS. Starting the site and getting it linked from Macintouch was all it took for me to contribute my little bit of open source advocacy to the Mac community, and I strongly recommend similar routes for people with messages of their own. It's easier than you may think.
In the year I've been maintaining the site I've received enough feedback from people to convince me that open-source projects have as much of a place in closed-source OSes as open ones. It's all good.
J
MacOS Open Source
jmac
"How do I convince a Mac geek to become an Open Source Mac geek?"
Funny how times have changed....did'nt apple have
a pirate flag on there building for a while?
AdFuel
Has this 'game' been written? If not, I'm going to toss a clone together tonight, if you don't mind..
It's at least as entertaining as paranoia!!
.sig: Now legally binding!
I submitted a thoughtful TidBits article on this subject, as well as an Andy Ihnatko article I can't find again. Both were rejected -- a week ago! (There's also a MacWeek interview with ESR.) Didn't occur to me to frame them as an Ask Slashdot ;-)
Anyway, on the subject, there's a long history of freeware for the Mac, frequently with source available. I think that FSF-style free software never caught on because of the difficulty of Mac programming and the lack of good free development tools.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The average Mac user does dink around with his/her box once and a while, but the environment is not suited for real tweaking (yet - OS X looks sweet [except for it being COMMERCIAL :{ ]). The *NIX world is built around tweaking -- using perl and shell scripts for EVERYTHING, for example. The glut of STANDARD (and usually free) tools has made "programming" (even with shell scripts and piping stuff through grep) a fact of day to day life. Mac users live in a static desktop world where Apple has placed simplicity / ease of use over power in many cases (not that Macs aren't good machines - I like 'em). The point I'm trying to make is -- Mac users are fairly apathetic about their desktop experience. It has changed very little (in comparision to desktops on Windows and UNIX machines) since its conception -- honestly its a pretty good design for novices. Mac users don't expect to change the way things work. (Now I'm referring to the Evangelista-types without trying to avoid using a cult metaphor so this doesn't get modded down as flamebait) They assume that Apple has their best interests in mind.
There. See If I made ANY sense.
The reason, as I see it, that open source thrives on linux is because a large proportion of the linux community are coders. Certainly we aint all kernel hackers but most people can tweak bash and perl scripts to get them running.
:) and even still dont know very much about how it works. Sure I can knock up simple stuff in RealBasic and i've played with Microsoft Basic for Macintosh from the outset, but I still dont fancy coding anything complex on it. Added to that before an ordinary Mac user will accept open source software it'll have to be a fully graphical application... I used to hate it when things ran in a console like window.
:)
I've only been using linux a lot for under a year now and already I have been required to learn quite a lot about how it works, just to make it work. As such i'm in a far better position to write or contribute to open source.
On the other hand I've been using macs since 1986 (age 6
The requirement of having a graphical OS must surely push up development times, and costs, and hence make open source less attractive.
Added to this, mac users are used to paying over the odds for their hardware and many dont mind paying for software too.
Computers seem to be something of a trade off between cost and ease of use.
Macs are comparatively expensive but at age 8 I could upgrade the operating system in total confidence.
It took me another 3 years to feel happy doing that with a PC, yet it took me til age 18 until I could fully configure and recompile the linux kernel.
However having said all that, I expect that the advent of OsX will make it easier to port existing linux/bsd software to this platform and by then any coders still left on the mac platform (sorry guys but my Powerbook 100 is getting a bit dusty) will be able to add cutesy aqua interfaces and it'll all be good
Well, I wouldn't use it to replace apps that I would write in a full power programming language, but for simple little apps things that you wanted to put together in an hour or 2, or presentations, it couldn't be beat (excel will always eat hypercard's dust).
Eh...
The same is obvious when you look at some Apple Software like WebObjects (it sucks!): It includes gcc, gdb, bash... but here gcc is called the "Apple Compiler" or something like that... Disgusting!
Mac OS is actually a free OS with a proprietary GUI, and Apple should honour this. Perhaps there are also some legal implications about this. Perhaps the FSF could find out. Remember: A few years ago the FSF tried to boycott Apple for their "Look and feel is copyrigted"-approach.
No flames here...it just occurred to me that in your /. user prefs you can omit any authors you choose. Think I'll go zap Cliff right now.
cat
Seriously... as a Mac fan and LinuxPPC user myself, I've noticed that Apple, these last couple of years is getting more respect... especially from the part of the geek community who usually would have, a few years ago, dismissed Macs as toys.
And I think that OS X is a big part of this. Aqua "gooiness" (all defined in editable XML files... first thing I'll do is put the widgets back where they're supposed to be... to hell with the "traffic light" model) aside... OS X really IS the first attempt to market a Unix OS to mass consumers. And I, for one, am definately fascinated to see how it turns out... if it will REALLY be so easy to use that you'll NEVER have to see the command line if you don't WANT to. I'm doublely impressed that the command line WILL be available when I WANT it...
Choice, as they say, is good.
And we'll have perl, gcc, java and all the other "traditional" development tools, PLUS some pretty nifty stuff from NeXT... projectbuilder and the "bundle" application model!!! Cool stuff, I would say... it sure looks like OS X is gonna be very "hackable".
Add to that the fact that, with the rise of Linux, and the forituitous actions of the DOJ, microsoft is rapidly losing its credibility in the "windows r00l3zzz apple dr001ez unix bl0wz" FUD department. And, as such, gates is losing it's ability to propagate his ever-so-popular "anyone who has ever used a Mac is an idiot" propaganda.
It's also worth noting that Apple is becoming (albiet, slowly) more and more "open"... Darwin is open, Quicktime server is open, OS X reportedly does not require the infamous boot ROM.... (tho I don't know if the Darwin liscense meets RMS's strict standards... but then who appointed him open source God? I like ESR's fork of open source philosophy better myself).
Indeed, when Apple was "Steve and Steve", they were "open source" fifteen years BEFORE Linux and the popularity of open source Unix-like OSs. The Apple II used to come with complete schematics (good enough that you could use them to build your own Apple II from parts), commented assembly for the ROMs and a disassembler in case there were undocumented changes!!! And Woz freely gave out schematics to all of his designs to anyone who asked. But then came the suits...
(I find it particular ironic that Be whines about Apple not giving them the G* specs (FUD anyway, they're available from Motorola (enjoying that intel money jean?)), when it was jean louis gassee who, after being insturmental in the expulsion of the Steves, was the biggest OPPONENT of Apple licensing its technology)
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
Maybe forget about the geeks and concentrate on Joe Average user. Let him get dependent on some program that runs under MacOS 7/8/9 and then for some reason breaks under MacOS X (not that far fetched, considering how different X is from 7/8/9). When he can't get it fixed because the vendor is out of business, or the vendor wants to charge him an arm and a leg for an "upgrade" that doesn't have any extra functionality (except that it works under MacOS X) then perhaps that user will begin to understand the value of having source.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I think that one of the major things holding back opensource development on Mac is the lack of readily available _free_ compilers. Sure there's Apple's MPW but it doesn't come standard with the MacOS. How can you expect your users to download the 21 megs worth of MPW just to compile your software. I don't mind downloading source for an application under linux because it's simply:
> tar xvfz sourcefile.tar.gz
> cd sourcefile/
>
Simply because I already have gcc installed with my distro. However, under MacOS it's a much larger headache - especially if the user doesn't have MPW (which is 98% of Mac users anyway). Just my $0.02
Linix, though a typo, is actually a better name than linux. it devolved itself from MINIX not MINUX, right?. it is actually the best correction to a lousy name EVER.
Besides, to the American Eye, Linux is often pronounced Line-ucks, not leeenush as the Scandanavians would have you believe. By using two "i"s, this would make it SO MUCH SIMPLER TO PRONOUNCE. but I guess linush isn't about ease-of-use or universal accepted pronunciation, is it?
Mac developers begin as Mac users. They are used to the Mac way of doing things, just as windows, Linux, BSD, BeOS, etc. developers begin as users and are used to the practices of the general communities that support their platforms. Mac developers, therefore, see the projects that are successful on the Mac and write code in a similar fashion, for the most part. The OS becomes tied to the method of software development, and the two will generally go together. When you convince someone that a different standard/model is a Good Idea(tm) it's quite possible that you will also convince him or her that the operating system developed under that model is inheirently the best. In this way, Mac developers convinced that open source is the way will go to an open operating system and thus cease to be mac users.
Information wants Coq
There's no reason to believe that Open Source produces the best software. Just become some Best-of-Class software is the Open Source, that doesn't mean that all Open Source is best of class. For example, there isn't a single Open Source OS that is genuinely consumer friendly. But consumer friendly OSes have been around for over 15 years.
The Mac developers were extremely skeptical because ESR didn't give them a reasonable business model should the Dev's open their code. If they do that, then how will they make a living? Providing Services, etc, is a weak and half-assed answer.
Both Open Source and Proprietary code have their place, and both have produced quality software.
I've looked into starting Mac versions of one or two open source projects, and I've heard of similar problems from others. The problem I had was that open source projects often make assumptions about the platform, despite the goal of being platform independent. Like they assume you can have arguments passed from the command line, or they assume you're working with a sockets based networking architecture. The Mac often doesn't follow the same conventions as other platforms for a variety of reasons (some valid, some not).
Further, when the tools do exist to do the porting (you *can* have a console app that will prompt you for arguments, and you *can* use GUSI, a sockets based networking API), it usually means putting a further burden on either the developer or the user in order to get the port to work. As a developer, I might not mind so much, even if it does involve learning an additional way of doing something I already know how to do, but as a user, most wouldn't bother learning anything new.
Every barrier that gets in the way means you lose another large percentage of your remaining audience.
-D
(If you're thinking of whining about those changes are not integrated with mainline GCC, complain to me personally instead; fully 1/2 of my hours for Apple are now allocated to preparing GCC patches to send to the FSF...)
So why *is* open source not more popular on Macs? I think it's the same reason there's not so much on Windows either; it's more work to develop programs than for a Unix variant, there is a large end-user base that just wants binaries and is often willing to pay for them, and there is a relatively stable ABI, so there are fewer reasons to need sources for the purposes of recompiling.
I expect to see some change when OS X comes out, because there is now more awareness of the other benefits of open source, and porting Unix apps is pretty easy (I've done some myself), but I expect it will be a gradual transition as OS X expands its installed base.
Stan Shebs
shebs@apple.com
In what way is gerry's open?
I have never seen any source, just looked at the page, nothing there...
De lyckliga slavarna är frihetens bittraste fiender, legalisera!!!
>and feel is copyrigted"-approach.
Not that he doesn't mesn well, I'm sure that he does. But it seems like RMS gets so wraped up in the "all software must be free" aspect of his philosophy that he ignores the "big picture".
Remember who Apple was struggleing against in that suit? If Apple had won, it's quite possible that windows would have been stillborn. Think about it... a world with no "gates in a sweater" commercials, no win95/98/2000 hype, no outlook viruses, no explorer integrated into windows, no ability to "embrace, extend, and extinguish", no halloween papers, no ability to steal the work of any potential competitor and call it his own, and possibly, even no microsoft at all!!!
Imagine where the computer world would be, were gates not holding us back. Where would we be if he did not have the monopoly power to supress any superior technology that might compete with one of his own offerings?
There's and old saying that RMS might want to look up... "The enemy of the enemy is your friend".
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
For some reason, many (maybe even most) of the people writing code for the Macintosh have the idea that they deserve to be paid -- that being rewarded by enthusiastic users thanking them and saying nice things about them is not enough. Although there are some wonderful shareware programs for the Mac that are worth every cent their authors charge and more, there are also many tiny programs whose authors demand US$5-$15 that would be given away for free without a second thought by Unix hackers.
In discussions I've had about why this might be, my friends and I have generally come to the conclusion that because the Macintosh has always been sold as a ``premium'' platform (Macs cost more than roughly comparable PCs, and have traditionally been marketed to appeal to people who want to believe they're ``better'' than the average person), combined with the fact that the Macintosh user community has tended to be less hands-on technically adept, may have created a user community that equates money with quality, and so expects to pay for a quality tool, no matter how trivial. (The Macintosh user community tends to be stereotyped as incompetent and technically ignorant -- in fact, most Mac users just want to concentrate on their work and not on the tools they use to do their work. If they have to pay attention to their tools, they're being distracted from their goals.)
It's also possible that programming the Macintosh is such a chore that Mac programmers do much less of the kind of ``scratch-my-own-itch hacking'' (``I have a problem I need to solve for myself. Hack, hack, hack. Done! Gee, now that I've solved it, I bet other people might interested in this code, too!'') that we see in the open source community. Because the Macintosh presents a polished, closed interface, Mac users don't have the ``gateway drug'' experience Unix users have with the shell: learning how to use shell commands, then learning to assemble those commands into pipelines, writing simple scripts, and then, perhaps, learning to write more complicated programs in languages such as Perl, Python, and C. (Apple provides AppleScript, and people can and have built fairly complicated workflow solutions using AppleScript, but most Mac users never find a need to justify purchasing or printing out the thick manual and learning the language. Even if they did, many Mac applications support only the most basic set of (required) AppleScript commands, making them essentially unscriptable.)
It may be (and we can hope) that MacOS X, with its Unix underpinnings, will allow the world of free (as in both beer and speech) software to penetrate the Macintosh world in a way it never could before. If people can download the vast library of free and open source tools and put them to use (either as compilable source code or as MacOS X installer packages), then shareware that handles the same tasks but can't be modified for a user's specific needs might take a beating, provided that the quality is there.
Betas of this software have been shown around the valley for months now, and it looks quite promising. (If apple was really really smart, they would BSD/GPL this puppy, and make some friends in the hacker/free software developer community. As an added benefit, all the apps developed with it could then target linux and mac os X.
Rule number one for radicals: don't let the forces of evil divide and conquer...
However, GPL'd utilities such as bash, gzip, gnutar, gcc, etc. can be bundled with the operating system, as long as it's clear that they're not part of the operating system.
Apple Legal is actually being very careful about not breaking the GPL, from what I hear.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
With all due respect. Myst is great and all, but I could envision putting that together in hypercard much more than I could say... Quake. All in all, I love hypercard (believe it or not, I've written a lot in it, even fairly complex programs. Still, there will be A HIT. I'm not for ANY sacrifice when processor time is essential.
Eh...
To learn more about OS X porting, look at Apple's developer pages, mail me, or get on macosx-dev@omnigroup.com, which has a lot of useful discussion.
Stan Shebs
shebs@apple.com
You are an idiot. Have you ever heard of LinuxPPC or Yellow Dog Linux? Linux runs very well on Mac hardware. Not to mention that a G4 is the only super computer that can be owned personally and run Linux. My Linux on a G4 will spank your Linux on Intel any day of the week and twice on Sundays. By Intel's own benchmarks, G4 is 2-3 times faster than any Pentium.
MacHack has gone a long way to promote open-source on the mac - for way longer than 'Open Source' was a popular refrain - namely the proceedings disks containing all the hacks - including most of the sources .....
This has always been my theory on why there is so little Mac open source. Specifically, if you've invested the time and effort to learn to program a Mac, the ease with which you can obtain a commanding marketshare makes it quite tempting to take any and every piece of Mac software commercial.
I wrote the MacHTTP web server in my spare time in early 1993. It was originally given away for free and most of the source code was easily obtained as well. But as time went on, the increasing demands on my time, the addition of significant features, and the market demand for the software made it a certainty that the product would become commercial.
After a year of free distribution, it became a shareware product (the first "commercial" web server on the Internet). After a year, the product was making over $250,000 a quarter as shareware and turning it into a commercial product (WebSTAR) was a no-brainer. StarNine turned that into a $15M run rate and 98% market share in 6 months.
From the perspective of even the most altruistic of developers, passing up that kind of cash is hard. In the context of the Mac marketplace, where good software is rewarded with high margins, high purchase rates, and loyal users, it's impossible to pass up. I think all the really good Mac programmers are just too busy making money at it to do open source justice on the Mac platform.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
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$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Steve is a real visionary. I've read about him, and seen a lot of his stuff. I might not know him personally, but if there was someone that I would want to work with for a few days, it would be him. He might not have been popular with a few people (fired from Apple), but man, NEXT was really... good. I'm glad he's back with Apple. Now, the fruit flavored macs might be aimed at a different kind of user, but I can see the concept and the marketting. Other stuff that Apple is doing is real great, we just get hung up on some of the stuff that they do that we consider to be "goofy shit" and the relatively aggressive stance that they take with their platform (usually).
Eh...
right but its window dressing basically.
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$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
The book assumes you already know how to program in C, but know nothing about the details of the Macintosh API. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get started writing open-source software for the Mac.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
Well, if nobody else ever said "thank you" for writing MacHTTP, then consider yourself thanked.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
And WebObjects definitely does not suck. It has the best API out there for mapping databases to objects and vice versa.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
The $70-$80 "Discover Programming Edition" of Code Warrior does not allow you to redistribute any binaries or source code that you develop with it, even if it is done for free.
I am not quite sure how they could tell if you were uploading to a CVS server, but...
But the other reason is because starting off as a developer in the Mac community was very difficult. Open-sourcing my programs may help others get started (i hope). It is not easy piecing together all of the information necessary from the various Mac programming web-sites that offer useful advice (of which there are few), and at the same time trying to wade through the Windows/Linux specific information that is all too easy to find.
What is needed is a web site aimed at Mac users interested in learning to program. If an experienced Mac developer would collect information on compilers/APIs etc. and show how rewarding programming can be, it would be a good investment for the future of the Mac programming community.
If you have ever compared a general Mac magazine to a Windows one, you will notice a huge difference in the content. Mac magazines continually contain Photoshop tutorials, beginners guides and other less-technical issues. On the other hand, PC magazines cover almost every computer-related issue, from the basics right through to programming with languages like C and Perl.
What I am getting at is that the average Mac user never comes across programming. I'm not calling them ignorant, its just that no-one ever shows them the joys of staying up all night in front of a monitor, staring at lines of code. And I wish someone would do something about it.
There is an article at tidbits that talks about this very issue.
I can always use more reading material.
Eh...
I am not a believer in the church of emacs. I dont share the dogmatism of RMS at all. I didnt mean to propagate a policy of free software purity (not even "open source" purity).
Rather i am convinced that also proprietary approaches could be useful in strengtehening an open culture of software standards. (e.g.: In my opinion Sun did a very useful job with java, even if they didnt make it yet to pass it to an independent standardisation authority).
My concern here is that i seriously mistrust Apple regarding their policy towards look-and-feel-copyrights. I couldnt accept this as a legitimate means against MSs monopoly. If APple would have succeeded, software development in general would have to suffer from it.
I juts wish that Apple would show clearer how their position towards issues like that might have changed.
I agree: Webobjects doent really suck. It has a nice model for mapping relational databases to objects, and it has a nice RAD. It has many advantages for some purposes of software development. But in my company it is being a little bit overestimated. I Wouldnt use it for every kind of web based application. You can design a mapping scheme between relational aod OO entities without having to use Webobjects. This way you dont have to use the framework and the tools, which have disadvantages also. Generally i prefer this way.
> Do ANY of the games from Loki run on LinuxPPC or YellowDog?
how about civilisation ctp, myth2, heroes of might and magic, EUS, rairoad tycoon2 gold and few more
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
Uhhh....
No?
Yes, some of that is window dressing, but most of it is functional improvements, and that's just stuff the average user can do easily without help. There are LOTS of freeware and shareware apps out there that do all kinds of tweaking, and installing and configuring these in various combinations can do as much to personalize a Mac as hacking shell scripts does to personalize a Linux box.
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$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
A question i have not been able to fully answer is about how apple is planning on selling the new darwin based mac osx.
If they are allowing people to add code to make the os work I find it appalling that they are then going to turn around and try to sell the comnpleted version to these developers. People who made it possible for this product to succeed are going to have to buy the workable part of the os, I think its obvious that macos doesnt work without its plaything of a gui.
Part of my question is, when does this apple thingy stop being a mac and become a real unix machine anyways? And why not make the carbon what-not (obviously i dont use, or ever want to use a mac) ported to all linux's unix's etc.. ? Because to me that's what mac is. a GUI.
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
You are an idiot. Have you ever heard of LinuxPPC or Yellow Dog Linux?
Posts that begin with
"You are an idiot" don't
Win you many friends.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
The Mac market is a strange bird. The way it's been treated, it's no surprise.
;-)
Here are some of my thoughts on the matter, in no particular order.
Like other posters have pointed out, Mac programming has a high barrier to entry: the Toolbox. It's powerful as anything, with upwards of 5,000 subroutines in it. When was the last time you thought, "I feel like cranking out a program. I'll just refresh my memory on the 5,000 most common system calls and hit the keys!" Compare it to the difficulty of becoming a Perl master, times 10. "Hello world" is about a 15-line program unless you use a special STDIO runtime library.
Source code has never been an issue. I've played with Macs for over 10 years and never had any trouble getting working source code to learn from. Documentation, on the other hand, wasn't always as easy as it is today.
One important social issue to remember is that the Free Software Foundation snubbed Mac users pretty hard. How long did that silly boycott last? That always seemed awfully hypocritical to me, since FSF programs have always been supported on other platforms that are just as closed and proprietary as Mac: HPUX, SunOS, DOS, etc.
It's really amazing how the attitude toward the Mac has been poisoned in the PC and Unix communities. I think it all derives from one simple premise: DOS and Unix users between 1984 and 1995 were perpetually sick with envy and too stubborn to admit it. It's all sour grapes.
I honestly can't imagine anyone giving the Mac a fair, open-minded try for a couple of months and not concluding that it is, in many ways, still years ahead of everything else (even though the kernel lags). Some of its features are amazingly slick. Aliases, for example, are much smarter than Shortcuts or symbolic links.
Also like other posters have mentioned, a lot of the grassroots Mac development took place in Hypercard, not something likely to catch the attention of the rest of the world. I prefer to do my Mac hacking in MacPerl nowadays; AppleScript I mostly ignore.
Finally, I'd like to try (once again, in vain) to put to rest the twin myths of software drought and overpriced hardware.
In over 10 years of using the Mac, I don't think I've ever been forced to do something on a PC or Unix because there was no software to do it on the Mac. I may have done it if I couldn't find appropriate free software, but there was always something. The Mac shareware and freeware communities have produced a steady stream of high-quality apps. Some are so good I have used them daily for over 6 years. On the commercial side, there are over 25,000 shipping applications. This is not exactly what I think of as a platform bereft of runnable code. Maybe you're thinking of Minix.
Finally, I have yet to be convinced that Macs below the top-of-the-line have been significantly overpriced in the past 5+ years. I keep pretty close tabs on current Mac and PC prices, and low- and mid-range Macs don't cost much more equivalent PCs -- in fact, they often cost LESS than an equivalent PC from a first-class maker like Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Toshiba, Sony, HP, or IBM. It doesn't bother me that Apple charges an extra $1000 for that last 50 MHz; the top-of-the-line should be the high-profit-margin gravy. I want the guys with all the bucks to subsidize my mid-level machine!
I can understand how the can licence distribution of binaries (since they include proprietary library code), but what legal justification od they have to prohibit the distribution of source code? Is there "wizard" based or other generated code which includes copyrighted material? And if so can you get around it by using the compiler only to compile code which is 100% open source?
They may quite reasonably prohibit the distribution of header files and generated code. Beyond that I doubt they have any right to restrict your code.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
cool.. I'll change my finder icon to the dogcow. and.... make apple+delete eject disks
hypercard is kinda cool though...
what can you REALLY do though?
The term "open source" needs clarification. In practice, this means that the developer of software makes the source code available under a license similar to GPL or the BSD artistic license. This is a good thing, because it means you can make fixes or changes if you become desperate, and there's always the possibility of someone else picking up the project should the original developer(s) lose interest. Or someone could use the source as a basis for another project. And so on.
But let's stop fooling ourselves into thinking that open source means better and faster development. The best software is still developed by focused groups of people who are following their original vision. Add too many people and you get design by committee. There aren't good examples of non-system software that has benefited from OS. Perl, the Linux kernel, apache, and sendmail are the usual examples that get trotted out, just like fraternities trot out the "We do charity work!" line each time they get nailed for hazing or drunkeness. The bottom line is that just having the source code freely available (as in speech) does not make for open source development. That's something different altogether.
"Open Source" means that the source code is freely available. "Open Source Development" means "development by people who are making the source code publicly available." ESR would have you believe that all the work is being done by people who happen across the source and add major features, which is far from the truth.
The operating system itself does not include any GNU code at all (or at least it's not supposed to).
Wrongo! The operating system core - the BSD and Mach layers - is all under GPL.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
well old or not 90% of lokigames exists for ppc, some games can even run on sparc and alpha....
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
The AltiVec code is owned by Motorola, not Apple, and so they have to be the ones donating to the FSF. I've lobbied the Motorola folks on this, but they seem to have washed their hands of the issue, and so their code will probably never end up in the GCC mainline. Sigh.
Apple's precompiled header implementation is not even a part of GCC (it's a separate program), so it's not part of the changes I was referring to. Even so, not long ago Zack Weinberg (who's working on GCC frontend opts) came over to visit Apple and we talked about implementation strategies for precompiled headers. Apple expects to be contributing directly to GCC frontend work at some point, but it's not plausible when mainline GCC doesn't even run on our systems. So...
Stan Shebs
shebs@apple.com
For example, I can have the system generate an event when a user puts a file into a folder and have an associated script run. I think that this is actually much easier then doing the same thing under UNIX.
Admittedly, Apple does not do a good job of letting people know about Applescript. But please don't spread the myth of the lack of MacOS programmability! It's been there since 1994.
Exactly. Mac users have been "hacking" their systems for years. All you need to do is drop a Control Panel or Extension on the System Folder and you've done it. Even novice users do this. I was a novice Mac user in the early 90's in university, and we traded inits/cdevs/CPs/extensions all the time. When AppleScript came along, it became easier for the beginning programmer to add functionality himself, without compiling.
Dropping an extension file into a folder is sure alot easier than writing a script or editting a registry, which is what Linux and Windows often require you to do. In my experience, more novice Mac users alter their systems than their Windows-using counterparts. Of course, Linux users are presumed to have a little more technical savvy.
Constitutionally Correct
I guess you didn't follow the link I mentioned early and actually *look* at the sources on http://www.publicsource.apple.com ...
The core (xnu) has all been put under the APSL, as the original licenses allow. It is very carefully kept clear of any GPLed code.
Tools like GCC and bash continue to be under the GPL, which is OK because they are optional programs not required by the OS to run.
Again, all this is documented at Apple's website and in the downloadable sources. Please check your facts there before spreading bad information.
In keeping with the topic, I've ported it to MacOS. Enjoy!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
> (And NewsWatcher and its derivatives are still the best news readers
> on any platform. Nothing compares on Unix or Win32.)
Not only is this ignorant, its simply not wise to make such a sweeping statement. Software `goodness' is largely a matter of preference.
-- a SLRN user
http://space.mit.edu/~davis/slrn.html
Because mac users actually expect quality software that just works, with no configuration hassles. That aesthetic informs all [good] MacOS developers.
Open-source, when you get away from the hype, is basically a cabal of *nix developers, who tend to be willing to jump through all kinds of hoops to get things done. MacOS users, though, earn $$ from their Macs, and lose $$ when they have to mess with config crap. When you're billing $400/hr, the last thing you want to do is tweak that annoying config file with the option that you read about 2 years ago and isn't in the man page.
Sofware that's too hard to use = lost time, and time in the Mac world is more valuable than it is in other worlds. If your product doesn't save users time, they won't use it.
"Welcome to the Real World."
And, just to whip it out, I've configured virtual domains in apache, used perl and shell on 4 *nices enough to hate it, and wondered why the dumb gnu configure script doesn't stash its info in a repository so it doens't have to look for it over and over and over every time you compile another tarball of stuff. I've forgotten more *nix system administration that I ever wanted to know, and I believe that compared to a real *nix like AIX or Solaris, Linux is 2-4 years off-the-ball. And yes, I do use smit(ty).
--- only for the squeamish
Mac OS X is going to be BSD at heart, great! This means everyone's favourite CLI util ought to compile on it. But the interface is supposed to be designed, as indeed it needs to be, so that the commandline should be invisible to most users.
Seems to me that since there is already a whole raft of great open source software out there, perhaps the best way to get quick acceptance on Mac would be to write OSS Mac-style graphical front-ends to common GNU tools. That way, people would get the new OS, and relatively quickly a huge amount of software would pop up, all free. That would sure get people's attention.
This is what Apple's Project Builder is, I think, and that looks like it will be some really cool stuff when it goes GM. Apparently there were only two engineers working on the whole IDE. However, this is not exactly the sort of thing that your average user thinks of as dead sexy. A few ideas...
All this being said, I'm not a Mac programmer. I'm a CS student, and I intend to start learning as soon as OS X is available, but...
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
Or much karma. That's why I like to karma whore.
-o Disclaimer: You smell like shit, so does your mother, and I fuck her up the ass every day. o-
As is your mother
-o Disclaimer: You smell like shit, so does your mother, and I fuck her up the ass every day. o-
There are MacOS ports of several Unix scripting languages and GUI toolkits, e.g. Tcl/Tk and Python/TkInter.
These efforts tend to rely on far too few volunteers. A few more people being willing to hack on Tk for example would be very much appreciated.
This would help two groups. First, Mac people would have some new alternatives for doing development. Having done both extensively, its a lot easier to build apps with Tcl/Tk than with the Mac toolbox! Cleaning up some of the rough edges would lower the barriers for Mac people to start developing, just as it has on Unix.
The second benefit would be to people who've developed software on Unix versions of Tcl, Python, Perl or whatever. For them, it gives them yet another platform they can deploy their software on. And given the types of feedback they're likely to get from Mac people, probably improve their software in the process.
I've got a novel idea. Instead of trying to bring all the open source stuff to the macintosh, what about bringing all the macintosh ideas into the current open source arena. In other words, remake x86 linux in the Mac's image. I think this would be a great idea because the current infrastructure for doing such a project (compilers, hardware, toolkits, etc) is already available on X86 linux. It would be possible to get out all our superior mac interface and design ideas on the machines that most people already have, which means getting those ideas out to the widest audience possible. Mac programmers are hands down the world's best UI designers, and X86 Linux truly needs all the UI help it can get, since most linux programmers are either traditional Unix programmers don't have much experience at making user friendly UI's, or are former windows programmers who, like most all windows programmers, have proven themselves completely inept at doing so. It's time to stop GNOME and others from duplicating M$'s UI mistakes in the name of duplicating their success. Long live Clarux the Penguincow!
Your "think different" comments are also references to Apple.. as I said, Apple isn't involved in this at all. Once in a while I (for one reason or another) find myself looking for Windows programs (or Palm Pilot programs written by Windows coders). And I see "Shareware: $45". And I just want to wretch, and go back to the good old days of $5 shareware, postcards, and free floppy disks full of source.
So my post is a little fragmented and offtopic. Oh well. Just wanted to voice my distaste for the new meaning of "shareware". I hope we as coders (Mac, Windows.. whatever) can start being a little less selfish and take note from some of the recent Linux successes. "Sharing" is free. If you lend me your spare bicycle for a day, but you remove the seat and make me pay for it.. you're not really "sharing" now, are you? This crap needs to change. If only everybody else agreed with me. It'd do us all some good, and the world would be a better place. <cue "Kumbaya">
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
I have a mac at my house I got for free, and I tried putting linuxPPC onto it. The CD I spent way too much money on arrived, but whenI try to install it, it claims it can't find any of the files that are on the CD. I downloaded an install image, burnt it, and tried it. Same story. After a full day I got frustrated and gave up for now. So my advice for somebody trying to promote opensource for the mac is:
"Get a decent open source distrobution!!!!"
Yes, Its an utter shame that Microsoft was able to delay to death Apple's original MacBasic release. It was said to be ahead of its time, and would have been more approachable that MPW but more powerful than HyperCard. Microsoft used licensing for MS Apple ][ basic ROMs as the hostage. MacBasic would have caught the attention of more programmers if it was free on Macs or a cheap and official way to program for the mac GUI from Apple. Think of all the talented kids intrestred in programming Apple lost that way.
At least Steve Jobs promotes RAD tools and that's why we have Tim Berner Lee's WWW. The plus side is less Mac Viruses.
--
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blinko - "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down"
Our company used Mac exclusively for several years ('89-'95). We had no trouble intra-office since we all used Microsoft Works. Don't laugh, it was a pretty powerful suite.
The problem which eventually pushed us to Windows95 (ouch) was that we could not easily open other company's documents.
PDF has solved that problem for documents and presentations, but spreadsheets and databases effectively remain alien creatures.
Perhaps in the long run, OS X will bring Mac and PC users closer through OS X's use of a Unix-like kernel.
But in the short term (2000-2001) I don't see anything like the Linux revolution on the horizon for Mac. All Mac OS's have kept users isolated from the code underneath. Users have adapted to that environment. Remember that AOL has grown into a successful business because it its simple.
Mac OS's use the same plan: Cover the coding potholes with a pretty blanket and FLY over them. Ask a Mac user, and he'll say "Don't look under the blanket for any reason, you won't like it, trust me!"
"Many have chosen to follow. They aren't the ones I'm worried about."
Is that not what the Eazel project is all about? Or do you envision something more (although it's perhaps hard to answer that, since there is no Eazel "product" yet)?
You're my hero. A product written "in your spare time" and released as shareware becomes a million $ a year program? I'm not wasting any more time before cracking open "Mac Programming for Dummies."
Although, what source books do you recommend for programming for Mac OS X?
--
$tar -xvf
I am doing a talk at the Perl Conference later this month called "How to Be Really Cool Using MacPerl" that will show some of the stuff I use. What do you want done? Lemme know, I'll whip up a script for you. :-)
Files in a Mac OS filesystem have two hidden four-letter extensions: "creator" and "type". "Creator" tells which app created a document. "Type" hints at the format of the document. For example, text files created in SimpleText (Mac OS equivalent of Notepad) are type TEXT creator ttxt. C source files are type TEXT creator (whatever the code for CodeWarrior is). And if there are any TEXT/CodeWarrior files when they check the MacBinary information in your tarball, they can hunt you down.
Yes, I know you can hack the extensions with ResEdit.
Will I retire or break 10K?
No, it isn't. It is designed for people who want the UI to not get in the way of the work. It is designed for novice users to be able to use intuitively, and advanced users to be able to use flawlessly.
Let's see how Bill treats droplets: If you compile an ANSI C program to run in DOS or Windows, the shell treats a droplet. When you drag a document onto an app (or a shortcut thereto), the shell launches the app with the document's path as the first arg.
Now how Steve does it: When a droplet is started, it is sent an "Apple event" of type aevt.odoc (open document) that gives the path to the document dropped onto it. If a C library were to translate an `odoc' event into argv[] and additional `odoc' events into fork()/exec(), that would fit in just fine.
I've seen this in products such as Prograph and Widget Workshop.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I used to develop for the Mac, but gave it up when Copland didn't ship.
Install a copy of LinuxPPC and KDE with a 'MacOS' theme. Until they actually run a free operating system how can you expect them to believe in free software?
The Apple 'open-source' license isn't free, and as such running Mac OS is out of the question.
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
This has always been my theory on why there is so little Mac open source. Specifically, if you've invested the time and effort to learn to program a Mac, the ease with which you can obtain a commanding marketshare makes it quite tempting to take any and every piece of Mac software commercial.
The temptation may be there, but I think certain shareware authors should think twice about going commercial with their little weekend projects. I have seen $15 shareware programs that do nothing more than change file/creator types! Please! If you're going to try to market a shareware program, try to make it something substantial. Something that I can't do myself in 10 minutes with AppleScript.
- MFN ("Mighty Flying Nickster") / mfnickster@yahoo
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
my post did say that ESR treated the UI as an ad-on, and I stand by that as this matches his reported comments. I'm aware the UI is a layer over "lower" os layers (both Mac Aqua and Gnome (which i think is a good idea, not as you posted) but your assumption is that overall usability of the OS should be determined by the lowest level of the OS, the kernal. I'd respond that a full OS works in both directions, to bring the users and the kernel/system closer together. A system that build from the kernal up to a difficult to understand (ie poor UI) level that can only be worked by people with extreme technical experience has only done half the job. So Mac OsX when it comes out (concerns about details of the Aqua interface aside) supposes to be just that : An open source kernel of known reliability; (hopefully) transparent middle system layers developed by apple's proprietary experience of OSS; and the (also prop.) Aqua UI, developed from apples own experience and decades of mac user involvement. That it's not out yet is (for a change) hardly relevant. If Apple hadn't made any efforts in this direction, then ESRs reported comments would have made more sense. As it is, he sounds like he didn't know OsX was coming.
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We might be thinking about different tools but I had Microsoft Basic installed on my mac in 87 or 88. Certainly seemed more advanced than quickbasic was on the PC in that era.
But linux is the most open source friendly OS. And it would definatley help. And all the mailing lists are just people asking questions w/o any answers. B/c there is no strong push for this kind of stuff with the MacOS.
if there's any anyone interested in helping me write a port to the TI-8X calculator, let me know..!
[i have no idea if i'm kidding or not..]
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
1) kernel design: As everyone who actually has studied system architecture knows, MACH is not a retrograde version of unix, it the most advanced superset of unix design principles (indeed, it is linux which is widely regarded as being DOA from an engineering perspective). And as for being dead - well, like it or not, NT is based on a mK: can't get more maindtream than that!
As a result, OS/X is widely parised by conaisseurs as representing the epitome of kernel elegance & extensibility:
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/2q00/macos-x-dp 4/macos-x-dp4-1.html
And here are the key documents:
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/system/ documentation/developer/systemoverview.p df
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/system/ documentattion/developer/kernel/kernelen vironment.pdf
2) programming model: As everyone who has studied language design knows, ObjectiveC is not some retrograde version of C++, which is ultimately little more than a statically typed set of pseudo-object extentions bolted onto a procedural language; ObjectiveC has a front-end that looks & feels like a pure OOP, and a back-end which emits C. Therefore it does not have make all the comprimises that C++ must in order to attain OOP, yet retains all the 'virtues' of still producing low-level code that lots of programmers were originally trained in.
As a result, NextStep/Cocoa is widely regarded by conaisseurs as the preeminent development platform ever created.
Here is the key document - a small gem, which could easily serve as self-contained textbook for an Progamming 101:
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/system/ documentation/developer/cocoa/objectivec .pdf
Noneltheless, despite getting all his facts severly wrong, this fellows's consclusions have a scary foundation.
Apple has indeed before taken developers down the garden path before (and discarding truly amazing stuff like Taligent).
And they appear to be doing it all over again!!!
http://www.stepwise.com/articles/2000-06-21.01.htm l
So just as Apple finally has the definitive environment ... including the Opensource implementations - Darwin & http://www.gnustep.org ... it starts shooting itself in the foot again.
Once bitten, twice shy!!
So our ignorant friend should not necessarily be ignored.
A word to the wise!
ps: if the url's are not precisely correct, the root is:
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/macosx. html
Since John Norstad released the code to NewsWatcher under a very permissive (BSD-like) license, it spawned a long list of feature-enhanced derivatives: YA-NewsWatcher, MT-NewsWatcher, WS-NewsWatcher, Value-Added NewsWatcher.
And his use of a permissive BSD-like license instead of something like the GPL is the reason why we now have at least five different versions of NewsWatcher (not including Microsoft Internet Mail and News), instead of just two: the original, and one which incorporates all of the improvements.
It's kind of like this really old sink I saw at summer camp, which had both hot and cold water -- from separate faucets. NewsWatcher perfectly illustrates RMS's point that simply giving away the source is not sufficient to make software free.
jax
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
But ... it IS free.