JKH on OS X

Jordan Hubbard, co-founder of the FreeBSD Project speaks out about OS X, its significance to the geek, and whether it may be the David that brings about Goliath Microsoft's downfall, in this Salon.com article.

Comments

Don't expect all of OS X to be open-source

[edhall]

Jordan writes that open-sourcing OS X would be a "very bold and aggressively forward-thinking" thing for Apple to do. That may be an understatement; I'm sure there are many at Apple who feel it would be suicide.

Apple makes a lot of their money from selling hardware. Say what you want about the price/performance of that hardware, people buy it not just because of its looks (perhaps in spite of them), but because it is the only way to obtain the Mac GUI and run Mac apps. Open-source all of OS X, and in a matter of weeks the Mac GUI will be running on non-Apple hardware that costs a third of Apple's prices, and in a matter of months the Mac apps will start to follow. At least this would be their fear, and it is hardly a groundless one.

I agree with Jordan that leveraging OS X's open-source-friendly Unix base with the Mac GUI and apps would create a major force to be reckoned with -- perhaps even the Microsoft-toppling force he envisions. But I don't think Apple sees their share of that potential market as offsetting the downside to their hardware business. Perhaps there is a way they can assure a sufficient fraction of the resulting software market to make up for that loss, but I've yet to see a convincing argument of how they could do so.

-Ed