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Wilfredo Sanchez Leaves Apple

An unnamed correspondent writes: "At least, that's the rumor on the street. Wonder what this will mean for Apple's Darwin project?" The rumor is confirmed, boys and girls, Wilfredo Sanchez has indeed left Apple. A statement is on his Advogato page; apparently he has gone to KnowNow. Sanchez says on that page too that he'll still be involved with Darwin maintaining Apache and Perl for that platform.

23 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sure enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2
    Wilfredo,

    what a horrible breach of protocol. And with a sub-100000 user number, you should know better. Appropriate first post comments would be:

    • frist post bzatches
    • wh00t
    • french toast
    • bouillabaisse
    • fp
    • who da man
    • 1 0wn j00
    • etc

    best of luck.

  2. Re:Sure enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Well considering that Apple spent 10 years with both thumbs it's ass when it was supposed to be building a modern operating system, I can believe they would resent the man brought in to make sure they do their job this time.

    Apple had some great UI people, but the ideology there was that the 1984 Way was the best Way, but sometimes to get a new shiny thing on the shelf that people will migrate to (not "upgrade to"), you have to break some eggs.

    The irony of your flame is that most of the UI bitching I've seen is from the NeXT crowd, not the Mac users. (The biggest Mac user bitch seems to be the lack of a Control Strip, and that could be emulated with the Dock without much effort.)

  3. A sub-100 000 UID is cool? by Paul+Crowley · · Score: 2

    I believe the expression is "w00t!"
    --

  4. Re:Apple got what they wanted... by MouseR · · Score: 2

    why keep Darwin around after it served it's purpose?

    Duh! You dont know what you're talking about.

    Darwin is the core of Mac OS X. It has not yet served it's purpose. I'ts futur is to start on march 24th.

    Inform yourself, THEN criticize.

    Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.

  5. Re:developmental by Webmonger · · Score: 2

    Actually, one programmer can make all the difference. Studies have shown that some star programmers are ten times as productive as other programmers.

  6. Re:Is OS X taking off? by iso · · Score: 2

    i tried the Public Beta when it came out, and it was alright. i have a G3/350 at home, and it was pretty sluggish, especially with classic. i think i used the Public Beta for all of about four days before i gave up on it.

    i got really curious recently however, and "procured" a copy of a more recent beta, build 4k33. the difference is like night and day: it now runs very efficiently on my G3, classic actually works like a charm, and despite a few little bugs here and there i've had absolutely no problems with it. about 90% of my issues with the interface have been fixed, and i've been using it as my primary OS for a few weeks now.

    i've tried a lot of operating systems at the beta level over the years, but OS X is by far the most solid of any supposedly "beta" release i've ever seen; i think Apple finally got it right. OS X is well on its way to being the best operating system i've ever used.

    - j

  7. You dissin' Tiger Beat? by Infonaut · · Score: 2
    Huh? If they'd only show pix of Britney with an iBook, it would be the perfect computing magazine!

    ;-)

    --
    Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
  8. Re:Sure enough by wsanchez · · Score: 2

    My sincerest apologies. I will try to do better next time.

  9. Re:Sure enough by wsanchez · · Score: 2

    Post-Disney and pre-Apple.

  10. Re:ummm.... by Bill+Daras · · Score: 2

    Actually, I was a Mac user from 1994-2000 to be exact. (My iMac's analog video card burned out like so many others and I'm now Mac-less and not going back).

    Amelio screwed up, but he also cut the crap out of Apple and basically did all the dirty work, and then, before he had a chance to actually move the company forward, Steve had him kicked out. Jobs came back and "saved" the company. If Amelio hadn't done what he had done there wouldn't of been an Apple for Steve to come back to, or there wouldn't have been one for very long after his return.

  11. Re:developmental by Bill+Daras · · Score: 2
    Recall when Steve left Apple, it was not the end of the world for Apple and they did well for their core audience.

    Apple actually did a hell of a lot better after he wasn't there to screw things up anymore.
  12. Re:Calm down, guys! by Golias · · Score: 2
    Look, I know from following the Darwin lists that Wilfredo Sanchez is a huge contributor but -- front page Slashdot news? The Mac sites aren't making such a big deal about this. It's not like Steve Jobs or Avie Tevanian is leaving.

    The story doesn't matter much to Mac users, because Darwin is a "fringe" product from their perspective. One Darwin engineer leaving Apple's payroll does not impact the future of OS X very much.

    The story is of interest to the Linux-ish crowd because Darwin is YAFUC (Yet Another Free Unix Clone). Once OS X ships, it will probably become the most-used BSD-based OS in the world within a matter of months, and since Darwin is a Free-Beer-Free-Speech spin-off built with the same kernel, a lot of BSD hackers are going to be interested in it.

    --

    Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

  13. Smart move. by AFCArchvile · · Score: 2

    If I ever saw BSD running on a fruity translucent box, I'd run like hell too. And if I had a gun, I'd empty the clip shooting at the damned thing!

    --
    "Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
  14. developmental by pra9ma · · Score: 2

    One developer leaving would not affect the continuity of an entire Operating System as it is often a team of developers who create it and not a sole entity. Recall when Steve left Apple, it was not the end of the world for Apple and they did well for their core audience.

    Developers who leave may hinder a faster progress date but they would not jeapordize a project. Think about it you have a team of developers who work on a project and any company who would be moronic enough to have a sole person in charge of the whole thing would be ludicrous. People come and go daily in Sillycone Valley, yet you don't see companies falling as fast.

    --
    It is better to be feared than loved
  15. I CAN SEE THE FUTURE. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3
    With my mighty psychic powers and common sense, i can tell what this Slashdot thread will look like in 24 hours:
    • There will be between 110 and 160 comments, no more than 106 of which will have score:1 or higher.
    • At least 30 posts will be gibberish.
    • At least 40 posts will viciously attack apple in a completely unreasonable manner.
    • At least 20 posts will viciously attack apple for things that it is quite reasonable to attack them for, but which have little or nothing to do with Wilfredo Sanchez leaving apple.
    • At least 10 posts will contain bizarre vicious attacks on BSD from people who, upon examination, appear to be slightly unclear on what exactly BSD is.
    • No more than fourteen posts will actually be informed.
    • There will be between 10 and 30 posts which are well-thought-out and in general worth reading, but not particularly helpful or directly relevant.
    • No more than six posts will have anything directly to do with Wilfredo Sanchez.
    • There will be at least one utterance of the words "I will no longer be doing with apple computer" from an individual who has never owned an apple product in their life.
  16. Awesome buzzword desnity by warmcat · · Score: 3

    ''Our Zero-Install JavaScript microserver transforms static Web pages into Dynamic HTML user interfaces by wiring them into a peer-to-peer XML message bus. By sidestepping the cost and incompatibilities of Java or ActiveX applets, ESP app developers can immediately leverage the massive installed base of 4th-generation Web browsers. Furthermore, choosing to route across the KNN can leverage our pre-provisioned real-time content, security, peering with wireless carriers, and personalized prioritization engine to deliver the right information, at the right time, on the right device, to the right people & programs.''

    Good job they went stealth, buzzwords this dense could easily have ripped space-time.

  17. Re:Is OS X taking off? by deeny · · Score: 3
    As Jobs said in his MacWorldExpo keynote, they expected to sell 10k of the MacOS X Public Beta and they sold 100k. The release won't ship until 3/24, but it is really solid.

    I've had two issues with it:

    1) Connecting from an old Mac to the X box using FileSharing over TCP/IP caused the Mach kernel's AFP layer to harf. To get the service going again, I had to restart (kernel services being a bummer that way). This was a known limitation; I just didn't know it.

    2) There was some issue where it wouldn't create additional terminal windows and, when pushed, it eventually wound up with a kernel panic. I sent in the backtrace. This was apparently also a known problem with some kind of memory leak.

    Minor stuff really, not problems I'd have in everyday use.

    But for using, hard, a beta OS for a couple months, not a bad track record. It will replace Linux as my home desktop OS (already has for the most part); it has more creature comforts to offer and, with open source under the hood, little of the prior MacOS's disadvantages.

    _Deirdre

  18. Re:Calm down, guys! by update() · · Score: 3
    ...and by the way, I always have to laugh at Linux maniacs who have the attitude that they're the hyperrational ubergeeks while the rest of the world chooses their technology according to marketing, eyecandy or some other "Joe Sixpack" criterion. Meanwhile, their primary concerns are 1) translucent shading and 2) which free software celebrity is putting his name on it.

    Advocates of Freehand and Illustrator have some nasty flame wars, but you don't see them dropping developers' names like fashion slaves talking about designers.

  19. Alfredo's post to the darwin dev list by empath · · Score: 4

    To: Darwin Development
    Subject: In case you haven't heard

    You may have noticed that my email now tends to come from MIT instead of Apple.

    I no longer work at Apple. I now work for a company called KnowNow.
    My last day at Apple was Friday 2/2.

    You may also have noticed that I've since then helped Chuck import cscope, fixed a nasty in mod_perl, fixed up libtool some because I'm porting (Apache) APRlib to Darwin and tweak flex to install libfl.a as a link to libl.a. You might therefore come to the conclusion that my involvement with Darwin is not exactly over, and you would be correct.

    For what it's worth, I've left those things I can no longer reach in good and capable hands; I couldn't have left them otherwise. As the one guy on "Dark Angel" says: "It's all good, all the time."

    Pleasant hacking,
    -Fred

    Wilfredo Sanchez - wsanchez@mit.edu

    --
    "Please don't sigh like that, maam"
  20. Information about KnowNow by Ryu2 · · Score: 4

    Their actual page seems to be like that of Transmeta pre-2000... but the Google cache works wonders.

    --
    There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
  21. Sure enough by wsanchez · · Score: 4

    Yep.

  22. Waitaminute by firewort · · Score: 5

    Wilfredo Sanchez still has commit access on FreeBSD and Darwin, so even if he's gone to work for someone else, he still has the power to effect the code of major projects.

    Provided that FreeBSD remains as popular in the server market, and provided that Apple continues to integrate improvments in Darwin into their commercial release of OsX, then I expect we'll be seeing more work from Wilfredo Sanchez in the products we use.

    No cause for alarm.

    A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close

    --

  23. Calm down, guys! by update() · · Score: 5
    Look, I know from following the Darwin lists that Wilfredo Sanchez is a huge contributor but -- front page Slashdot news? The Mac sites aren't making such a big deal about this. It's not like Steve Jobs or Avie Tevanian is leaving.

    The free software world has this habit of latching on to whichever developer brings himself to their attention. Just try to explain to people that Jamie Zawinski didn't singlehandedly write Navigator or that Jason Haas isn't doing PowerPC Linux entirely on his own.

    Again, no disrespect to Wilfredo (or JWZ or Jason, for that matter). I know he was extremely important in OS X development. But this sort of "Stop the presses! RASTER QUIT HIS JOB AT RED HAT!" mentality strikes me as more appropriate for Tiger Beat.