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Apple Plans To Release Rendezvous As Open Source

Posted by timothy on from the so-it-won't-be-a-secret-rendezvous dept.

Snuffub writes "According to MacCentral, Apple announced during an interview today that they would be releasing Rendezvous, their implementation of the zeroconf standard, under an open source license. I can't see this as being anything but great news for everyone involved -- the community gets a mature implementation of an emerging technology, and Apple benefits as more devices are created to support Rendezvous. For everyone interested, you'll be able to download the source from Apple's site in a couple weeks." uglyhead69 adds: "The article is light on details and doesn't mention what license will be used, but it's probably safe to assume that it's the APSL."

3 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Peripherals! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The last Stevenote showed this off, a PowerbookG4 being walked in range of a Rendezvous enabled HP printer, they were configured on the fly by the OS and in seconds they were able to print to it. No wires, multiple users, no configuration. Besides iTunes p2p music library (it automatically locates other Rendezvous enabled Mac's and adds their music library to yours, streaming wise, it doesn't actually transfer the music ;) )

    Many, many possibilities here.

  2. Smart business move by Infonaut · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This is one way Apple can align themselves more closely with users of other *NIX OSes. By helping to improve easier connectivity between various non-MS OSes, Apple is essentially saying: "Look, you can now easily hook into a Windows network on a Mac. But, you can do even more if you're using a network with OS X, Linux, BSD, et. al."

    From Apple's point of view, anything that puts Microsoft outside a large pool of functionality is good. Essentially, it's an attempt to conduct a reverse embrace and extend. Take something that was already there, improve it, then give it back.

    Apple isn't doing this out of selfless motives. But the fact is, they're doing it. Pretty cool indeed. I've been using 10.2 since the public release, and I'm impressed by Rendezvous, and I can't wait to use it with Linux as well.

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  3. My implementation by The-Dork · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I implemented one of the Zeroconf internet drafts on Linux for a class project. It can be found here.
    It is in no way a complete implementation, but got me an 'A' grade :)

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