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Apple Plans To Release Rendezvous As Open Source
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."
I believe Windows XP's Universal Plug and Play is similar to this... it auto-discovers network components, such as gateways, etc and allows the OS to determine the external IP address, for example, which is useful in some applications. But this seems a whole lot cooler... and now that it's open source, hopefully we'll see it get integrated into a lot more OSes. Apple is really good when it comes to the "innovation" and "ease-of-use" way of doing things.
I think Apple should allow the Open Source developer community access to the code bacause ...
oh wait. they already have?
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Recent interview post here. Stuart is awesome (he wrote Bolo).
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.
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.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
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
The statement below is true.
The statement above is false.
Apple didn't really have a choice on this one. The only way their technology will become successful is if it is accepted and supported by a large number of companies. If its open source, why not include it in your next hardware release?
SIGFAULT
Suppose you want to write a distributed system.
Lots of processes running on an array of machines. Say for example you have a data center full of racks of 1U servers, and each one is cranking away on some part of the application code. You have redundant processes scattered around too, so if one machine takes a dive, you want the whole application to stay up and running anyway.
Imagine you're the administrator of this system. How do you tell each little process in the system what IP address and TCP port to use so that every other process in the system knows where to find it?
Without Rendezvous, you have several options-- all of them unappealing. You might start with some kind of application specific configuration file format and a cobbled-together system for distributing such data around to all the hosts in the system. You might instead store such network configuration in some directory server on the network, like DNS or LDAP or some kind of custom front end to some kind of evil database backend.
Either way, you quickly encounter what we veterans like to call "the cache coherency problem," i.e. the information in the directory must be consistent at all times with the actual state of the processes in the system. Whenever processes start, stop, migrate or change their profile, you have to update the directory. Solving this problem with existing technology can be expensive. If you don't solve it, then single-point failure modes proliferate and the system becomes exponentially more difficult to manage the larger it gets.
With Rendezvous, the network itself is the directory service. Since all the little processes in the system are responsible for their own advertisements, there is no cache coherency problem. You don't have to assign addresses and ports to all your processes because the application can simply assign itself a set of abstract service names and discover all the instances of those services on the network with Rendezvous service discovery. No configuration files to keep updated. No dynamic updates to LDAP or DNS servers that might get overloaded, or may not be running or in the right place when they need to be.
Of course, there are alternatives to consider. You might think to use SLP (RFC 2608-2610), which you can download now from www.openslp.org, but strangely... SLP hasn't managed to get much traction in industry. Some say that's because it's too unwieldy to use effectively.
You should compare Rendezvous with OpenSLP and see which one you think is better.
--
jhw
I'd really like to be able to take my iBook (or any networked laptop, really) into a public place with the AirPort card turned on and have it not only pick up a base station signal, but every once in a while send out a signal over the wireless card to see if there are any other non-base-stationed wireless cards present that might want to hook up for a small wireless mini-LAN. This sounds like the kind of thing Rendezvous would be a great start for. It'd be a good way to meet people, too. Set up your machine with a little program that does the 'ping' for other machines and advertises whatever it is.
Ping.
iBook, OS 10.2, anyone around?
It'd be like combining Wardriving with those weird "Beep if someone you'll consider hot is nearby." things they were selling in Japan a while ago.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
If Apple uses the APSL, then the source code could not be used in Linux. I'm uncertain if Debian would accept any APSL submissions.
The issue to my mind is that Rendezvous needs popular adoption, and rapid acceptance would be best. If Apple has it in mind to emphasis Windows' network reliablity, then a GPL license would allow the technology to be integrated into Linux, and percolate into FreeBSD via ports. If Apple wants the most rapid adoption a source license can provide, the BSD license would be best, but then Microsoft would be free to embrace & extend.
This is why I root for the GPL in this case. Rendezvous is very cool technology, so Microsoft would either have to ignore it, attack its mindshare, impliment its own version, or bend knee to the GPL. Their own implimentation would be inferior for a time, and due to demand and early deployment, Microsoft would be unfairly judged as having an incompotent implimentation, rather than a primitive one. This would add pressure to move to non-Microsoft platforms. This is good for Apple, because non-Microsoft means Unix, and in many cases, that means MacOS X.
That's aside, however. I'm afraid that an APSL license would cause the source to stagnate except for the eyes of a few Wizards that learn from the implimentation and then develop their own (L)GPLed version.
I think I'm rambling.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
I like to think of Rendezvous as a much smarter analogue to NetBEUI, which I often refer to as the "butt sniffing protocol" that Windows machines use to detect each other in the absence of IP networking.
"There is no night so forlorn, no mood so bleak, that it cannot be infused with pleasure by tender meat..." - R.W. Apple
But seriously, Sharp has already embedded this technology in thier printers, so it's not just Epson, HP, and Lexmark that will be supporting this standard.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The more people who use this and the more machines that use this the more 'value' it provides to apple customers. Imagine: I walk into a company and hook up my Mac Notebook. I need to get printer access, one of the guys has a linux machine running rendezvous code, I can now print. That provides a heap of value to the person with a Mac. If it was MacOSX only it would be good for close shops. Also I don't think that this technology would be a deal breaker/winner. Eg I have to get a MacOSX box so I can use Redezvous. I am guessing iTunes, iDVD, iPhoto, Final Cut Pro, are all thinks that add to the deal winner for Apple. My guess is you won't ever see them open sourced.
Go out and get sailing!
Apple is in the business of selling clients. If all the vendors of servers (yes, your network printer is a server) adopt this technology, then they can sell more clients. It's that simple -- make it easy for everybody to implement Rendevous, and you make more money. This is different from Micro$oft's business model, which calls for controlling both the client and the server, so they don't make it easy to implement ANYTHING that's compatible with their software.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Just because you can find my address in the phone book, it does't make it any easier to break into my house. Rendevous doesn't ship any actual code around, so what's to carry the virus? About the worst that can happen is multiple machines come up with the same address -- but a malicious node on your network could make that happen WITHOUT Rendevous.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
hand me-downs. You mean like:
The Floppy Drive, no we had that first
The home computer, no we had that first too
The mouse, no we had that one first
The GUI, no Xerox had that but didn't want it, we got it and made it good.
Oh I know SCSI, no wait, that was another first for us.
You must mean USB, well yeah Intel developed that first, but they just sat on it, Apple ran with it and wow, now look where it is.
Oh you mean 64 bit processors for consumers, no wait that was us too.
You must mean M$ programs, no wait we had those first too.
Oh well
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I don't think you understand what Rendezvous does very well at all. It does not allow remote execution of code; it enables you to advertise and discover services on the network.
This means you don't need to know IP addresses and well known ports, or run port scanners to discover services. If your machine doesn't want to be found by Rendezvous, don't advertise your services with it.
One key thing that makes it smarter than UDDI and the like is that it is service-centric, not device-centric. You don't have to find a machine and try to open special ports to see if it has a webserver or SLP printer or SMTP relay or whatever, instead, you ask for a service that you already know the protocol for, and you find out if any devices that implement it are available.
The more Rendezvous-enabled devices and apps are out there, the more useful it is.
Apple has yet to reveal their clustering solution for Mac OS X and Xserve, but consider how easy Rendezvous will make this task.
zeroconf breaks applications in several ways, for instance:
zeroconf will be really nice when we figure out how to make it work well without breaking apps. It's unfortunate that Apple is trying to deploy a technology widely that has several serious known flaws and claim that it is a standard before those flaws are fixed.
(BTW, the English plural of "virus" is "viruses"; the Latin plural would be one of "viri" (pronounced "vee-ree"), "virorum", "viris", or "viros", depending on case.)
As I read the APSL, it's simply and open licence that also ensures that Apple remains removed from you. That seems perfectly reasonable. GNU doesn't like it because of the termination clause, but when you think about it, it's entirely nessesary. What if a version with your modifications becomes the norm, even becomes packaged with Apple machines. If that happens, and you get accused of infringing on someone elses patented work, Apple could be in serious trouble. By terminating the agreement and stopping distribution of your code, Apple can keep themselves free from you. Just because they terminate does not mean they will sue you. As near as I can tell, the APSL is a very very open license for a corporation and is what we arround here might call a Good Thing (TM).
OTOH, I seem to have picked up a flaw in the GPL, which may be the reason corporations have been slow to take up software released under the GPL. If as you say, proprietary or APSL and other less open licensed software was not permissable within GPL software, many companies would not want to take up that software. The reason being is many companies develop their own private modifications to software. For example, I worked for a time at a well know power company which shall remain nameless. This company had a software suit which they had purchased which provided for the creation and movement of troubleshooting "tickets". The software in it's basic form was useable, but the company had other needs. They wrote modifications to the software (with the original creators permission) to run within their networks and throughout the company. If under a GPL license the company would have had to opensource their modifications and release them under the GPL, the company would not have taken up the GPL software.
Freedom is a good thing, but forcing people to open their code is almost as bad as the closed code is.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
no, the .local TLD isn't in the current proposal,
it's been removed.
see draft-ietf-dnsext-mdns-12.txt
This might be a bit redundant, but it seems to me that the most interesting thing about all this is that Apple seems to have hit on a business model that actually makes money off open source software. First came OSX, which isn't really much more of a modifed PPC port of FreeBSD (Darwin) with a wicked nice (and nicely engineered) GUI (Aqua) slapped on top. Now we have Rendezvous, where Apple is making their implementation of an open standard open source, in hopes that its broad adoption will encourage people to buy Apple's software. Imagine what these guys could do with Ogg. . .
So maybe the moral of the story is this:
Of course, you can't attribute all (or even most) of Apple's financial success to their OSS endeavours, but (and I speak from personal experience here) OSX has changed Macs from cute little toys to a viable and intiguing alternative to x86 hardware. And if Rendezvous takes off, not only will it be a boon for the community, but Apple could do quite nicely as well. In the end though, Apple might be a pretty unique case: Apple is primarily a hadware vendor, and Apple's involvement with OSS primarily adds value to the hardware it sells (I'll buy a TiBook because it's the only game in town for running OSX), and there aren't a heck of a lot of hardware vendors who are in a position to duplicate what Apple is doing.
As I understand it (and by no means am I any sort of expert here), Stallman's main objection is that the APSL is asymmetric, in the sense that Apple, as the original creator of APSL'ed code, has more and different rights then subsequent modifiers of the code. Specifically, if you change ASPL'ed code, even if you don't publicly release the changes, you still have to notify Apple of the changes. In the eyes of GNU/FSF/Stallman, this is a violation of privacy which free software licenses should protect, and represents a central control over code which free software licenses should prevent. For more info, see This commentary on the GNU site.
Apple isn't doing this out of selfless motives. But the fact is, they're doing it. Pretty cool indeed.
I think that the coolness factor may have played a big part in Apple's reasons for this business move.
The hackers of the Open Source community are addicted to cool and will use this technology and exploit it to the maximum. I think this may have an even bigger effect than Sun's open sourcing of StarOffice because an office suite just doesn't have the same coolness factor. Sure, it's very important and the OpenOffice team have been doing a great work but it just doesn't scream "play with me!" to tinkerers and gadget freaks like this does...
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
...if the so-called "community" would spend less time playing wannabe lawyers arguing about licensing minutiae and spend more time developing new applications for users. The users you need to attract have never heard of Richard Stallman, buy shrinkwrapped software (including Linux, if and when they do use it), and judge an OS by the quality and range of applications available to run on it.
/. insults to users as too stupid to know what's good for them. In reality, they decide your future.)
Endless iterations of the same traditional Unix toolset, tools for the server side, and attempts to mimic Office and the Windows interface, won't cut it. Be imaginative.
When I've tried to explain Linux to people who make corporate buying decisions, their questions boil down to: Why buy a cheap knock-off when the real thing is available?
(Please try to refrain from the usual
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
... the GPL policy [which I understand to be, if you modify the code, your modifications have to be open source and GPLed and anyone should be allowed to use them]
Slight correction, which is often forgotten: If you modify the code and distribute the resulting program, you have to make it GPL. If you don't distribute the stuff, there's no requirement to make the changes available. I believe this is actually a requirement of the Free Software and/or Open Source definition (though I'm not absolutely sure).
I doubt, therefore I may be.
Billy Gates wrote:
3 229) that gives my reasons for believing that Apple did not use the DMCA. If OWC wants to change my mind, they can show me the letter from Apple legal that mentions the DMCA.
h tml) on open source databases.
> According to news.com [com.com]apple is using
> the dmca
Yesterday, I wrote a posting "First version of this story did *not* mention DMCA" (read it at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=38907&cid=416
> to make sure its itools software does not work
> with any other dvd player but there own internal
> ones
This has nothing to do with iTools (which kinda indicates that you might not have read the article you are refering to). Apple created *iDVD* to sell their SuperDrive equipped Macs. OWC was trying to warp iDVD so they could use it to sell OWC's own DVD drives. OWC was stealing Apple's work, against Apple's license, in order to compete with Apple in the DVD drive market. Apple is the victim here.
> Apple does not care about the opensource
> community
Ha! They have released Darwin and Quick Time Streaming Server (and next month Rendevous) as open source.
OS X includes such well loved open source and free software as GCC, Emacs, Apache, and Perl.
They provide documentation on using open source, such as this page (http://developer.apple.com/internet/macosx/osdb.
And Apple ships with Macs (compressed on the hard drive but available and free for install) and in the OS X retail boxes a free copy of their development suite (which now includes GCC 3.1). Upgrades are free for the download, or $20 for a FedEx-ed CD. This enables any Mac user that wants to, to develop as much open source as their little heart desires, without having to pay for development tools.
> like Enron care about profits above all else.
Companies have to care about their profits because their first duty is to their shareholders. But in order to get those profits (and they have to be real, not cooked books), they have to care about their customers and keeping them happy.
Apple does care about their customers, their shareholders, and even tries to benefit the industry as a whole (Firewire, Rendevous). In contrast, Microsoft takes their customers for granted, uses them, manipulates them, treats them like criminals. Microsoft also doesn't pay shareholders dividends, and their stock prices are no longer going up and up. Microsoft acquired more congresscritters than Enron, because they donated three times what Enron did in the 2000 elections. You can compare one of these two companies to Enron. The one isn't Apple.
BTW, thank you Apple, for gifting Rendevous to the open source community. It was an unexpected, and most pleasant surprise.
Yatta Jaguar!
"It's a miracle! The sea water has once again created new life."
Moll, "Rebirth of Mothra 2"
Why don't all the great OSS developers out there, who claim to be so wonderful at their abilities to create nearly identical products make their own Quick Time? I'm not trying to bash on people here or be a troll, but on one hand, you're complaining abou thow evil corporate software is, yet on the other hand, your demending a Quick Time port from Apple.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I started out as a rabid mac user, i did a lot of multimedia stuff in the early days, some time around the Quadra 840AV and a few years into the first PowerPC machines. Macs were fun and i could do what i wanted, which would have been way harder on PC platforms.
then when i went into hardcore web applications development and entered the corporate world, well, as cool as BBEdit is, i couldn't justify to my boss to get an expensive Mac Laptop over the DELL everyone gets. Win2K served its purpose, then DELL hardware and win2k started freaking out, randomly freezing the mouse, corrupting sectors on my hard drive. I lost *a lot* of time.
Then Apple came up with unix at the core of its OS. now as a developer, UNIX makes sense. my dell was crap. so my boss got me my early 400mhz TiBook, with OS 10.1. beautiful thing. it never ever crashes, i never need to reboot it aside from software upgrades, it does what i need it to and just WORKS.
What I'm trying to get at is:
How much are you willing to pay for "It Just Works". Frankly, I will wholeheartedly shell out an extra $1000 on an apple system running OS X, over any PC equivalent.
Why? Because:
1) eventhough linux occupies a special place in my heart while i'm running LinuxPPCQ4200 on an old PPC 7500 pci mac at home, it's still not the perfect desktop OS. It's getting very close with office suites, browsers, email clients, but it's not quite there yet.
2) there is no fucking way in hell i'll ever run windoz for any serious computing, in light of all the security holes this thing still has. Should i forget to disable netbios i don't wanna get fucked by script kiddies. plus the SSL issues, IE5/6+ scripting holes, i mean we could go on and on.
3) in the end i want an platform running an OS which has it all. and that's Mac OS X.
Until OS X came along, i'd say "fair enuff, macos is nice but it's really not all that powerful, not really enterprise-grade material and out-of-this-world networking. you can't really hack into it because you can't get command line. it's not super-stable. provided you've got good hardware, a clean install and some luck, you'll get great stability out of win2k. All in all, provided it doesn't crash on me, i can do more things pertinent to my job in win2k than macos, such as running cygwin".
But since mac os 10.1 came out, and now 10.2, in my book there is no other solution for serious computing, for doing work under tight deadlines, for which you are getting paid non-negligeable amounts of money, and where your ass is on the line, i know OS X's got my back.
Don't get me wrong i'm not saying apple systems are good for everyone, they *are* more expensive.
It boils down to this:
How much is dependability worth to you? How much is your time worth to you? to me, priceless.
Oh another thing worth noting ... apple's "digital lifestyle" concept works very well. i bought a sony digital camera, an ipod, i don't even own a dvd player but my TiBook does play DVDs so i buy DVDs. apple's iSoftwareSuite freakin' rocks. iPhoto totally ownz.
I've installed GNOME and Oroborus, i play Tetris in xemacs under OS X.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
keith, can rendezvous-based packets be routed across a wan using multicast routing (like dvmrp or pim) to enable applications to function?
no, mDNS/LLMNR is supposed to use link-local multicast scope for queries, and linklocal IPv4 is not supposed to be routed. however another problem with rendezvous/zeroconf is that (at least in the current specs) it's not clear that mDNS/LLMNR and linklocal IPv4 have the same scope - so you could end up finding IP addresses via mDNS that aren't usable to you, or conversely
you could end up having local hosts that are accessible but which you can't find using mDNS even though they support it.
i.e. this is nowhere nearly ready for prime time
actually there are several drafts you should look at:
t -ietf-zeroconf-reqts-11.txtn s-12.txt
draft-ietf-zeroconf-ipv4-linklocal-07.txt
draf
draft-ietf-dnsext-md
and I think there's another one somewhere about
DNS service discovery, but I don't recall it offhand.