Apple Releases Rendezvous As Open Source

clarencek writes "Apple has released Rendezvous as Open Source, as promised. Excerpt: Starting today, developers can download Rendezvous as open source under the Apple Public Source License. Rendezvous is part of a broader Open Source release today from Apple which includes the Darwin 6.0.1 operating system and additional Open Directory plug-ins. Together, these underscore Apple's commitment to making core protocols freely available as open standards and open source."

Comments

ahhh, newspeak

[SubtleNuance]

making core protocols freely available as open standards and open source.

except aqua that is...

Apple is using *BSD and Opensource like MS used BSD's tcp/ip... dont get fooled again.

on so many levels.....

[johnjones]

ok

sigh

no your cant easily integrate it in but a good start and it helps if at least you can copy and paste things like strucs from one bit of code to another

I for one dont want to have to sign up to the apple licence when I install a linux distro do you ?

in the end
yes you can fsck around with things but its alot nicer if someone does a nice port rather than "just makeing it work" which is what you seem to be saying regardless of what you have to sign up for

sorry your argument fails on so many levels

regards

John Jones

Re:APSL takes away rights

[dh003i]

Yada yada yada. Users have the right to make their OS look like whatever the hell they want to, whether those users are using Linux, Windows, OS X or whatever else. If a user wants to make WindowMaker look like Aqua, they'll do it by theming. Offering pre-made themes for downloading just saves people that hassle.

You don't see the OSS/FS community bitching because Apple ripped off the dock, which is used in so many of our Window Managers, do you? No.

Apple doesn't prohibit us from using "transparency, or blueness"...Actually, they do want to do that. They don't want to allow anyone else to make a theme which has a glassy/transparent blue look to it.

So fuck Apple. I have the right to make my UI look like whatever the hell I want to.

Personally, I think Aqua's theme sucks. Tacky and tasteless like a two-dollar whore. I'd much prefer a simple no-thrills theme which is clean and neat. Though I'll say you shouldn't use themes in OSX (as it'll make your system unbootable), the best themes for OSX are BeOS, NeXT, and Sosumi. All of them are simple and clean.

Re:It's the technology, stupid.

[BitGeek]

If you can't accept it on the terms they offer it, it's the same as not releasing it at all.

Oh, don't be silly. In this situation all the reasonable people get the source and the Free-As-In-Totalitarian Nazis are the only ones who don't get it.

As to your fud about Apple suing you, you'd better provide some examples rather than just spouting such bullshit.

Show me a single example of Apple suing a developer who complied with their Open Source license.

Its OPEN SOURCE. TM and Certified.

Just cause you're a socialist all-property-must-be-free doesn't mean Apple didn't release their software as OPEN SOURCE.

And if you don't like it, fine. We don't care.

Re:APSL takes away rights

[dh003i]

Oh, please. Firstly, if you believe there weren't docks and such before NeXT, your fulla shit.

Secondly, Apple did not invent the NeXT look. NeXT did. NeXT was a separate company, with an abysmal profit situation. After they stopped selling the NeXT OS on NeXT boxes, people in the Linux world wanted something that felt like NeXT. Hence GNUstep & WindowMaker. Its a users right to use and get whatever interface they like; if the company that produced that interface stops selling it or goes out of business (as is the case with NeXT and Be), then you should expect users to make a replacement for themselves (i.e., GNUstep / Windowmaker, or BlueOS & OpenBe).

In short, there were docks before NeXT. It invented nothing new in that regard (though column-file navigation, I believe, was NeXT's invention). And people who developed GPL'ed alternatives comparable to NeXT (Windowmaker and GNUstep) did not rip off Apple (as Apple hadn't made them), nor NeXT (as NeXT had stopped selling them, and even had they not, we have the right to make improvements to our UI).

Besides, the idea of patenting or copyrighting or whatever a "GUI's feel" is outrageous. Progress in GUI's is greatly aided by different people copying the good ideas of others; why waste time & effort coming up with a alternate solution to the problem when a good one has already been deviced?

Apple took plenty from the FS / OSS communities via the UNIX-tools they incorporated into OS X. They pretty much took it unmodified and recompiled it for Apple hardware. A little bit hypocritical for them to ask that no one copy some of their good ideas.

The whole market of ideas is dependant on the abillity of one company or in this case volunteer effort to copy the good ideas of another; not their exact implementation, but certainly the idea behind them. First Porsches & Jaguars had rounded headlights, then Mercedes Benz' had rounded headlights, now Ford Taurus' and every commoner car have headlights. Hardly anything wrong with that. What you want is for one company like Apple to be able to obtain IP rights over something very general, like "a column view file navigator" or "the dock". This is outrageous.

As for using the Mac interface, if I want to use something that looks like Aqua, I can manipulate my themes for WindowMaker to look like that; there's nothing Apple can do to stop me from doing that. Why shouldn't I be able to save others that trouble and prevent them from having to do that?