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

Re:APSL is no opensource

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL - 6 pages of legalsleaze 25000+ words.
BSD - 1/4 page less than 300 words.

BSD code can be used in GPL
GPL code can't be used in BSD

Looks like BSD is MORE Open Source than your 'real open source' idea. Oh, and next time Bruce, post with your name.

bad link...

[NNland]

I don't know what's up with the apple webservers, but they have a problem with;
http://developer.apple.com/Darwin/
as listed in the link above. Switching it to;
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/
works fine though.

for what it's worth

[Anonymous Cowrad]

this is also being discussed on macslash.

the article can be found here

Since when was aqua a protocol?

[cduffy]

Keeping some user interface code closed is not a big deal. Keeping core OS code, interoperability-related code or protocols themselves closed is. Apple's position is reasonable.

Re:APSL takes away rights

[BlueGecko]

* Apple sued developers of the KDE and Gnome themes that were "confusingly similar" to their Aqua theme?

Like it or not, Apple spent a good deal of money developing Aqua and cultivating its image. When users see Aqua, they immediately recognize it as an OS X system. It's like the distinctive styling of Jaguars and BMW that make it so easy to identify them even from a good distance. The KDE and GNOME themes threatened to destroy that branding before it got off the ground. I fail to see what's wrong with that. Apple didn't ban KDE or GNOME from transparency, or blueness, or even clumping all the window widgets together on the left. They just didn't want them copying their branding. Is it that hard to come up with your own unique theme without copying someone else? Or do you just have to have permission to flat out plagiarize everything you see?

* Made the decision to keep their window manager closed, in order to keep the community from benefiting?

So, just to make sure I'm entirely and 100% clear on this, your basic problem is that Apple only released all of their base system (which included many parts--NetInfo, OpenDirectory, OpenTransport, the HFS+ filing system, CoreFoundation, OpenPlay, and Rendezvous, just to name a few--that they had absolutely no requirement whatsoever to release) and not the entire system. Apple did not release that core because it is what distinguishes the experience from so many other pgorams, but still, look at all of the stuff you did get. Instead of focusing on the fact that Quartz, which probably cost millions to develop, remained closed, why not be happy that they have given you an excellent directory technology (NetInfo) and some very good networking technologies under an open-source license.

As for your complaint about the APSL: the APSL is recognized by OSI as a valid license, so unless your beef is with all of OSI, I'm not going to accept your complaint about the APSL unless you can be more specific about how it's taking rights away.

Re:yes it is nice shame its not compatable with GP

[BlueGecko]

so from this *BSD nor Linux can NOT use the code

I don't understand where this comes from. You cannot easily integrate Darwin's source directly into the kernel, but certainly all of their independent libraries and programs are absolutely fine, and unless someone has a really convincing argument otherwise, since closed-source drivers can be linked with the kernel through loadable modules, I would assume that any of this code can be linked that way as well. In fact, while it is no longer under development, there was a project to integrate NetInfo with Linux. They apparently saw no problem. So what, specifically, makes this impossible, in your opinion?

Re:ahhh, newspeak

[spankalee]

How is Aqua a "core protocol"?

You can't be happy that Apple is participating in open source, you want them to give away everything. It's simple business that Apple has to retain some value added features in order to have something to sell (of course I'm sure you'd rather they gave everything away). Plus they wrote Aqua from scratch, it doesn't use open source code. Originally based on Display PostScript, they had to re-write the entire windowing and graphics system, and you want them to give that away? Basically, you're jealous.

They are not using open source like M$ used BDS tcp/ip stack, this is pure FUD. By all accounts they are contributing back to the projects they use, and are releaseing the core of their operating system as open source that even comes ready to run on open x86 hardware. They also hired Jordan Hubbard in part to make sure that they were able to work better with the *BSD projects.

Opensource.org

[bherrmann7]

I thought the trade marked opensource.org community says Apple's license is open source. Can't we rely on them to police these licenses?

Re:yes it is nice shame its not compatable with GP

[spankalee]

APL is compatible with BSD, and they do give back the the *BSD projects, even though the BSD license doesn require it, as well as release Darwin as open source.

It's the technology, stupid.

[marmoset]

So far we have several dozen posts complaining about licenses (so very Slashdot of you, really), and no one talking about why releasing the Releasing the Rendezvous source is so cool. Zeroconf is cool stuff. Imagine setting up a dozen machines at a conference or a LAN party and having them automatically self-configure their networking and discover each others services, without having to worry about subnet masks or a DHCP server. They already demoed a forthcoming version of iTunes that lets you play music from another 802.11 connected laptop without any configuration.

Oh, but I forgot -- bitching about the license is more important.

Re:It's the technology, stupid.

[Morth]

Imagine standing outside your local mac tech shop. Their network runs ZeroConf, when you open your iBook you are greeted on to their corporate LAN. It may be secure but it sounds likely that it is more Zero Security and lots of Conf to make it secure.

This scenario is not more applicable with zeroconf than without it. To use zeroconf you must have access to the network data, and if you do you have already compromised the network. It's not much harder to configure an ip yourself than getting one by zeroconf. And it's not much harder to sniff the network for service discovery either when you know how.

Rendezvous, SLP, and UPnP

[maggard]

OK - complete karmawhore here (like I need it) but before there are a hundred what is it? posts here are links to the answers:

• IETF Zero Configuration Networking (Zeroconf) Group
• IETF Zeroconf on Apple Rendezvous and Zeroconf
• Apple's Customer-pitch for Rendezvous
• Apple's Developer-pitch for Rendezvous

Here's an overview of earlier Apple implementation called SLP (RFC 2608) also used by Novell:

• Service Location Protocol

Finally, for completeness here is UPnP:

• Universal Plug and Play Forum
• MS's Developer kit
• Intel's Developer info
• Intel-developed SDK, Open Sourced.

Re:APSL takes away rights

[BlackGriffen]

"Apple sued developers of the KDE and Gnome themes that were "confusingly similar" to their Aqua theme?"

That has nothing to do with source code and everything to do with branding. Apple wants people to be able to look at the screen and say, "Oh, that's a Mac," like they have done for years.

"Made the decision to keep their window manager closed, in order to keep the community from benefiting?"

There's a very good reason for closed sourcing the the window manager. Any monkey can find a free BSD variant online, but the window manager is sufficiently different from X and it's managers to make it stand out, so Apple doesn't want to lose that competitive advantage. If Apple lets go of that, then there would be no reason to buy a Mac when 50 clones came out on the x86 platform. Simply put, Apple isn't just in the business of building computers, and because they also make the operating system, they cannot afford to open source all of it unless they are willing to let go of what competitive advantages they do have.

Besides, I was under the impression that parts of the Red Hat distro were proprietary, no?

BlackGriffen

Re:on so many levels.....

[MalleusEBHC]

Sorry, but _your_ argument fails on one fundamental level: Apple is not required in the slightest to open source anything under any license. You should be happy that they have chosen to open source a lot of stuff under an OSI acceptable license. It's trolls like you who forget that Apple is a company, a company that needs to make a profit.

Re:Darwin 6.0.1 not the latest

[Draoi]

The 6.1 MacOS X kernel update only came out a few days ago by Software Update. Boxed Jaguar is still only 6.0.1, as is the latest Darwin release. The above references are confusing as they refer to both 6.0.1 and 6.1

One Apple developer on the darwin-developer mailing list hinted strongly that 6.1 Darwin would be out shortly.

That's not news.

[Arker]

Darwin's been on x86 from the beginning. It's the higher level GUI systems that are PPC only.

Re:That's not news.

[Anonymous Coward]

...correction. It's their higher level GUI systems that are RELEASED for PPC only.

Re:APSL takes away rights

[BitGeek]

APSL only works to take away the rights of the users

Are you really so stupid that you think a license granting rights to source code with conditions is "taking away" rights?

They cant' take away rights to their property that was never given.

YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS TO APPLE PRODUCTS OR SOURCE.

Furthermore, its clear that you think suing somebody who STEALS YOUR PROPERTY is a violation of rights.

Great. Can I have your car?

Re:APSL takes away rights

[BitGeek]

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.

I love how apple "ripped off the dock" from operating systems that were released well after NeXTSTEP.

We all know they have amazing powers of time travel-- "stealing future technology for the needs of today!"

Sheesh.

Nevermind that the entirety of the look and feel of every Linux box is a blatent ripoff of the creation of Apple computer (with a trivial amount licensed from Xerox.)

No, lets pretend that isn't the case. sure.

Something glazed over....

[Brat Food]

One thing that sems to be missing in all of this is that Apple is a public, for profit company, releasing code in to the public domain.

While im sure the GPL et al. are great, what apple does is give themselves some protection, and try to make it so that their code doesnt get forked and messy with no way "keep up" with it. To illustrate the point, lets say rendevous is released under a "take it and do whatever the hell you like" liscense. CompanyA decides to add something, and releases a million widgets with their unpublised modification. Lets also say that this modificaiotn makes their produch not interroperate with anything else based on the standard. Now, while you may say "thats companyA's perogative", you are also probably not realizing that companyA is so often microsoft. So you see, the protection built in stops companyA form "embrace, extend, break" and gives OTHERS using the standard sort of a guarentee that they wont be left out in the cold. If i find a bug, i can be sure that my addition will work with the standard that everyone has. Its not perfect, its not the same on the outside, but, to all you detractors, it has its inherant merits, and should not be judged with tunnel vision.