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Apple Releases Rendezvous As Open Source

Posted by pudge on from the and-darwin-6.1-too dept.

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."

4 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Re:APSL takes away rights by BlueGecko · · Score: 5, Insightful
    * 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.
  2. Re:ahhh, newspeak by spankalee · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. It's the technology, stupid. by marmoset · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Rendezvous, SLP, and UPnP by maggard · · Score: 5, Informative
    OK - complete karmawhore here (like I need it) but before there are a hundred what is it? posts here are links to the answers:

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

    Finally, for completeness here is UPnP:

    --
    I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.