GNU-Darwin Dropping Cocoa, PPC Support

Johnny Mnemonic writes "MacSlash is reporting that the Gnu-Darwin ports project has taken issue with some of Apple's current policies, to the extent of: 'GNU-Darwin will not support or distribute any software which links to proprietary libraries, and that includes Cocoa, Carbon, CoreAudio, etc. There will be no native package manager from GNU-Darwin (pkg_add suffices). Second, we will be moving our operations to x86, and we are putting the ppc collection into maintenance mode.' Astonished reaction on MacSlash, and recognition of the Fink alternative. Is this a worthy principled stand, or is it more like Kruschev banging his shoe in the UN? Will this help or hurt Apple's adoption of GPL technology?"

Comments

Re:Utter Stupidity

[Uruk]

They didn't really have a choice. If you want to stand up for software freedom, this is pretty much what you have to do. Look at the licenses on the other software components that they're talking about, and it's understandable why they did what they did.

Your comment seems to assume that software popularity and utility are the most important. They are to some people. But people who want to use the GPL to make a principled stand don't see software just in terms of its utilitarian applications, but also as an issue of freedom. And for them, this makes a lot of sense.