Slashdot Mirror
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?"
They're dropping these libraries but they haven't got anything worthwhile to replace them. This is a great way to kill their project.
Since when did apple adopt GPL technology? Darwin is based on BSD not gnu. Does OS-X even ship the gnu tool set by default?
Someone you trust is one of us.
For those who were wondering what the specific problems the GNU folks have with the APSL are, the GNU site lists their problems with the Apple License
Sounds like a project about to go down the tubes. Principles are nice, but when they get in the way of being an effective entity, it rapidly becomes prodigious to get rid of them rather than to cling to them. Any belief held too tightly can be harmful.
--
lds
"First, Apple continues the wall-of-silence with respect to their repugnant DMCA-based legal action, and there is no reason whatsoever for us to think that they will not undertake similar action in the future. It is regrettable that the DMCA was Apple-sponsored legislation, and it is now time for them to disavow it and promise never to employ it."
I think it's about time for Apple's actions to catch up with them. Frankly, they've made a lot of people mad over the years and it's nice to see a project so politically active. I just hope it doesn't destroy the project in the long run.
I couldn't get to the MacSlash article but I have to question the motivations of these GPL people. They say that Apple doesn't seem to be properly embracing GPL. Well that was never apple's motivation! They have been using the BSD license, and they use it a lot!! They both employ prominent members of the BSD community and have given back to the community in code as well.
I have to say I don't even understand the purpose of darwin-x86 myself. It seems like stupid factionalization again. If you want to run BSD and x86, run FreeBSD. If you want to run a secure server or a routing box, etc, go for OpenBSD. If you want to run on anything else, go for NetBSD. And if you want to run OSX...darwin! As it comes closer and closer into synch with FreeBSD, I just don't see the point.
I quite frankly hope that the gnu-darwin project falls into oblivion.
it won't help their project much.
_ __
Sure, they can't call the thing GNU if they keep all the proprietary stuff from the Cocoa angles in.
Apple is NOT ready to go all open-source with their stuff so its an impasse.
Can't really blame either side. The OSnews folks are plugging this in the commentaries as an example of closed-minded attitude of the GNU folks or either the greed of a silly corporation who has no clue.
I think that is the wrong response. It had to happen if the Gnu/Darwin project was going to stay true to its ideals. Still, moving Apple to be open-minded to open-source ideas is like moving a mountain with a spoon. It is happening but very slowly. I have worked for too many corporations to just get all knee-jerk and blast them immediately. They act of moving such a huge thing in a new direction is a slow process at best.
This is especially difficult when Apple is not really sure if it wants to change direction. On one hand it wants to open-source the tech or guts of the OS while at the same time protect its look and feel. It would be easier if Apple was totally sure of what it wanted.
_______________________________________________
ACK
What, the slashdot crowd says that standing on pricipals, even if it's like kicking yourself in the nuts, is a bad idea? How strange...
I'll probably get modded or flamed into oblivion for this, but here goes anyway...
Is this a worthy principled stand, or is it more like Kruschev banging his shoe in the UN?
No, it's more like a child on the playground at recess sitting down and crying in the middle of a touch football game because the other boys wanted to play with different rules. And then going off to play his own game on the other side of the playground by himself.
Maybe a bad analogy, but come on. From the statement on sourceforge, nothing in the situation has actually changed; it just seems like the project maintainers had been hoping that Apple would bow down and see the light, but it's been too long and they haven't. So we're taking our ball and going home.
If the APSL is not free software compliant, why not say that in the first place instead of finding issue with it now? If Apple's "support" of the DMCA was disgraceful, why bring it up now rather than before starting the project? I mean, I'm sure the burgeoning legions of x86 Darwin users will support you, but at the cost of alienanting all the PPC users. Priorities.
Donning nomex suit andd breathing mask; prepare for flaming in five, four, three, two.....
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Updates
Apple first released an updated version, 1.1, of the APSL but it remained unacceptable. They changed the termination clause into a ``suspension'' clause, but it still had the same kind of bad effects.
In January 2001, Apple released another version, ASPL 1.2. This version fixes two of the fatal flaws, but one still remains: any modified version "deployed" in an organization must be published. The APSL 1.2 has taken two large steps towards a free software license, but still has one more large step to take before it qualifies.
Below, is the original commentary on the first version of the APSL, version 1.0.
Original APSL Commentary
After studying Apple's new source code license, the APSL, I have concluded that it falls short of being a free software license. It has three fatal flaws, any of which would be sufficient to make the software less than free.
Disrespect for privacy
The APSL does not allow you to make a modified version and use it for your own private purposes, without publishing your changes.
Central control
Anyone who releases (or even uses, other than for R&D) a modified version is required to notify one specific organization, which happens to be Apple.
Possibility of revocation at any time
The termination clause says that Apple can revoke this license, and forbid you to keep using all or some part of the software, any time someone makes an accusation of patent or copyright infringement.
In this way, if Apple declines to fight a questionable patent (or one whose applicability to the code at hand is questionable), you will not be able to have your own day in court to fight it, because you would have to fight Apple's copyright as well.
Such a termination clause is especially bad for users outside the US, since it makes them indirectly vulnerable to the insane US patent system and the incompetent US patent office, which ordinarily could not touch them in their own countries.
Any one of these flaws makes a license unacceptable.
If these three flaws were solved, the APSL would be a free software license with three major practical problems, reminiscent of the NPL:
It is not a true copyleft, because it allows linking with other files which may be entirely proprietary.
It is unfair, since it requires you to give Apple rights to your changes which Apple will not give you for its code.
It is incompatible with the GPL.
Of course, the major difference between the NPL and the APSL is that the NPL *is* a free software license. These problems are significant in the case of the NPL because the NPL has no fatal flaws. Would that the same were true of the APSL.
At a fundamental level, the APSL makes a claim that, if it became accepted, would stretch copyright powers in a dangerous way: it claims to be able to set conditions for simply *running* the software. As I understand it, copyright law in the US does not permit this, except when encryption or a license manager is used to enforce the conditions. It would be terribly ironic if a failed attempt at making a free software license resulted in an extension of the effective range of copyright power.
Aside from this, we must remember that only part of MacOS is being released under the APSL. Even if the fatal flaws and practical problems of the APSL were fixed, even if it were changed into a very good free software license, that would do no good for the other parts of MacOS whose source code is not being released at all. We must not judge all of a company by just part of what they do.
Overall, I think that Apple's action is an example of the effects of the year-old "open source" movement: of its plan to appeal to business with the purely materialistic goal of faster development, while putting aside the deeper issues of freedom, community, cooperation, and what kind of society we want to live in.
Apple has grasped perfectly the concept with which "open source" is promoted, which is "show users the source and they will help you fix bugs". What Apple has not grasped--or has dismissed--is the spirit of free software, which is that we form a community to cooperate on the commons of software.
Could someone explain why the GNU-Darwin people think Apple will care what they do? I'm not against the protest per-se, in fact I think they're protesting some valid issues. But really, why would Apple pay any notice?
It's great to see people trying to hold companies to account for their actions. This is a bit silly though because they run the risk of becoming irrelevant by not supporting PPC and not including certain packages.
If this is good for anyone, it's the folks at Fink.
People who actually use computers are done a great disservice by this kind of petty political bickering. It's the open source equivalent of Microsoft's marketing gimmicks: Just noise that wastes my time.
Some developers appear to be so isolated from the real world of computing that they are convinced that users care about all this trumped up ideological puffery about licensing. As a current Apple user (and a former Linux user), I don't care. What I want is better, more innovative software. Yapping about licensing schemes doesn't get me better software, proprietary or free. These developers should stop pretending to be lawyers and start developing.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Look at the installer.
/tmp before they are overwritten).
/tmp...
First they want you to run it by doing curl http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/one_stop | csh as root, allowing them to run whatever they want as root on your machine.
Next, it downloads a bunch of GNU utilities (wget, killall, tar, and a couple of others) and replaces the standard system utilities with them, without checking checksums, or providing an easy way to back out the changes if something goes wrong ( some - but not all - are copied to
Then, these unchecked progams, are run as root, to download the rest of the packages. I see no attempt to verify that anything was downloaded correctly, let alone compromised.
You would think they could have at least used md5 or even cksum to try to make sure that they are downloading what they think they are downloading, or back up the system files they overwrite to some place besides
Like other posters have noted before, Darwin/Mac OS X is actually based on BSD-licensed software, not GPL-licensed software. If you want Linux on PPC, there are other alternatives.
However, that kind of problems only points at a much greater problem. Namely, the fact that a commercial entity (Apple) is heavily using open source in their latest software offering, even though their behaviour clearly indicates they are not interested in the philosophy of open source.
Finally, honestly, what's the point of Darwin only on x86? If I want BSD-style operating system on Intel x86, I'll use FreeBSD, or one of the other two, not some sort of bastardized version, which does not offer the reliability, security, or portability for which the other versions are well-known.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Oh well, Fink is an extremely good set of Unix tools as I can say from personal experience. It is recommended for building Mozilla too.
I can understand them having gripes with Apple, I can understand them moving away from proprietary libraries, although in both cases, I do not agree (me being an OS X user myself). But moving away from the PPC platform for these reasons is rather childish.
Obviously this is just an attempt at a troll (and not a very good one, at that). But I feel I need to correct a few of your points so that nobody is confused.
GNU license is vile and repugnant.
The [L]GPL is just another license; developers can read it, understand it, and evaluate it before choosing to license their software under its terms. Some of its properties (specifically the "viral" aspect) make some people uncomfortable, but we must assume that the software creators are aware of these, and choose the GPL anyway. And in the end, we must respect the wishes of the authors.
*BSD is dying.
LOL. Mac OS X seems to be doing fine, on the desktop no less, and OpenBSD practically owns the firewall market. *BSD is a lot healthier than GNU's operating system, the HURD.
FreeBSD is already dead.
I don't know what you mean by this. They have had some difficulties with leadership in the last year, but they are far from dead. The latest news on their web site is from just a few weeks ago. The ports collection continues to grow, and the developer community is burgeoning. FreeBSD is far from dead.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Surely they knew from the very beginning that Apple had no interest in the GPL or free software licensing. That they should be shocked to discover this now sounds like they were utterly and unbelievably oblivious, and this sounds impossible to accept.
I suppose maybe they hoped and believed they could "change" Apple by having a GPL/GNU centered distribution of Darwin. If so, that is amazingly nieve. Apple is a company that listens only to it's own evangalism, which is why it remains a minor player where new ideas are created so they can be stolen and marketed more effectivily by others who care less.
But Apple is also burdened by it's own cult mentality, where they know they can even sell customers crap, and they will continue to buy. So Apple is a small closed market all unto itself, a baby monopoly if you will, and certainly has no interest in outside views of what it should or should not do, or how it should or should not license.
So what was even the point of GNU Darwin then? I never understood it. It seemed like tilting at windmills at best. Darwin itself is just a BSD licensed kernel, based a bit on older xBSD kernels and some mach stuff, if I recall correctly. And if there is a desire to have a GNU/BSD distribution, why not start out from a current FreeBSD or NetBSD kernel and wrap a complete "GNU" distribution around that? (Debian GNU/BSD anyone?). At least that I could understand the point of...
GNU is free to have their opinion, and I agree that the "we can stop you from using your stuff at any time" is a little silly and makes software licensed under earlier versions of questionable value, but after 1.2, I don't see the big deal. So what if they require you to send back your changes? The fact that GNU is complaining about freedom to do what you want with software is both laughable and hipocritical. The GPL places severe restirictions on what I can and cannot do with my software by requiring me to provide source. I've got no problem with the fact that they require me to, nor would I have a problem with the fact that Apple requires me to send them changes. If I accept the license and use the software, that is the cost of doing so. They created the software and can put whatever license they please on it, that's their right.
However, for the creators of one highly restrictive license to call foul on another is nothing less than pathetic. The APSL does not "disrespect privacy" any more than the GPL disrpespects freedom. Each is a license with a purpose.
It seems this company just never can let things get too good for them. At some point, they screw up everything, and i'm not talking recently, but historically, back even to the early 80's with the massive marketing blunders with the Apple II series.
Why did they even make Darwin open-source? I note M$ uses BSD TCP/IP code and that sure isn't open source. This seems like just bad publicity that they don't need. And what did it buy them, ever?
Why not use the BSD license for the small number of basic components that are APSL? I mean, who gives a crap - not like they are handing out the Finder or something.
Why not just use NeXT code rather than BSD? They had a full Unix behind them. Why mess with open source at all?
If you are going to choose an open-source Un*x, why not choose the most popular one (Linux)? Then you build in gobs of application support.
They have a wonderful customer base, who will stick to them through thick and thin. They have decent technology at times. Yet, for all this, at the times of their greatest success, they seem to have this weird hubris that causes them to make idiotic business decisions that poison the very landslide of acceptance they seemingly deserve.
Forever a niche player.
This is just a tiny example of same. I feel sorry for people who are enamoured of Apple. I really do. Kind of like being a Red Sox fan or something.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The very nomenclature is a fraud, and I think they deserve to die.
(In passing, though, OS X does ship with the GNU toolchain, it's built with gcc. RMS has made it clear that that alone isn't enough to demand prefixing a GNU-- for example he doesn't demand calling FreeBSD GNU/FreeBSD. Clearly Realm & Co are bigger zealots than him.)
What the hell does this mean?
Since when did GNU define what "free software" is? I don't mind GNU, and I respect their goals, but certainly BSD and Apache software is far more free than GPL. GPL is highly restrictive. They have their social and political goals, which are well and good, but why is it that they expect everyone to agree or support them?
I really don't see any difference between this and myself whining the GM and MicroSoft don't support my personal political views or send my their source code for free, because I want them too. In my opinion, it's arrogant, petulant crap that this that tarnishes OSS more than anytihng else.
The sad thing here is that what's being lost in all this sturm und drang is that Mac OS X is seriously set back by this.
/sw, and so has a hard time playing nicely w/ tools which expect things to be in normal places. Apple didn't help this by using Wilfredo Sanchez's path preferences instead of a more normative default.
.pkg, stored itselsf in /NextLibrary/receipts and it ``just worked''.
The Apple installer uses Pax instead of gnutar, and will blow away a link posing as a directory (so you can't mount an extra hard drive w/ full control / convenience).
http://www.osxgnu.org/ uses it (with extensions) though.
Fink puts everything in
Gerben Wierda has a nice i-installer, but it's mostly used by the TeX community and has a limited number of packages available for it (and of course if one wants up-dates of classes, one must install them oneself using tex docstrip foo.ins or some such)
Oh for the halcyon days of NeXT when everything came in a
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
...they have a deeply principled development program of little use to anyone. Great: another flavor of Unix. Next?
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
This group starts a project, based on Apple's Darwin, which is released under a particular license. Then this group has problems with that license, so they suspend the project, and raise hell and high water while doing so ?
Is that what's going on ? If so, who the hell is running that particular ship ? Was that manifesto penned by Stallman ? Why even *get involved* with a project with a license they find philosophically unpalatable in the first place ? Is it because he figures to get a bigger podium and more press by attacking a big company rather than some obscure GPL-violators ?
This won't put any effective pressure on Apple; I'm pretty sure they
don't even care that Gnu-Darwin exists. What it will do is make
life painful for normal users and reduce the amount of positive
exposure some people get to open software. Gnu-Darwin is the
equivalent for the Apple platform of Cygwin on the Windows side.
Dropping it is like saying "you can't use our free software unless
you switch operating systems". Huh? I thought it was free?
Now, if Gnu-Darwin was relying on some libraries that weren't
properly license-compatible, then that needed to be fixed... but
_dropping_ Gnu-Darwin entirely isn't the way to do that. They
could have temporarily pulled it, if they'd announced it in a
way that said, basically, "we goofed and are fixing the problem,
it was a licensing issue; we were linking against something that
isn't license-compatible", but trying to blame this on Apple is
like blaming the weather for making you cold when you forgot to
wear a coat.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I've been up all night doing some Mac OS X device programming. Entirely from userspace code, using the gdb-based ProjectBuilder GUI debugger to debug it. No lockups and no rebooting (although that can happen by programming the IOKit. But it's less common than with kernel space programming.)
It is quite nice.
You can write device drivers for OS X, but you often don't need to, there are interfaces exported to userspace to allow you to do a lot of stuff.
The userspace interface for OS X' IOKit is based on (ducking) Microsoft COM. I've never heard much that's real positive about COM, but the way it's used here seems to make sense, in that you can instantiate C++ objects that talk to the kernel.
That is, the user code access to the kernel is largely done through C++ class interfaces. There are a few file-based hardware interfaces like in traditional Unix. I think that's mostly for compatibility with legacy code, and you still have to use the IOKit to obtain a file descriptor, rather than opening a file by giving its pathname.
While the kernel is indeed a BSD-derivative on top of Mach, the driver architecture has been completely replaced. In its place is a system of "kernel extensions" whose code is written in C++.
If you want to write a driver that extends an existing driver in some way, you subclass the existing one and add your specialization in the subclass.
Let's see if I can find you some documentation on this...
-
kernel extensions tutorials
-
IOKit Fundamentals
-
Writing an IOKit Device Driver
-
Accessing Hardware from Applications (that is, from userspace)
I think the IOKit driver architecture is a signficant advance over the driver architecture employed by any traditional Unix or Linux kernel. May I timidly suggest that some of them would do well to adopt it.Of course there is the question of license compatibility between the BSD or GPL and APSL. But you could adopt the architecture by rewriting the code, rather than adopting the actual Darwin source code.
Of course, most Linux hackers aren't into programming C++.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Overall, I think that Apple's action is an example of the effects of the year-old "open source" movement: of its plan to appeal to business with the purely materialistic goal of faster development, while putting aside the deeper issues of freedom, community, cooperation, and what kind of society we want to live in.
...
This passage made me sick. The notion that any "movement" that is not compatible with FSF philosophies necessarily puts "aside the deeper issues" is so self-important and self-righteous, even coming from Stallman's mouthpiece. Sorry, there are plenty of people who have considered the issue who do NOT feel that our society must engender all the rules and restrictions that you would have placed on us. The FSF's world-view is not the only considered one. Many people who adopt non-"free" (as defined by FSF gospel) licenses do so after careful consideration of all the issues and deciding that non-"free" licenses more closely reflect the world *they* want to live in. Who the hell is the FSF to decide ? Keep your self-righteous ramblings to issues like GPL violations
I've not followed them much since i dont have a PPC and use FBSD on intel, but without out those 'features' ( and going to i386 only ) is it really much different then FBSD at this point?
Wouldn't it be more productive use of their time and energy by putting it into something that is more established?
Why do so many OSS teams keep reinventing the wheel, instead of helping paint the ones we have now?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Companies don't do open source because of their love of freedom or anything. They do it because it saves them money. Many eyes ... you know it. And we have a right to ask for something in return.
Coming back to the license issue: It's not about Apple not releasing under the GPL. The point is that the APSL is not an acceptable free software license. . Where did everyone get the idea from that they're asking for Apple to adopt the GPL???
Look at it in another way. How do you feel about M$ taking all the networking layer code from BSD? OSS brings a lot of benefits to companies, but they also have some responsibilities if they want to have a useful symbiosis with the free software community. And it is our duty to remind them of this responsibility.
clarifications anyone?
by proclus on Wednesday December 18, @07:05PM EST
Sorry, I just couldn't let the story to out this way, because truth is important to me.
All machines that are currently supported will continue to be supported in their current configurations, so we are not pulling out the rug as it were. The situation could be better than this, but the ball is now in Apple's court. I will say that Apple has been moving in the right direction with respect to these issues over the past few years. If projects like ours can stay engaged with them, there may be a chance. It is not easy, and may be overly optimistic, but there it is. I'd like to give some time for Apple to respond.
The main source for the Apple/DMCA story is at the following link, although it has been covered extensively on the web as an 'Apple DMCA' googlesearch will reveal.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-955805.html
Based on my experience with the Adobe boycott and other anti-DMCA activism, I consider Declan as a trusted source. Here are some good stories about the impact of the DMCA in general and on Apple users.
http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-656.html# lnk3
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06901
As for the APSL, this has been a long standing issue with the Distribution, which dates back to the founding.
http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=00/12/01/20282 54&mode=thread
Darwin is not free software, because the APSL is not consistent with the free software definition. For more information, check GNU Project.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html
You may know Yves@gnu-darwin.org, who is a OSXFaq.com editorial contributor. His most recent installment is highly germain.
http://www.osxfaq.com/Editorial/open/index4.ws
Until Darwin is freed, activists such as myself will be leading users away from it instead of toward it. This antagonism towards Apple in the free software community has been aggravated by the DMCA fiasco. For example, Slashdot coverage of Apple has soured considerably since that time. We added the caveat to our Darwin distribution CD's soon after that (see grey box).
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/order.shtml
Clearly it is in Apple's best interest to repudiate the DMCA, to remove the onerous anti-privacy clause from the APSL, and to meet the standards of GNU Project, so that users can have a truly free OS, and so that activists can support Darwin instead of undermining it.
The message for users is to educate yourself about software freedom. In this world of economic contraction, the DMCA, RIAA, and the patriot act, that might take some effort, but it will be worthwhile in the event that free software becomes more difficult to maintain. Here is the starting point.
http://www.gnu.org
Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/
Jakob Breivik Grimstveit
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."
..... is what happens when you don't keep pedantic technological politics separated from the technology itself. Now GNU-Darwin will creep further into irrelevance thus strengthening the position of the Fink project.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Gnu darwin packages some GNU software around the APSL licenced darwin OS from Apple. So really the benefits of GNU darwin is helping software mainainers to have their code compile straight out of the box on darwin and thus MacOSX.
OTOH you need to be aware of fink which brings the same kind of software to macosX and thus darwin.
Then you also have darwinports bringing to darwin the same has gnu darwin.
Gnu darwin will now only port x86 making the port "just" a little easier then the PPC one which involves endianess issue and other tricky stuff.
If developers are interested in darwin they should stick with the main developers of the OS (Apple), hence with PPC so interested party should join darwinports instead of Gnu darwin.
none Yet.
And this isn't just a one-way thing. Apple (well, NeXT, but it's the same people) is largely responsible for GCC's Objective-C support, and continues to contribute code to the project.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
This comment comes from an AC over at MacSlash. Its hilarious:
" It's called "grandstanding," and it's one of the few actual skills the GNU bozos have. Their skills aren't in software -- they have yet to create a single program that anyone outside the nerd clique wants to use. They literally can't give their stuff away."
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I do appreciate Apple trying to cooperate with the free software community to some extent. But, frankly, I don't expect too much from it. I think there is really not all that much Apple has to offer, and most of the things that Apple has opened up were really forced by licenses or business realities (e.g., gcc was forced by the license, Rendezvous and QuickTime were forced by business considerations).
Overall, I think it just doesn't matter much what Apple does, either technically or in terms of their business. I don't see Apple winning in a big way: they can't take away much market share from Windows, and, based on my experience with them, I think they are not a major competitor for UNIX or Linux workstations or servers either. Apple doesn't have the power to fight the DMCA or DRM. And technically, I think Darwin and Cocoa are dead ends for practical purposes and it really doesn't matter whether people clone them (GNU Darwin and GNUStep). Open source developers should emulate Macintosh style and simplicity in their; copying lots of low-level nuts and bolts is neither necessary nor sufficient for that.
So, basically, I gave up getting particularly pushed out of shape about Apple or open-source OS X-related projects either way--there just isn't any point to it.
When several people pointed out this problem in his argument, Proclus defended his position by saying, "Consenting adults should be permitted to modify and copy software in privacy," which is an effective soundbite, but no more than a shibboleth; Proclus doesn't explain why this is such a critical public policy issue, and, judging from his replies, I don't think he can. We're not talking about an invasion of the bedroom -- this is a business contract for the use of specific software. If he doesn't like the license, he doesn't have to use the software, but it's tedious to have to listen to someone who insists on turning what is a contracts dispute into an ideological war.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
I am still a mac classic user
Mac Classic
Yeesh!! Get with the times, man!
Yes, it's time to teach Apple a lesson.
Let's remove all the unique/useful components of the GNU/Darwin distribution.
Let's remove any motivation for Apple's customers to have any interest in using or touching GNU/Darwin.
Let's abandon PPC and remove any motivation for PPC-owners to keep an eye on GNU/Darwin.
Let's proclaim in ideological rage that GNU/Darwin will abandon its ties to propietary evilness and be reborn as Yet-Another-BSD-on-x86 with Yet-Another-Kernel.
Surely it makes sense for GNU/Darwin to compete with FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc on the same old platform with practically no distinguishing factor or even aim. It's not like that would be redundant.
Surely Apple will see the light after their customers collectively blink and go on with their lives.
That will teach them.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Am I wrong? Does GNU-Darwin offer the x86 something more than just a MAC desktop theme?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
or is it more like Kruschev banging his shoe in the UN
For those of you who might not be familar with why a person would do this, I thought I should point out that this is from the bible. A person bangs off their shoes to condemn a place.
Luke 9:5
"If people do not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave their town, as a testimony against them."
Luke 10:10-12
"But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near.' I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. "
Acts 13:50-51
"But the Jews incited the God-fearing women of high standing and the leading men of the city. They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region. So they shook the dust from their feet in protest against them and went to Iconium."
So you can see that banging your shoes off is quite a big deal in a bibical Just a little background info.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
Apple definitely needs to improve their efforts with their OS<=9 users, but I think they have been making some smart moves with their OS X strategy.
Think about Apple's position - they needed a new OS that was stable and user friendly. World + dog knew that they were working on a system with a Unix core (via NeXT), so they couldn't very well pretend it wasn't true, although classic Mac users would be very turned off by a "geeky UNIX machine".
At the same time, Apple is a shrinking company; it's been laying off engineers, and research is minimal. Sales are crap, but improving thanks to the iMac. By opening up at least part of the OS and adopting more and more open source code and open standards, they save engineering time ($), and potentially benefit from a large pool of talent who want open source as a philosophy to work.
Don't minimize the huge sea-change that Apple made by embracing open standards. They were known for years for creating their own (sometimes superior but seldom embraced) protocols. Now, they're working with the community on those issues, and everyone is benefitting (Firewire, Zero-conf networking).
So, Apple plays up the UNIX angle, it's part of the promotion: "easiest to use UNIX ever". What does that get them? The ear of current Mac users, plus linux and bsd geeks who have been griping about the *nix desktop forever.
It's working too. Look at the people who work for Apple now. Look at O'Reilly gushing over OS X.
Why not use NeXT code? They are. Why not Linux? It's frankly a mess of inconsistency. Plus, as Fink proves, the vast majority of Linux apps are a recompile away.
I think Apple is playing a very smart long-term strategy. They're working on mindshare, getting the geeks and college students excited. They're staying out of the devil's bargain that Microsoft is making with the record and movie companies, and smart computer users respect that.
Hopefully for Apple, this will all lead to new software and more users, and potentially, a foot in the door when those new geeks start getting jobs.
I'm happy to be an Apple fan, but it's more like being a Packers fan. They don't generally win, but here's the thing; sometimes they do. And, they're innovators too (only community-owned team in the NFL).
compare fink to Gnu-darwin. From the end user perspective gnu darwin stinks. They dont respond well to critisism and they have never been very compatible with OSX. THe reason I think is they never really wanted to be part of OSX they wanted to replace it with a tottally GNU system rather than embrace OSX and bring GNU to OSX. For example, install GNU darwin and it overwrites lots of the BSD bin functions like make and tar. that's pretty absurd. No warnings no documentation worth reading.
I'm glad its gone. Now everthing will port via fink which is intended as an add on to OSX that brings GNU to OSX without replacing OSX.
SO this is good news
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
<quote> The pictures taken at the conference show Kruschev banging the table with one shoe while wearing both shoes . He either had three feet or the other shoe came from somewhere else as the other Russian delegates are shown wearing both of their shoes as are the US delegates .A photgraph of the underside of the Russian table showed that a brown paper bag had been bought in by one of the Russian aides .It was deduced that the shoe was in this bag, and that the famous " We will bury you" out-burst, was in fact a carefully timed and plotted piece of propaganda, inserted into the disarmament conference in order to give the US public fears of an escalating nuclear conflict.
</quote>
source
Apple is a company that listens only to it's own evangalism, which is why it remains a minor player where new ideas are created so they can be stolen and marketed more effectivily by others who care less.
I wouldn't call being the single most influential computer company of the 20th century being "a minor player."
Seriously. Name me one computer maker that has had more influence than Apple. Apple essentially invented the personal computer in the Apple II; that is, they had the right combination of pieces in the right place before anybody else did. Apple essentially invented the graphical user interface, to the extent that they took principles of GUIs developed at Xerox, wrapped a software toolbox around them, wrote guidelines for deploying them, and built them into a line of computers.
Apple's influence is everywhere, from software to computers to toasters. Every time you see a gizmo encased in translucent colored plastic, that's Apple's influence staring back at you.
"A minor player?" Hardly.
I write in my journal
Man, is this ever old news. It all started when somebody at Apple said that they would be doing some stuff with "amd" in the near future. This was widely reported on the rumor sites as meaning that Apple was about to announce a partnership with AMD, the microprocessor company. In fact, it referred to amd, the auto-mounting daemon.
Go back to your homes. Nothing to see here.
I write in my journal
You have literally no concept of what you speak of.
Mac OS X IS NextSTEP. Its simply the evolved form. It has never been pure "BSD". Darwin, the core of OS X, is released under the APSL license. IT WAS NEVER RELEASED UNDER A BSD LICENSE.
They did NOT screw up here. GNU-Darwin is a VERY insignificant project. By making Darwin open source, Apple has gained a lot of brownie points from the open source community. There are TONS of projects such as Fink (which is heads and tails better than GNU-Darwin and doesn't over-write your default binaries for example) which would not have begun were Darwin not open source.
I mean you drawing a distinction between Next code and BSD code proves just how much of an idiot you are. There has always been some BSD code inside of Next and thus by default now in OS X. Why doesn't Apple just use the BSD license? Probably because they're not as dumb as you are maybe? Corporations who like to remain profitable wisely retain as much control over their products as they possibly can. The APSL allows them to do this where as the BSD license would not.
This is not bad publicity. This is the rantings and ravings of one GNU zealot project head who just doomed his own project. The comments are 25 to 1 on the side of "What the hell is this guy thinking" not "Yes this man has principles which are to be respected!"
I dunno, maybe if you actually USED OS X it would help you when you go to comment on it.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
He's three. Someone plays with his toys, he gets all ticked off and takes them away and goes home.
And no one misses him.
Besides isn't GNU-Darwin nothing related to darwin? Too many names with too many TLAs in front of them.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I have significant problems with licenses that require you to send back any changes. Now if it were the more reasonable "post to ftp site .... the code for any changes that you publically release", that would be much different.
Perhaps you are paraphrasing the license, but Borland actually stuck something like that in the Kylix license. You were legally required to maintain a site where all of your scratch work was publically available. As far as I could tell from reading the license, every single edit that you made was supposed to be permanently saved and publically available. STUPID. And quite costly and inconvenient, also. Now I never heard that they prosecuted anyone for not doing this (it would probably be quite difficult to prove), but it was in the license, so they COULD have. And that would cause me significant problems. Eventually I decided that I didnt' need the grief, and didn't use Kylix. So I definitly understand that another group might decide that some comparable set of restrictions was intolerable.
Also, a license doesn't need to be intrinsically bad to be incompatible with another. One of the conditions of the GPL is that you can't add any more conditions, so it's possible that the APSL is incompatible without making any assertions about it's intrinsic "goodness".
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This is nitpicking, but, G3's are supported on OS X, so you'd have to drop back to a 604 or earlier, or an upgraded 604 (which isn't supported).
I'm not defending Apple, but the linked article is pretty ridiculous. After reading it I am relieved to find that GNU-Darwin (not Darwin) is irrelevant. I am relieved because the thought of hot-headed individuals such as this running a project of any consequence is scary.
Think about it: dropping support for specific hardware and APIs in response to a company's policies on DMCA etc. (as opposed to technical reasons) is almost Microsoftian.
At the very least it's quite lame.
A) How exactly is Apple "choosing to enforce the DMCA"?
B) The GPL only has meaning because of copyright. Using the GPL to fight against copyright is like fucking for virginity. And you can only see Apple's behavior as contradictory?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
By encouraging GNU-Darwin, Apple helps GNU.
You make the assumption that Apple encourages GNU-Darwin.
Apple pretty much ignores GNU-Darwin; the only Darwin they care about is the one in Apple's CVS (and, by extension, OpenDarwin's CVS), not some guy's fork of it.
The thing that people seem to be missing in this discussion is that GNU-Darwin is *not* Apple's Darwin. They could care less about GNU-Darwin, and, in fact, pick BSD-licensed alternatives to GNU software if possible. Whether it's for idealism reasons or business ones, no one but the people making the decisions can say.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
This isn't the first time Apple (or at any rate its returned founder Steve Jobs) has had a run-in with the GPL. NeXT used GCC to speed up their development of an Objective-C system, hoping that there was a loophole in the GPL that would allow them to do creative linking of binary object files that they would keep proprietary, to provide the Objective-C support. The FSF, however, was wise to this and told them that no, they can't do that, and after some legal wrangling, NeXT realized they were wrong, and opened up the source for the Objective-C compiler. This is also the main reason why gcc is probably the only compiler in the world for Objective-C (not counting the to-C translators out there), and why it's the default compiler system on MacOS X (thanks to Cocoa's lineage from NeXTSTEP).
This has been a Good Thing(tm) for the rest of the world, but to someone like Steve Jobs who isn't convinced of the merits of open development and Free Software, it would have felt like the Free Software Foundation got one up on him.
Correction is in order here though. The GPL erroneously described to give restrictions on developers. Nonsense. The GPL places restrictions on DISTRIBUTORS of software. You can make whatever modifications you please to GPLed software to your heart's content, and no one will call on you as long as it stays internal. The GPL only comes into play when you redistribute these modifications to third parties. You have to provide these third parties with your (modified) sources, and you cannot thereafter legally restrict them from in turn modifying your sources and/or redistributing them to anyone they see fit.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Originally the GPL had that clause as well, but it was removed in order to preserve peoples sanity. It's a stupid clause. What if you make an experimental change that doesn't work? Do you have to send a useless patch to Apple? What about if you alter the indents to make it look neater in your opinion? They don't really care about that. What about changes that are site specific? The list goes on and on.
The "viral" nature of the GPL is there to stop organisations forking it and then "taking over" the product by adding proprietary modifications that then may become popular, so effectively closing the source. If you never redistribute the code, that can't happen, so there's no need for it.
I see so much FUD about the GPL, really pathetic FUD. Stuff like "the GPL takes away my freedoms". That's BS - it takes away your "freedom" insomuch as laws against murder take away your freedom to kill people. Absolute freedom to do whatever you like simply doesn't exist in reality, why should software licensing be any different.
The GPL places severe restirictions on what I can and cannot do with my software by requiring me to provide source.
No it doesn't. The GPL places some very easily satisfied conditions on you if you modify then redistribute those modifications to somebody elses code. You can use that software for whatever you like, you can modify it in any way you want, but if you want to give other people that software it must be licensed in the same way as it was originally. Big deal.
Anyone who has gone through the 20 years of Mac trials and tribulations knows that there is NO WAY you can say Mac fans are ipso facto Apple fans. Remember the late 80s? Remember the contempt in which Apple was held by people who ADORED their Macintoshes? No, probably not.
So now iSteve is back in the driver seat and has somewhat mended that emotional/ideological/theological rift, and all the recent "Switchers" probably have no idea of Apple's tortured history. That has probably erased any distinction between love for the platform and love for the company from the average geek's brain, but not mine. Lessons learned from the days of Mr. Pepsi are hard to forget: in fact, loving the Macintosh in all it's incarnations probably means you are MORE passionate in your love/hate relationship with Apple.
So, verily, I don't think the typical Mac user is so braindead that they "believe Apple can't do any wrong".
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
I respect what the FSF is trying to do (although that is taking a much broader perspective than this Darwin versus Apple snit). However, I don't believe they can demonstrate that their efforts have increased the amount of innovative and useful software available to users, whether that software is proprietary or free.
GNU -- in intent and in reality -- is a rewrite of the basic Unix toolset. Commendable, but not innovative, and certainly of no use to the typical computer user. (By my definition, anyone who makes the effort to learn Unix is not typical.)
Ditto Linux, et al. Commendable, yes. Have they fostered the development of original software? Perhaps, if you view the computing world from inside a server. But, if you're a desktop user with no interest in the ideology driving the free software movement, you'll see that Linux has fostered software that mimics proprietary software -- KDE, Gnome, Gimp, the OS itself, etc. All useful, but not original and not especially innovative.)
Note that I'm not arguing that the commercial software world has been any more innovative. They haven't. But, then, the free/open source software community isn't really pushing them, either.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
There are a lot of posters here saying "Darwin uses BSD, not GPL!". If I am not mistaken, this is completely wrong. Darwin is based upon BSD tools, but is not BSD licensed. It's a perfect example of BSD code taken and put under proprietary wraps.
Err... of coures it has, because it's a good argument, and, as evidenced by the actions of the GNU-Darwin people, still a necessary argument. I will be very glad not to make it once it is no longer necessary. In fact, I'd rather not make the argument.
Let me clarify: I have problems with the APSL too. I also have problems with the GPL. I wouldn't develop (and distribute) code under either (the latter because I don't want to send Apple my changes, the former because I need to charge for my code to make a living). I understand GNU's problems with the APSL... it's not their stance that I have a problem with, it's their phrasing.
The language, both on the GNU site, and the GNU-Darwin site, read to me as if they are angry or judgmental of the APSL license. The GNU-Darwin site says that the APSL license cannot be free software *because* it's not compatible. So, I think I more or less agree with you, and my problem is that the sense I get from GNU is that they define "goodness" as "compatible with us." To me, that seems both morally dangerous in general, and specifically inimical the idea of a free and vibrant open source movement.
That statement is stupidly wrong.
If it is YOUR software, YOU hold the copyright, and YOUR decision to grant me additional rights by letting me have your software under the GPL places no additional restrictions on you. It removes restrictions which copyright law would otherwise have placed on me.
If you are not the copyright holder, then it is NOT your software. You have no right to redistribute the software, and you have no right to distribute derivative works, unless the copyright holder gives you a license, e.g., the GPL or BSD license, which includes those rights.
If I license my software to you under the GPL, I am leaving in place several restrictions imposed by copyright law which the BSD license would remove. These are not restrictions on your software; they are restrictions on your distribution of MY software. If you choose to make a derivative work from my software, the law says that for you to distribute that derivative work is a violation of my copyright. The GPL removes some of those restrictions, and the BSD license removes a few more, but those restrictions are on what you can do with MY work. In this scenario, there is nothing that you have a legal right to distribute, unless that right is granted by license.
I suspect that most of the folks who whinge about the GPL's ``restrictions on their software'' haven't any software of their own, in the sense of being the copyright holder. What they are really saying is that the GPL forbids them to put restrictions on other people's software!
See what I've been reading.
You are an excitable one! Maybe you should work for a political campaign, I bet you'd be great a smear ads. :)
If you take my comment completely out of context, you are completely correct. Read the rest of my post, though. It is clear in context that the meaning of the sentence is:
The GPL places severe restirictions on what I can and cannot do with [GPL derived software developed by myself] by requiring me to provide source.
Other than your openning remark, I agree completely with everything you've said, which, if you'd read my posts on this subject, would be clear to you. I'm a huge fan of using licenses and contracats to restrict people in their actions and define what they may and may not do.
I could understand their actions if they didn't also specifically target the PPC porting. I have no probelm with their stand against linking to APSL modules. Why is the PPC work being halted, but not the x86 if not as a petty swipe at Apple user (not Apple itself)?
-David
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is especially difficult when Apple is not really sure if it wants to change direction. On one hand it wants to open-source the tech or guts of the OS while at the same time protect its look and feel. It would be easier if Apple was totally sure of what it wanted.
That is exactly what Apple wants. They want to be able to use stable, developed technology to base their products on, and they want to support standards. They do not have to make a black-and-white decision, either completely open source or completely closed.
I like this hybrid open-closed system a lot because it addresses the deficiencies in our patent/copyright laws. Ideas and technology are shared through the open source code, and they get paid for their innovations through the closed. Hopefully, as they develop more technology, they will open less recent code, say opening any code older than 5 years, which is the way I think copyright law used to and should work.
Lies about crimes
If it's your code, in the sense that you own the copyright, neither the BSD nor the GPL place additional restrictions on you. If it's not your code, both licenses REMOVE restrictions which would otherwise be imposed by copyright law.
Thus, in my words, that line was ``stupidly wrong'' as you wrote it. That was impolite, but I can't find a gentler way to put it which is still adequate. I couldn't gather the `` [GPL derived software developed by myself]'' part from the talk about Apple and their license which preceded and followed the line in question. Even if I had, I would have had the same reaction.
You are right that the various open and free licenses are out of the question if you choose to release your work in binary form only. In that case, you are choosing a more restrictive license than the GPL. The GPL is not too restrictive, rather, it is not restrictive enough to suit your needs. Again, your choice of words implied to me that you had missed the essential point: if you are the copyright holder, you have all the rights. If you are not, you have only those rights which are granted by law or by license. A more restrictive license retains more of those rights for the copyright holder.
The reason I used such strong language is that neither copyright law nor the GPL is new. These ideas have been around for a long time now, and I think that a lot of the FUD and confusion which is so prevalent is the result of unclear language, fuzzy definitions and fuzzy thinking.
Getting slightly off the topic of this thread, if our ``intellectual property'' laws were reasonably functional, there would be no good reason not to release source code, since it would then be adequately protected even if published.
See what I've been reading.
Well, pretty much since GNU defined what free software is and devised the GPL actually.
This is what resulted in the RMS/ESR - Free/Open schism in the first place.
What GNU is doing here isn't defining what Free software is, it's demanding that Open software change its license to be Free. That's a bit of a different kettle of fish. It smacks of fascism, not freedom.
KFG
do it
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
But I never said anything about having problems with restrictions. I agree that releasing a binary only, proprietary licenses is very restrictive, more so than the GPL (well, most likely). My problem is not with GPL restrictions, or APSL restrictions, or any restrictions at all. My only problem is with GPL proponents complaining about the restrictions of other licenses when their own licenses impose restrictions of their own. (If BSD or Apache proponents wanted to complain, that would be a different matter.
As for context, maybe you couldn't get it from this post... my thinking was actually the three (original, not the replies to the replies) posts in the thread. Not that I'd expect you to have read them all... my point being not so much that you "should have read it this way," but more by the way of supporting my assertion that my rewritten version was the original intent.
Anyway...
I still don't understand how saying the GPL places restrictions on software derived from it is stupid. I'm not saying restrictions are bad, I'm not saying the GPL is bad. I'm just saying the it places restrictions on derived software, which seems to me, not only reasonable, but factually true.
I agree that there is a lot of fuzzy thinking and such around GPL and coypiright law, and IP law in general. In fact, my entire reaction was to the common mistake that GPL==free software. What incensed me in the GNU-Darwin point, and, to a lesser extend, GNU's web page, is their explicit and implicit claim they and they alone can define what free software is and what a good license is.
To a large part, they have been successful. Much common media equates GPL with free software without understanding the implications or the foolishness of such a conclusion. GPLed software is a subset of free software, and though important, and even large, is dwarfed (in terms of users) by BSD/Apache style software.
If anything, BSD/Apache style free software should be considered the archtypical. Not only does it have fewer restrictions (in that it has practically none), but it's usage is huge. There's BSD software in Windows, Apache is the biggest web server, the most used Java libraries/frameworks are Apache style, etc.
As for you divergence, I agree. I personally wish that I could share my code without fear of having it stolen. To be able to do so would be a great value to myself, and, I like to believe, others as well.
Maybe this was their whole intent in the first place. After all it stirred up discussion about GNU. That's all RMS wants. He doesn't care if any GNU projects work. It's all about fanaticism. ;-)
his animosity is manifest in posts like this and that and this. Nasty isn't he?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...I'm willing to entertain that he used "to" correctly. However, someone should inform him that "being" is intransitive. :-)
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
We need to invade Iraq for several reasons.
If you are so determined to blast a country into little pieces I hope to you have a) signed up for the military and b) will be on the front lines getting shot at by a number of pissed of Iraqis.
If you feel that the war is worthwhile, you should then feel it is worth your life. Until then shut-up.
(If you are in the military and will be going over seas or already are, good for you, you poor, miserable pawn.)
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
might this case qualify as hara-kiri??????
what do i know, i am just a gaijin anyhow. . . . but a damn good lookin savage at that :)
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
I'm happy to be an Apple fan, but it's more like being a Packers fan. They don't generally win, but here's the thing; sometimes they do. And, they're innovators too (only community-owned team in the NFL).
Eh? You don't follow football, do you? The Packers are tied for first in the NFC at the moment with a record of 11-3 (with the Eagles, who seem to be able to win no matter who their QB is, and the Buccaneers), which means first in the NFL since nobody in the AFC is doing better than 9-5.
Anyway, I'm not a big Packers fan, being from New England and all, but I have to agree with you that the community-owned thing is very cool.
Let's see - the original manifesto reads like this:
* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- Yep. You can do this and still have Apple technologies (Cocoa, Carbon, Core Audio) handle the grunt work they were designed for. Pretty good compromise to attach all these ease-of-use goodies to your main event...
* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- Yep also. Unless you need to have the control boxes mauve, puce and burnt sienna instead of red, yellow, and green. Or you need to reconfigure MIDI so that all the white keys are black. But really, how often does such low-level tinkering drive an app? This smacks of kids who play with the fonts instead of writing their paper...
* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
- Absolutely. Linking to core services doesn't stop this in the least.
* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- Again - no problem. Gets done every day.
This amounts to shoe banging.
As I said over on MacSlash, GNU's Not Unix, and It Ain't Intuit, Either. This sort of behavior will not get a doorstop-style, Jehovah's Wittness visit from Steve. Alienating the platform in question will not get anyone to open-source the proprietary technologies that they get to make money on.
Don't hand out recipes and then punish me because I need to Cuisinart to make it happen at my house.
Here's what yiour actions predict: Apple will continue with certain core technologies, make money to buy bananas, maybe never invoke the DCMA again for anything, do quite well in either case, and you guys will be the backwater of open source software for a darn good platform.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Let me be the first to defend GNU, since I have attacked them so often in the past...
GNU/Darwin is nota part of the GNU project. Any bizarre actions on the part of GNU/Darwin should not be placed at the feet of GNU.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
i'm not saying that they aren't winning now... but remember the dry spell they had before Favre came along?
:)
Heh, well. Favre has been around for awhile. You can't complain about a team because they sucked 10 years ago
It was like rooting for the Cubs, without Harry Caray to laught at.
I don't know who Harry Caray is... baseball makes my eyes bleed.
Actually, the commentary on this GNU page is for all practical purposes irrelevant since it only properly addresses a version of the licence which has been superceeded. Apple made some significant changes to APSL to specifically address the reservations the open souce community had about their first attempt at an open source licence. I believe the authors of this comment need to rewrite it make it relevant to the current version of APSL, and if they don't, I suggest people stop referring to this out-dated material.
:
the above post is complete FUD. The analysis offered on the gnu site is completely up-to-date. Here is the proof which is completely verifiable, as opposed to bald assertions which turn out to be untrue in the parent comment.
Specifically
- latest version of the apsl is 1.2,
according to apple's own site here,
released on jan 4, 2001
- gnu apsl anlysis page last updated 2002/10/15
(shown at bottom of page)
which specifically addresses remaining problems
with apsl 1.2 (the latest release)
and while it still provides comment
on the initial problems with the 1.0 release,
this comment is clearly referenced
as referring to an older release
for which later releases corrected
only some of the problems
(and probably the gnu analysis page played a large
role in having these problems fixed).
so, in summary, please stop posting fud,
and moderators please check a posters assertions
before modding him or her up
That is a complete lie. The GPL places NO restrictions on what you can and cannot do with your software. You can choose whatever damn license you like for your software.
If you mean to say "The GPL places severe restirictions on what I can and cannot do with somebody else's software" then you are also wrong. The GPL gives you additional and less restrictive distribution opportunities than standard copyright permits.
Now you could sensibly argue that some other licenses give you additional and less restrictive distribution opportunities than the GPL. I wouldn't disagree. I only disagree with your claim that the GPL imposes restrictions (you used the word "places" but in context it meant the same thing as "imposes"). The GPL does no such thing. You always have the option to ignore the GPL, in which case you are restricted by the default copyright laws.
Anything that isn't gushing with enthusiasm over Apple and their technology is modded down. Come on, guys, get over the group-think. Arguing that Apple is not going to be a significant technological player in the decades to come is not the same as "trolling". If you disagree, say why, don't mod people down.
wise ... words
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck