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Mac OS X Sessions at LinuxExpo
h0tblack writes "The latest ADC Newsletter has details of a few sessions Apple are hosting at LinuxExpo in Paris in a couple of weeks. The sessions are: Mac OS X for the Linux Community, Mac OS X in Heterogeneous Environments and Mac OS X and Developer Tools. Shame that the first session clashes with the keynote from RMS ..." Yes. Shame.
You can put your own code under whatever license you want. RMS has personally written a shitload of code and released it under the GPL. No Linux distro runs without FSF code. If you don't want it, don't use it. If you don't like his speech, ignore it.
He may be a zealot, but he puts a lot of code where his mouth is.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
It is good that Apple is encouraging cross-platform interoperability, and they are genuinely interested in open source developers. Linux users should find a lot to like about current Apple systems. They are continuously getting more capable from unix point of view. I am watching for ever more powerful server hardware to come out of Apple, probably in about six months, when they are expected to release the next major update to the operating system.
They are courting geeks to try to get them to switch from other *nixes. Initially, they are focusing mostly on individual desktop users. I think part of their strategy now is to get their products into the hands of people who will be making corporate purchasing decisions down the road. Right now the server variant of the OS is not there yet - Many advertised features do not work as documented, or as they should. The next major update will probably be much better. Once you have an Apple in the server room, it is possible for you to provide all sorts of specialized services to Apple clients, making it more attractive to obtain them.
Watch for businesses that want the stability and manageability of Linux but also want to be associated with a mainstream company to look at Apple. We are already seeing plenty of sysadmins switch. First, personal machines, then (Apple hopes!) the machines they are responsible for.
It is pretty amazing that Steve Jobs had the guts to set up shop in a linux expo. By the same token, I applaud him for taking notice of and respecting the linux community. Certain other OS vendors try to hide linux in the closet and pretend that it isn't a serious undertaking.
If you want a true anti-copyright license, it would be like the BSD-license except that derived source code and its object code would be allowed to be copied, studied, modified and distributed after modifications. In cases where only the object code was distributed, it would be allowed to decompile that code.
You could also say that it would be like the (L)GPL except that the source code would not have to be distributed along with the object code. Except that it would explicitly allow to decompile the binaries and then excercice the rights granted by the (L)GPL.
As no such license exist, it is my opinion that the (L)GPL comes closest to true freedom. After all, the obligation of having to distribute the code is but a small effort and brings huge gains to end-users (or the programmers they hire.)
In the USofA we are free... don't argue, just go with it... we have this Bill of Rights and the Freedom of Speech, That freedom doesn't say "You can say whatever you want as long as it's nice" it says that we can say things that other people disagree with, we cannot threaten the President's life, but we can openly disagree with him. That is freedom, giving someone a right(code) and saying "here ya go, do what you want with it, even if i don't agree with how you use it".
PD and BSD are like this, you can take that code, and use it however you want... FREELY.
The GPL is saying "Take this code, but you can't close it, you have to leave it open. That isn't free.
Yes, it's certainly silly to make a distro without GNU tools.
In your original post, though, you seemed to equate the usefulness of his released code with the validity of his ideas. They're completely separate - I appreciate his contribution to the Linux community (e.g. his GNU tools), but I think his ranting and irrationality does the community a disservice.
You're right. There are two schools of thoughts in this matter and sadly their differences will never be settled.
This is the way that software should be done - open source foundations and tools, and the options of commercial and free software for things the users (well, non-coding users) interact with. You as a user choose software that has a payment model and source license model that works for you. The developer does the same, and everyone is happy.
There should be free (as in beer and liberty) tools and OS's, but to claim that everything on a system should be OSS, thats just silly. If you want it personally for your machines, that's fine. But don't preach it to everyone else, because OSS doesn't imply usable; it doesn't imply reliable, or secure, or any other part of what makes a piece of software great, except for price and extensibility. And the truth is, extensibility means next to nothing to most people, as they don't have the slightest idea how to modify source code.
Using open source is not the same as embracing it however. Redhat embrace open source. Apple use it. Microsoft use it too, believe it or not. Have they embraced open source?
And guess what, they're free to do so. You don't give someone something under certain conditions and then bitch when they actually take it. They're still abide by the conditions set forth and that's all they have to do. Apple isn't in the make the world a better place business, they're in business to make money. Be thankful that by all accounts they've taken an incomplete rendering engine with a relatively small and clean codebase and will help turn it into a respectable one that Apple users and Linux users will both benifit from.
I think you mean embrace and extend. Safari is not open source for instance.
I'm not really sure what you mean. As others have pointed out Apple is working with the KDE team to integrate their changes in KHTML back into the KConq browser line and work off a common source tree. As far as the Cocoa functions which create a high power HTML library for Objective-C which calls the KHTML engine they've released that open source as Webcore. Omni for example is thinking of switching over to webcore. The graphics templates are under some licensing restrictions since that's part of Apple's look and feel however they available to anyone with Safari. Finally they open sourced KWQ which is there QT for Aqua not using QT.
I guess I'd ask what do you think is missing? The only thing I can see is look and feel.
If it was really "just a proprietary gui" then I could run MacOS apps in KDE yes? I'd be using a different desktop but I could still use the apps. But that doesn't work.
I think you are oversimplifying. Apple has not just created its own window manager but rather an entirely seperate system from the frame buffer on up. Its not X11 based so it doesn't run under KDE (which assumes the apps are making QT or X11 calls). It can be implemented under X11 (see the GNUStep project for example). Further Aqua can support X11. You can't run Berlin apps under KDE either; even though both are open source Unix gui apps.
So it is in fact a propietery gui; which is more than a propietery window manager.
I pointed out that embracing open source would mean actually taking the ideals of the movement to heart, not simply using code from it to further their own ends.
Umm, EVERYONE who uses open source code is simply using the code to further their own ends. That includes RMS, BTW.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."