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.

Comments

Re:I want to see....

[Scarblac]

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.

Good to see this

[Knife_Edge]

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.

Re:Good to see this

[JonathanBoyd]

Mmmm.... how so? MacOS apps will only work on MacOS. It's not like you can just install Aqua and a Quartz server on Linux and display these apps, like you can with X11/GTK is it?

But Apple do provide X11 for you to run and you can compile a lot of Unix stuff for the Mac, so in that sense it is cross-platform.

Possibly, but it'd have to be a pretty dumb sysadmin to blow their IT budget year on year replacing PCs with Macs, only to find that model has been obsoleted by Apple a few years down the line. Plus of course repurchasing all their software as well. And IT budgets aren't getting bigger quicker like they used to.

Just because Apple builds a better computer a few months later doesn't mean the one you bought won't still do the job you bought it for. There's no law I'm awar eof requiring you to upgrade computers continuously. It's been noted quite a few times that the TCO for Macs is significantly lower than for Windows machines, in part due to not having to replace/repair/upgrade them as often.

I for example am using an iBook 500 which the better part of 2 years old now. Newer iBooks for lower prices run rings around it. It still does everything I need it to perfectly well. It runs Jaguar, gets me on the Internet, runs Maple and Appleworks/Office, plays the occassional game, manages my photos and mp3s and allows me to dabble in movie-creation. In short, it is far from being functioanlly obsolete.

Re:Good to see this

[JonathanBoyd]

There's a difference between Mac OS X running nix stuff and Windows running it. OS X is a version of Unix in its own right. Apple is encouraging the open source community, writing software for them (Safari rendering engine, Darwin) and giving people a much wider range of software to work with. Write a program in Cocoa and it can be moved a lot quicker to another platform than most programs.

As for bugfixes requiring hardware, that doesn't really happen. Your 9-X analogy is flawed as 9 was a continuation of 7 and 8 i.e. a series of OSes that spanned a lot of years. It will be a good many years before an operating system requires radically different hardware to run. And as long as current programs run on older OSes, everything is fine. We don't have a 9-X situation every couple of years; ee have it once a decade which is not unreasonablle.

Re:Good to see this

[Graymalkin]

You're forgetting that Cocoa and OpenStep are source compatible. OpenStep is a free specification, one that the GNU-Step is making decent progress reimplementing. If you want to write a cross platform app you can target it to the Cocoa/OpenStep API and have it be compatible on anything that will run GNU-Step. That was the original point of the OpenStep initiative was so enable an OS vendor to write their own OpenStep implementation and run source compatible apps. If your compiler supported fat binaries you could easily have a single executable that would run on just about any OpenStep host.

No Apple isn't about to release the source for Quartz or some of their more tightly held technologies, this however does not preclude you from writing open source applications that will run on both Linux and MacOS. For a large commercial company Apple's done a pretty good job with open source thus far. They've given code back to several open source projects including but not limited to enhancements to GCC and KHTML. They're also using a ton of open specifications in their products which makes it quite easy for you to make hetrogeneous Linux/MacOS environments work very well together.

I'm not sure your system purchasing comments make much sense either. You're saying a company shouldn't ever change platforms (to anything) because the move is expensive. Well duh. That however doesn't mean switching platforms whole hog or incrementally is a bad thing. Would you not want a company to consider migrating from Windows to Linux if Linux was a better proposition for them?

As for the hardware, it isn't the fastest or cheapest in the world but it lasts a pretty long time. Out of the box they're going to last a while but if you're so inclined you can upgrade them for a pretty decent price. I've seen more than a couple "obsolete" Macs with a G3 or G4 upgrade card running OSX without any problem. Just about any PCI Mac with a little tinkering will run OSX. Even without upgrading to OSX there's a ton of old Macs that are plenty usable.

Re:Good to see this

[Anonymous Coward]

Your entire argument was lost with me as soon as you stated a need to upgrade Macs every few years not being feasible.

I have a Biege G3 (1998) and 2 first inception G4s (2000) in production. All three are running Jaguar just fine, and will for another couple years at the least. (The G4s will probably last much longer)

Conversely, we have 450 Windows boxes which have been through 3 replacements since 1998 because they can't keep up with the demands of modern Windows OS and apps.

You have failed to convince me that Apple is requiring more freqent replacements than Windows is. The reverse is actually true in my experience. The noly upgrade I've made to the Macs is new video cards to take advantage of Quartz extreme, and that wasn't a requriement of Jaguar, just an added bonus.

As for running Uniz apps on Windows, your experience must be different from my department's experience. Apache and PHP, frankly, aren't worth attempting on Windows. Not if you know how it is supposed to run on a *nix plat. Many OpenSource *nix apps won't run properly, or offer no benefit, if used on Windows.

Your argument is fraught with misinformation and opinions.

Bold of Apple

[absurdhero]

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.

Re:Bold of Apple

[grantb]

So this is like Steve coming out of the closet? I think the main reason that apple is in attendance is to say, "..hey were not Microsoft..." and frankly OS X does work pretty darn good with linux. But Steve has been pushing Unix in general since NeXT. So he really came out ages ago(on unix that is). But also look at apples recent release of X11 for OSX, they are really trying to push unix in general and if they can attract some Linux people to the platform all the better.

Re:I want to see....

[Mister Proper]

I also dislike the "Free" software term - GPL is restricted and non-Free, too. Public-domain (and BSD-style licensing, to a slightly lesser extent) are more "Free".

The BSD license and the public domain allow you to modify the code an release it under as proprietary software. This means that people can use BSD licensed or public domain source code and then restrict you from using derivated works. That doesn't count as freedom in my book much like being "allowed" to sell yourself as a slave does not consitute freedom.

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.)

Re:The New Apple

[iomud]

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.

Re:The New Apple

[jbolden]

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.