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Apple Posts Their X11 Source
fdiv_bug writes "This happened a day or two ago, but it slipped my mind to report it. Looks like Apple has released the source code to their X11 implementation for Mac OS X." Also check out more downloads at OpenDarwin.org.
I wish they'd make up their minds on whether or not they're evil. My head hurts.
Nice to see some code spread on the net.
It doesn't really matter to real programmers if it's gpl or fbsd or anything.
Having the source and getting ideas from it is a good thing.
As a mac user only really currently on the outside of the open source movement I mostly want to see how this links with the development of Open Office, which I am very interested in...
Finally, the world can see the source code to an X11 implementation! I've waited for this moment for decades.
I don't know what the submitter has been smoking, but this did /NOT/ happen a few days ago.
I remember downloading it a couple weeks ago. It's been available for download since they released their X11 betas.
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
I'm fairly new to the mac dev scene, and haven't played around with this code yet, but at over 50MB, and it being easily accesable, could compiling this become a new benchmark to add to the huge list of those floating around the mac web today?
Indeed. In this context, about means 'regarding' and not 'in the vicinity of'.
Lindows, only in reverse.
Im not a MAC user, but darn, that is really nice to have the ability to run X apps on a MAC. I think this really enhances the appeal of a MAC to a serious user.
Apple made a great move, adding *nix at its core with OS X.
Who's a year behind? Dell is finally starting to dump the floppy drive, they're five years behind! ;-) More, if you include the old legacy ports they still use.
Oh, you mean CPU speed? My 3 year old iMac is fast enough for everything I do, save for recent 3D games, and I don't really need those anyway. That's one thing hurting Apple's 'marketshare', the quality and longevity of their products.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
All they put in the source tarball is the default twm. Thanks Apple.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
And even if they were, they might still do some things we think of as `good', and others we call `bad'. Corporations, like people, are complex things. Humans tend to think by simplifying, categorising, and labelling, but we must realise we're doing it, and avoid it when it loses too much information. The world is a complex place.
As Anonymous Coward said above, Apple has done many good things, and some bad ones. That's all there is to it. Predictive value? Well, I predict that in future they'll do some more good things and a few more bad things. Wow, huh?
(As it happens, I like a lot of the things Apple are currently doing, and I like their kit enough to own some. I'd like to see their stuff become more popular. But I've no illusions; I wouldn't like to see them have 90%+ share, just as I wouldn't like to see anyone have that sort of share. M$ may have an unusually immoral corporate ethos, but I doubt any company in their current position would be entirely altruistic for long. Power corrupts, and all that.)
(Er, sorry, this post has turned out inappropriately serious for this place! Feel free to insert hackneyed one-mouse-button-sniping, lame puns, and unrelated whinges as appropriate...)
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
On Apple's X11 list, it has been stated that X11.app's QuartzWM is going to remain closed-source and proprietary. That's all their code and they're going to keep it to themselves, as is their right. On the other hand, the extensions made to the xfree86 codebase have been offered back to the community under the same licensing terms as the rest of that project.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
/* Why can't people just use bloody Aqua */ // Damn GNU hippies - S. Jobs
To go even further, here's your typical implementation of AIM for Windows. And then there's Apple's implementation of AIM.
And i don't even have to mention their hardware. Sigh... i hope you get paid handsomely, noble Apple design team. WE SALUTE YOU!
From the perspective of a person who only owns a Macintosh Classic with 4mb of ram, "RELEASE THE SOURCE FOR OS 7!!!"
IIRC, each editor is assigned an 'early day'. Apparently they get up early (as early as 6 AM, oh the horror!) to go through the queue and make sure our European Slashdotters have something to look at.
/sw/bin/gimp > /dev/null 2>&1 &"
Frankly, that would be the perfect job for me. It's 6:15 AM on a Sunday and I'm wide awake.
It would be simple to figure out what day is Pudge's day and act accordingly.
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Just in case anyone wants to accuse me of being OffTopic: here's a X11-related hint. Use fink to install The GIMP in the usual location and make the following AppleScript:
tell application "Finder"
launch application "X11"
end tell
set results to do shell script "cd ~; DISPLAY=:0.0; export DISPLAY; PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin; export PATH ;
That makes an AppleScript that opens X11 and the GIMP. Find an appropriate JPG of "Wilbur" the GIMP mascot, paste it into the "get info" icon box, and PRESTO! The GIMP in your dock!
My father is a blogger.
Yes, Quartz is analogus to an X server, but quartz-wm is a window manager Apple developed along with their X Server implementation that gives Aqua style window appearances to window borders. And it doesn't look like crap.
It also seems to have better focus behavior than Orobor OSX a non-Apple attempt at making a window manager that works well within Aqua.
I stopped using the floppy drive years before Apple dumped them, aside from reinstalling old games. I also haven't owned a burner since '99, and don't really have a use for one. I just have zero need of removable media, and nowadays I have DSL and a 100MB iDisk, so I can send some pretty big files to anyone in the world, and even let others upload to it. I've a 5GB iPod, too, so there's no reason to burn music CD's.
I can't even recall the last time I booted off a CD. If the worst happens to my OS X partition, my OS 9 partition starts up instead, and I can do repairs from there. This happened to me once last year.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
There's nothing wrong with this. Apple extended X11 under the terms of the X11 license and as a result is giving the code back to the community. Apple created a propiretary window manager (QuartzWM) and doesn't look like it is going to release this code to the community.
It is within Apple's right to do both things. Please don't get mad at them for not releasing QuartzWM source to the public. Why should they release QuartzWM to the public?
Poeple applaud apple for choosing Khtml and X11 to extend for their own uses. Apple obliges with the licenses, but then people get mad when they don't release source with their browser or WM.
Please be happy that apple has chosen open source software and extended it. The GPL and many other licenses protect the right for businesses to extend the software and still use proprietary extensions in the same way that it protects your right to download the source. It is a good thing that the software allows Apple to do what it does, otherwise Apple would have never used the source code to begin with.
Rather than being happy or sad with Apple for helping/hurting free software, why don't we all be happy with free software for allowing Apple to use it in commercial applications? I don't think that Babbage (the author) disagrees with me, I just wanted to clarify this point with other readers.
Keeping
That's not a clarification. It's mostly wrong.
The GPL does not seek to protect the right for businesses to extend software without releasing the source to their extensions.
There are situations where the GPL does not apply, however. If Apple didn't distribute their binaries, they wouldn't have to distribute their source either.
All of this isn't really relevant, since XFree86 is under the X11 license, not the GPL.
So how long before Apple opens the source for Mac OS 9 - or at least the Mac OS 9 Finder? I'm sure there are plenty of APIs in there that were abandoned, from the TCP/IP stuff to the printing architecture. I'll bet there are a lot of geeks who would love to get their hands on Mac OS 9 and continue extending it, do some speed improvement, maybe bolt on a little pre-emptive MT, protected memory, and a real VM. I for one would love to hack the Finder into a standalone Carbon application to run under Mac OS X.
-- thinkyhead software and media
If they released it, people in the open source community would get to see a big Quartz application, solving problems they are familiar with. If the code were unusually pretty or slick, it might encourage others to get to know Quartz better, and to write their applications in a way that could more easily take advantage of it when ported. They would also eventually get the bug-stomping benefits of lots of eyeballs caressing their code.
The only reason I can see for them not to release the code would be that it uses uncommonly good generic window system algorithms that they don't want copied by others.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
(Disclaimer: I've been using X11.app for a almost a month now. X11 for OS X (OS X11?) isn't new, and neither is this source. But that's what you get here... :)
TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.