Slashdot Mirror
Gentoo, Fink, and DarwinPorts Join Forces
Mr. Quick writes "From Metapkg, "In order to better provide freely-available software to users of Mac OS X and Darwin, we Fink, Gentoo, and DarwinPorts commit ourselves to work together." A unified front for free software on Mac OS X is something that was needed."
So while this is really cool, how is it going to work out?
To wit: thought maybe i'm on crack, it SEEMS like each of the three-- while offering basically the same interface to the same service-- were pegged to different codebases, and taking packages from different sources. Fink to debian, gentoo to gentoo and ports to bsd.
Is this the case? And which source (debian/gentoo/bsd) will the collaboration generally follow?
Since they ported X11 to Mac OS X on their own it would be kinda useful to have them in the same boat. Dont you think?
I think most people don't understand how unique this initiative is. Most of the times open source projects don't really notice eachother and when they do, they just start a flamewar about who's best and who stole feature from who.
It's good too see there are some developers out there with organizational talents who are willing to communicate with other projects in order to speed up development time and create a better product.
Yes indeed. Get them all together. Package them all the same. Get rid of choice, it is overrated anyway. That is the only way to get Linux to be just like Windows, and the OSI, FSF et al to be like just like MS.
These group's aren't merging into one project: they're still making three products, but will be working together to ensure there is sharing of work and no duplication of effort. This is indeed different from most OSS projects where the two competitiors come to hate each other for some reason. Another groundbreaking thought from their mission statement: "Non-advocacy: Our common goal is simply to provide software for people who choose to use Mac OS X & Darwin, not to promote or advocate any particular operating system." OSS with non-advocacy! Imagine how much more acceptance open-source software might get if everyone focused on telling people how the development model could produce great software at no cost to the user instead of droning on about how it is immoral for programmers to serve as wage-labor.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
...but running standard unix apps under X on top of OSX doesn't take advantage of OSX's strong points.
Unless I'm alone here, being able to run X11 apps and native OS X apps at the same time is one of the best features of my OS X boxen. The availability of diverse software from two almost totally separate camps is awesome.
So I welcome this move towards a unified ports system for Darwin, it was definitely needed.
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
What choices would you be losing if that happened? They same software would still be available, and you would still beable to do the same thing with it, e.g. install it from packages, install from source packages, roll your own from a tar ball.
/etc/apache /etc/httpd /var/www/conf or somewhere else? etc etc
The only thing that I can see that you'd lose is the multitude of different ways things can be configured. e.g. is the httpd.conf in
Where is the choice between GNOME and KDE when you have to have both installed anyway to beable to use all the decent apps avilable to Linux?
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
There are pros & cons to this.
The drawbacks to having fragmented marketshare (like KDE & GNOME) is sometimes--but not always--outweighed by the improvements caused by having strong competition.
Look at the drastic improvements MS IE received while Netscape was still a strong contender. Then look at the improvements after IE got 90%+ marketshare. Some would argue that there isn't much to add to a browser but a look at the innovations in Opera, Mozilla Firebird and Safari.
Rather than consolidation, I'd rather see competing products like KDE & Gnome come up with common standards. For example, KDE & Gnome could come up with very specific & consistent user interface standards and adhere to them in their products.
Microsoft did a great job (compared to Linux) in not only coming up with Windows UI standards but in preaching it: the vast majority of Windows apps writting by diverse vendors has a FILE, EDIT, HELP, etc. menu and they are rather consistent in their content too. CONSISTENCY IS IMPORTANT.
I'd like to see Linux be different where it counts: like stabiliy, security, open standards, Unix-like shell & filesystem, etc. But I don't see the point of being different for its own sake (like throwing out MS Windows GUI/UI guidelines so that 95% of pc users will find it less desirable to switch to Linux).
My apologies if such a GUI/UI standard exists--I simply don't see it being promoted or used in X apps I've tried--and it was just an example.
There is no need to make a complex metapackage system.
I find Gentoo's python based system way overly complex and buggy. You need to emerge rsync quite a few times during a new install to ensure you are using the latest version of portage.
The FreeBSD ports system on the other hand are just simple tcsh scripts. Under
If any of you reading this use FreeBSD 5.x go to
WHen you do a "make install clean" the port scripts just use standard ftp and http sites in the makefile to download the apps. Nothing complex and its alot easier to use.
I can not speak of fink because I have never used it.
Simple shell scripting can get rid of alot of complexity.
http://saveie6.com/