Apple Public Source License Now FSF Approved

BWJones writes "Apple has now made their public source license 2.0 free. From the release "The Darwin team at Apple is pleased to announce that version 2.0 of the Apple Public Source License has been certified as a 'Free Software License.' APSL 2.0 includes numerous changes and simplifications to make it even easier to use Apple Open Source software as part of your programs. To indicate acceptance of APSL 2.0, you can now use your new or existing "Apple ID", rather than having a separate Darwin account."" proclus adds "This is great news for Darwin-based free software projects like The GNU-Darwin Distribution and Fink. GNU-Darwin has had an ongoing discussion about this development, and annouced and end to our 'Free Darwin Campaign,' so long as Apple avoids DMCA-based legal action."

Comments

What are the motivations and implications?

[mjmalone]

Yay! now we have another license to rant about and compare with GPL/BSD!! But seriously, why does apple need a new free software license? Aren't the ones being used now sufficient?

Licensees will now have the choice of providing source code to either just the users of the code or (as before) to the general public (Section 2.2(c)).

What does this mean? Could one restrict who is allowed to use the code and thereby restrict who may view the source? In a commercial application this means that one could produce a program and then sell it and only allow purchasers to view the source, correct?

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Sheetrock]

Doesn't this mean that Apple 'Free Software' can mix with GNU 'Free Software' provided the proper attributions and such are given? I could see this as being a tremendous win for the Apple platform, assuming this really does mean that it gets access to the wealth of free code out there.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Kenja]

"Aren't the ones being used now sufficient?"

If they don't do what Apple wants then they are not sufficient as far as Apple goes.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Anime_Fan]

What does this mean? Could one restrict who is allowed to use the code and thereby restrict who may view the source? In a commercial application this means that one could produce a program and then sell it and only allow purchasers to view the source, correct?

From what I read in the license, it seems like the end-users won't have their rights restricted, just like with the GPL. They may if they like distribute the files to the general public.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[jdreed1024]

Doesn't this mean that Apple 'Free Software' can mix with GNU 'Free Software' provided the proper attributions and such are given?

If you mean GPL'd software, no. According to this page, the FSF still considers APSLv2 incompatible with the GPL. Though they don't explain why. At some point, I really like to see a comprehensive listing of why each of the free-but-not-GPL-compatible licenses are designated such. I mean, it's all well an good for the GPL to say "It's not ok to use this license", but I find such a statement annoying without at least a brief note along the lines of "it's incompatible because it prevents you from doing $foo, which is allowed under the GPL" Or something.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Zigg]

No; it's still GPL-incompatible. I am not convinced, however, that GPL-incompatibility is in any stretch a black mark on any license.

GPL compatibility is like a one-way gift. You bow to the "all-GPL" crowd by allowing them to use your code on their terms, but they don't reciprocate by giving you the right to use their code on your terms.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[American AC in Paris]

Doesn't this mean that Apple 'Free Software' can mix with GNU 'Free Software' provided the proper attributions and such are given?

I don't think so, no. According to the FSF, the APSL is free but not GPL-compatible.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Yes, correct. The GPL works similarly in that regard. I think their definition of external deployment is different.

I'm mildly disappointed that GPL coders won't be able to co-opt any of the code in Darwin under the APSL-2.0, but this is still a vast improvement.

This is by design. It's the same "viral" aspect of the GPL, but it infects things for Apple rather than the GNU hippies. And Apple gets to use the infected stuff in closed-source products. That's why Apple needs a new free software license.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Vexalith]

I thought by definition pretty much any license other than the GPL was incompatible with the GPL. By design...

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Jason Earl]

Actually most of the newer BSD-style licenses are GPL compatible. This means that I can use GPLed and MIT licensed source (as an example) in a project and distribute the new project without problems (under the GPL). Mix APSL and GPLed source and you have created something that can't be distributed.

In the end there is so much GPLed software that most Free Software licenses trend towards becoming GPL compatible. The change in the Python license, and the change in the license for QT (to the GPL), are two well-known examples of this trend.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[frankie]

Could one restrict who is allowed to use the code and thereby restrict who may view the source?

Yes. And GPL allows exactly the same situation. In both cases, those users are allowed to pass the source code along to others under the same license that they received it.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[leviramsey]

Uh... follow the links...

The first version of the APSL had these problems, which were sufficient to prevent it from being Free Software.

• The APSL required you to publish modifications even if the code was not distributed.
• The APSL required you to notify Apple of any use or release (other than use for R&D purposes).
• The APSL allowed Apple to revoke the license if a patent or copyright claim was filed against Apple.

Those three issues were rectified some time ago. The FSF considers the APSL to be free but not GPL-compatible, for the same reason that the Netscape Public License is GPL-incompatible: it requires that you give Apple rights to all works you derive from it, but Apple is under no such obligation to you.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[pyros]

That's how the GPL works, actually. If you distribute binaries, the source must be distributed in the same fashion, for a fee not exceding media and shipping. So if you offer your GPL software for sale, and not a free download to everyone, you only have to ship source to people who buy it, and can charge for the media and shipping costs.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[meldon corintur]

I wonder if SCO will find a reason to sue Apple because of this.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Homology]

Why don't you at least try to read the 2-liner from FSF that you quoted and check out The Apple Public Source License (APSL) version 2.0 qualifies as a free software license dated 2003/07/31 20:33:14.

Plase mod parent down, it does not deserve Score 4, Insightful.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Actually most of the newer BSD-style licenses are GPL compatible."

This may be true, but please note that the vice versa is not true. GPL licensed software is not BSD compatible, due to the restrictions of the GPL. BSD focuses on code deployment and use, regardless of use--you can close the source, release a binary only, etc. (but the released code cannot be pulled back). GPL focuses more on continual code openness--you can't feasibly close the source. (btw, it's not a matter of which license is better generally, but which is best for what you want to do.)

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Actually most of the newer BSD-style licenses are GPL compatible."

Due to the BSD license, not the GPL. The opposite statement is not true (GPL is not BSD compatible).

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[jcast]

GPL compatibility is like a one-way gift. You bow to the "all-GPL" crowd by allowing them to use your code on their terms, but they don't reciprocate by giving you the right to use their code on your terms.

Sort of like BSD-style licenses, aka proprietary-compatible licenses.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. The whole point of open source, and the GPL in particular, is to allow people to use source on their terms. So long as your terms are beneficial to the rest of us, of course. If not, I can't really say that my heart bleeds for your plight, anyway ;)

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Anonymous Coward]

On this page, the second bullet says "It is unfair, since it requires you to give Apple rights to your changes which Apple will not give you for its code." This alone would make APSL GPL-incompatible.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[bursch-X]

Which is completely wrong, because you can take BSD code and redistribute is under the GPL. You can't do the reverse.

BSD has bent over here to GPL, and I wonder wether you ever read what you quote....

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Aapje]

GPL compatibility is like a one-way gift. You bow to the "all-GPL" crowd by allowing them to use your code on their terms, but they don't reciprocate by giving you the right to use their code on your terms.

Sort of like BSD-style licenses, aka proprietary-compatible licenses.

I don't think that the parent put that very well. Let me try to explain it better (if he means to say what I think he means to say):

The GPL implicitly says that it's not good to have a non-restrictive license (such as the BSD license) because it tries to turn code with such a license into GPL'ed code. On the other hand, it's also not right to have a license with more restrictions than the GPL (because it won't work with GPL'ed code). For instance, the major criticism by the FSF of the previous version of the APSL was that you always had to publish the source if you changed the code (even when you didn't distribute the binaries outside of your organisation). However, there is nothing in the Free Software philosophy that says that this is not right (this restriction is in accordance with all freedoms that define Free Software). A programmer who is more extreme than RMS might want to see to it that every change is given back to the community. To this purpose, he can devise a sort of extended GPL license. Unfortunately for him, code under such a license would be incompatible with the GPL. GPL'ed code can never be used together with code that has more restrictions, while it can restrict code with fewer restrictions (code with a GPL-compatible license).

The BSD license is different. A BSD-licensed codebase can be extended with more restricted code. It's up to to the maintainer of the main tree and individual users to decide whether they accept the license restrictions that the new contributions bring (which may only apply to contributed code itself). On the other hand, you can also contribute code with less restrictions (public domain code, for instance) and it can keep its original (lack of a) license. There is no one-way street towards a particular set of restrictions.

To recap, GPL compatibility can only lead to GPL'ed code. You can never benefit from GPL'ed code without adopting the same set of restrictions for your own code. BSD compatibility does nothing more than allow your code to be used with BSD-licensed code. You have the choice to restrict your own code more, less or differently than the BSD-licensed code.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Arandir]

But seriously, why does apple need a new free software license? Aren't the ones being used now sufficient?

The set of "classic" Free Software licenses (pre-MPL) are not sufficient. I hate to say this, because I really detest license proliferation, but it's true. What these licenses do not address, or marginally address, are patents and trademarks. These are very big concerns for software companies today.

In addition, the simpler licenses like BSD and MIT are just too simple. While I like their simplicity (the user can actually understand them), the average lawyer runs away in terror at their terseness. Even the GPL is considered sloppy by some lawyers.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[spitzak]

The reason that that GPL does not force you to release changes to the code if you don't distribute it is practical:

The GPL is designed entirely to be an "exception" to normal copyrights. If you ignore or "disobey" the GPL then all that is left is normal copyright laws, which lets you do *less* than the GPL allows. Therefore there is zero reason to "disobey" the GPL because you gain nothing and you lose a slight amount (perhaps nothing if you did not plan to redistribute anyway).

Because the GPL does not restrict you from doing anything you normally could do with copyrighted code, it cannot be considered a "contract". Thus it cannot be challenged with any "I didn't agree to that" arguments that make EULA and click-to-agree type contracts legally useless.

Now normally when you buy a book, you are allowed to scribble all over it for any reason you want. Copyrights and other laws do not prevent that. So the GPL has to allow what copyright does, so in no way can it be considered a restriction.

Now to be fair, the GPL could say that you must give RMS your first-born. If you chose to disobey that part of the GPL, and a court agreed with you, you would still be bound by copyright and unable to copy the GPL code, but you would not have to give up your first-born. So adding restrictions would in theory not harm the GPL because legally at worst it would end up where it is now. However in the court of public opinion, having *any* part of it challenged would cause people to think the whole thing is meaningless.

This is also why "advertising" clauses are not allowed by the GPL, and why there are no restrictions allowed on what the software is used for.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Build6]

IIRC the reason why the APSL is not "GPL" compatible is because Apple wants control over your release. I.e. if you're modding it and using it internally for your own purposes, fine (as would be the case for GPL), but if you want to release it to the world at large, Apple needs to be informed/alerted/registered-with, i.e. you cannot release the code out into the world EVEN though you submit all the changes you fix etc. (i.e. as you would to comply with the GPL), which would be "undue influence" from the perspective of the GPL - if you release your code with the requirement that any subsequent public mods must also be (virally) released, that is enough for the GPL, but it isn't enough for the APSL. Anyone else who knows more about this issue and can enlighten us?

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Zigg]

But the GPL doesn't let me do that. If I want to link GPL code with otherwise free (even by RMS's standards) but GPL-incompatible code, I can't. Those are my terms. The GPL doesn't meet them. The LGPL does, and thankfully more people are starting to realize that and LGPL their code instead.

Just by way of contrast, if you're a licensed user of a Microsoft development product, you can link your code that uses any license with its runtimes...

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Ed Avis]

For a licence to be 'GPL compatible' means that you can take some code distributed under that licence and redistribute it under the GPL.

For example, you can take a device driver from a recent FreeBSD release, port it to Linux, and release a new Linux version including that driver. This is because the BSD licence is GPL-compatible.

On the other hand you cannot take Apple's code and mix bits of it with Linux, because the code is licensed to you under the APSL and the APSL does not allow redistribution under a different licence. Neither does the GPL. So you cannot make a single work combining code from both.

It would be fair to note also that the GPL is APSL-incompatible; the fault is not particularly with one licence or the other. But since the GPL is by far the dominant copyleft licence (and many other licences explicitly allow redistribution under GPL - eg Perl, Mozilla, LGPL), it's normal to say that the incompatibility is because of the other licences since the GPL got there first.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[jcast]

Well, yes. That's all true. But: name me a license which does have this two-way property. Any time two licenses are compatible, the effect is to trend toward the more restrictive license. So, the effect of BSD-style licenses is to trend toward proprietary software.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[jcast]

BSD has bent over here to GPL, and I wonder wether you ever read what you quote....

Well, yes. But BSD had already bent over to proprietary licenses. So where's the problem?

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Aapje]

I tried to explain that BSD-licensed code doesn't necessarily become more restricted since it can often live together with more restricted code without problem (ie. without getting restricted itself). Licenses like the GPL do try to force code towards more restrictions, but BSD-style licenses have certain advantages which might get people to contribute to the original BSD codebase and not to a more restricted fork. I certainly don't believe that BSD-style licenses cause a trend to proprietary software because I believe in open source cooperation. There is no such thing with closed source software. It's simply wiser to return your changes than to leech (99% of the time). It's perfectly all right with me if people use BSD-licensed software in closed source software and return bug fixes and enhancements that they wish to share. That won't do if your goal is to eliminate closed source software, but that's not my objective.

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[jcast]

I tried to explain that BSD-licensed code doesn't necessarily become more restricted since it can often live together with more restricted code without problem (ie. without getting restricted itself).

Any examples? What I've usually seen happening is BSD licensed code is re-licensed under a more restrictive license. (This is trivial to do, btw: O'Reilly could close the X docs by simply saying `our changes are integrated so tightly that you can't separate the original code from our copyrighted changes'. Just changing the wording here and there is sufficient.)

Re:What are the motivations and implications?

[Aapje]

Darwin. An excerpt from a Q&A with Apple:

Q: The BSD licence is written in such a way as to allow code covered by it to be distributed under a more restrictive licence, and so it would be possible for Apple to distribute the BSD-licenced portions of Darwin under the APSL. I believe, however, that you don't.

But, if Apple, or one of its contributors, makes a modification to software that was originally BSD-licenced, are those changes licenced under the BSD licence, or under the APSL licence?

A: We try as much as possible to respect the original license that came with the code, so in that case, barring some compelling reason to do otherwise, our modifications to the BSD code would be released under the BSD license as well.

I don't know of other non-GPL, non-BSD-licensed open source projects that incorporate BSD-licensed code.

GNU-Darwin is a misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

The Kernel and the utilities can be FSF approved, but until glibc is ported to Darwin (and I suspect it never will) it should still be called Darwin.

Re:GNU-Darwin is a misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

actually gnu-darwin is just a pile of software that runs on certain os's; it's not an os at all, just a collection of crap.

the name is super-misleading, actually

That is so cool!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

So where can I buy an Apple Open Source License, now that it is approved and all?

BFD

Re:That is so cool!!!

[KillerHamster]

I'm sure these people will be happy to sell you one. Or several.

GNU's Opinion

[Coneasfast]

GNU thinks its better than the first, they still dont like it (they are quite picky). Read here.

Re:GNU's Opinion

[Llywelyn]

>GNU thinks its better than the first, they still dont like it
>(they are quite picky).

My experience from reading GNU's work is that they aren't terribly fond of anything that isn't GNU.

From that webpage:

-------------
The FSF now considers the APSL to 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.
-------------

Let's go over these point by point.

>*It is not a true copyleft, because it allows linking with
>other files which may be entirely proprietary.

So does BSD. This does not, in my book, qualify as a "major practical problem."

>It is unfair, since it requires you to give Apple rights to
>your changes which Apple will not give you for its code.

Yes, it requires this. I'm not sure why this makes it "unfair" though: this seems like more of a "legal cover our asses" clause on Apple's part so that they can use the changes elsewhere.

>It is incompatible with the GPL.

Would someone look up the definition of "circular reasoning"?

It seems, from everything I've seen come out of GNU, that they fit every definition of "Zealots". They almost seem to be *reaching* for something bad to say about the license simply because a proprietary software company is behind it.

Re:GNU's Opinion

[burns210]

it seems that anything less-free then the GPL is simply not free enough to them... it is sad, really.

Re:GNU's Opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

>It is unfair, since it requires you to give Apple rights to
>your changes which Apple will not give you for its code.

Yes, it requires this. I'm not sure why this makes it "unfair" though: this seems like more of a "legal cover our asses" clause on Apple's part so that they can use the changes elsewhere.

You really don't understand how this is unfair?

unfair 1. Not just or evenhanded; biased

If Apple requires you to give them every change to the code and they don't have to give you any of theirs that seems to me to be "not evenhanded" or biased in favor of Apple.

Re:GNU's Opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

They BSD license gives you more freedoms that the GPL, but they hate the BSD license!

Re:GNU's Opinion

[Coneasfast]

Yes it is sad.

Not to flame, but they are very much like fundamentalists. They want everyone to follow their ways, they do not like the thinking of other non-gnu licenses.

Okay, they want what's best for the open-source community, and have obviously contributed quite a lot. But does anyone think it is unfair that others (X11, BSD license, zlib, etc) accept the existence of GNU, but not the other way around (this is shown by their philosophy documents, and also the nature of the GPL).

Re:GNU's Opinion

[__past__]

What's more sad is that anything more free than the GPL is also not good for them.

Re:GNU's Opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks, the license is a LEGAL AGREEMENT.

It's not just a "political statement" as many seem to think around here.

You're damn right they will "reach" for something, so will the lawyer that argues your opponent's case in court.

I for one hope the FSF continues looking at licenses with the same zealotry.

In the meantime you are welcome to start up your own Llywelyn software foundation.

Re:GNU's Opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I can clarify the FSF's reasoning behind the three objections to the ASPLv2:

1) It is not a true copyleft, because it allows linking with other files which may be entirely proprietary.

The clearly stated goal of the FSF is to create a protected body of code which may never be hidden from users of the code. This is because they think it poor form for someone to refuse to share their code (i.e., proprietary coders). Because a proprietary coder does not play nice (by sharing code), they do not wish to play at all with that person and set up the "copyleft" license to keep propriety coders out of their game altogether.

2) It is unfair, since it requires you to give Apple rights to your changes which Apple will not give you for its code.

This is simple game theory. If two players are going to play a game, the fairness of the rules is directly related to the rules being applied equally for both players. It dosen't matter if you don't like the judgemental tone of the word 'unfair' or not. If one player is granted rights that the other player is not granted, then the game is unfair by definition.

3) It is incompatible with the GPL.

This really is just a practical observation for maintainers of GPL software to know that they can't link in ASPL code with a GPL code base and redistribute the result (unless, of course, they are the copyright owners of said GPL code and grant an exception).

If I may make an observation, the reason that the FSF seems so prickly to you is because you haven't taken the time to know their motives and goals. It turns out that the Free Sofware Foundation has a very well defined philosophy (check their web site for details) which, in turn, allows them to publish some very 'definitive' papers on the compatibility or lack thereof of a given software license.

Re:GNU's Opinion

[Tokerat]

-------------

The FSF now considers the APSL to 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.

-------------

#1 wont' ever be resolved: Apple needs this to be able to link MacOS X to Darwin.
#2 No one besides Apple is going to use the Apple Public Source license, so who cares. You're contributing to an Apple product, love it or start your own on SourceForge.
#3 As you stated.

Interesting, isn't it, how it's called the "Apple Public Source" license and not the "Apple Open Source" license? It's not an open license in the sense of free as in beer, it's open as in the sense of "Help us fix bugs and add features, it's a win-win."

PS: Isn't it GNU/GPL? ;-)

Re:GNU's Opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

"2) It is unfair, since it requires you to give Apple rights to your changes which Apple will not give you for its code."

This is simple game theory. If two players are going to play a game, the fairness of the rules is directly related to the rules being applied equally for both players. It doesn't matter if you don't like the judgemental tone of the word 'unfair' or not. If one player is granted rights that the other player is not granted, then the game is unfair by definition.

But this is not a game. Apple is giving you something that they created and they have the right to set the rules. You have the right not to contribute if you dislike those rules. That's extremely fair. It would be unfair if you were forced to accept something.

Is this just Darwin

[brokencomputer]

This doesnt apply to the whole OS does it? I dont think so. Does it apply to the darwin core? I thought that already was fsf approved. Someone please clarify that. Hopefully this isnt a stupid question.

Re:Is this just Darwin

[Halo1]

Yes, it only applies to Darwin and their other open source projects. No, the previous version of the APSL wasn't FSF-approved, it was only OSI approved.

Long arm of open source community

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

This is one more feather in our collective cap. This means that in very recent history (less than a year) open source was significantly impacted every major player. Microsoft is keeping a close eye on us and implementing an open source lab. Big business companies like IBM and Oracle have jumped onboard. And now Apple is realizing that its better to go with it than fight it. This is great news. I could have dreamed of this five years ago, but I never would have bet on it.

We are making history and leaving a big footprint. Little people influencing very large companies.

Re:Long arm of open source community

[Drakonian]

I wouldn't have said "now". Apple has been on the Open Source bandwagon for quite a while. Ever since Darwin (OS X).

Re:Long arm of open source community

[mccoma]

actually a tad bit before darwin. Squeak is from Apple and has an very liberal license (well, except for the fonts - but they weren't Apple's).

Re:Long arm of open source community

[bursch-X]

Ever heard of MkLinux?

MkLinux was the first Linux distro I ever used and I downloaded it from Apple's website in those days...

MkLinux Developer Release 1 (DR1) was released in early 1996.

transplanting?

[SHEENmaster]

Does this mean that it's possible(legal) to transplant Darwin's SMP capabilities into OpenBSD's PowerPC port? Firewire support? Cheapass-iBook-winmodem support?

Re:transplanting?

[MalleusEBHC]

Even if it is legal to to port Darwin's SMP code to OpenBSD PPC, I don't see it happening. FreeBSD SMP code has been floating around (albeit not PPC), but that has not been incorporated into any OpenBSD archs yet. I think this is due to the intense scrutiny that such a major portion of code would require to meet the OpenBSD quality standards, and nobody seems to have the time.

As for Firewire and winmodem support, I think there is a much better chance there as it isn't nearly as big of an undertaking. I haven't checked if the TCP/IP over Firewire code is APSL'd, but if it is I would love to see that get ported to OpenBSD PPC if it's available.

Re:transplanting?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Sure, you could rerelease BSD-licensed code under the APSL-2.0, probably, and thus you could combine code from Darwin and OpenBSD.

You'd definitely have to use the APSL-2.0 for the resulting product.

But the architectures of the two systems are different enough that you aren't going to be able to plug in the SMP support. Or most drivers. Darwin uses a unique kernel and driver architecture.

Re:transplanting?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because the kernel in Darwin is Mach, not BSD. Darwin uses some BSD code to provide the Unix userspace environment but the core of the OS is totally different to BSD.

Re:transplanting?

[frankie]

possible(legal) to transplant Darwin's SMP capabilities into OpenBSD

No. However, you could transplant the entirety of OpenBSD into Darwin. The resulting code would require ASPL.

BSDL is a universal donor; you can take from it as much as you want. GPL is a "copyleft"; it intentionally prevents your ability to take code to other licenses. ASPL is not terribly different from LGPL; the code itself must remain within the license but it can link to other code (free or proprietary).

Re:transplanting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps, but that means that you have to re-compile the Mach component libraries for the BSD interface sub-set. While possible, it would be a challenging task as the nature of the Mach kernel doesn't permit dynamic pointers in the CPU registers. That will probably supported in the next release but it's an edge that the BSD sub-system has over the PowerPC platform.

Re:transplanting?

[Aapje]

Sure, you could rerelease BSD-licensed code under the APSL-2.0, probably, and thus you could combine code from Darwin and OpenBSD.

It's not necessary to relicense any code. You can just combine differently licensed code as long as the licenses don't conflict. That's what Apple does themselves. They didn't change the license of the code they took from FreeBSD (or their minor changes they made). Only major pieces of code that they write themselves get licensed under the APSL.

For the combined work, you'd have to obey both the BSD license and the APSL license. Of course, the BSD license is less restrictive than the APSL, so it might seem that only the APSL applies.

Re:transplanting?

[Elwood P Dowd]

The BSD license does not require that you provide derivative works under the BSD license. If you did so, and your only rights are as under the APSL, then you'd be violating the APSL.

So, I can download Darwin 'n' combine it with OpenBSD stuff, and if I ever gave it to anyone else, it could be under the terms of the APSL and not the BSD license.

Since the GPL has additional requirements that I can not legally provide (according to the APSL), I could take Darwin, combine it with the Linux kernel, but if I distributed that to anyone else, there would be no license that I could give them legally, and I would thus be violating both the GPL and the APSL.

I think I was more clear the first time.

Re:transplanting?

[Aapje]

The BSD license does not require that you provide derivative works under the BSD license. If you did so, and your only rights are as under the APSL, then you'd be violating the APSL.

There is no need for derived works to be put under one license. The APSL explicitly allows you to combine APSL'd code with code under other licenses:

4. Larger Works. You may create a Larger Work by combining Covered Code with other code not governed by the terms of this License and distribute the Larger Work as a single product. In each such instance, You must make sure the requirements of this License are fulfilled for the Covered Code or any portion thereof.

In a Q&A, they explain that they try not to relicense BSD code:

Q: The BSD licence is written in such a way as to allow code covered by it to be distributed under a more restrictive licence, and so it would be possible for Apple to distribute the BSD-licenced portions of Darwin under the APSL. I believe, however, that you don't.

But, if Apple, or one of its contributors, makes a modification to software that was originally BSD-licenced, are those changes licenced under the BSD licence, or under the APSL licence?

A: We try as much as possible to respect the original license that came with the code, so in that case, barring some compelling reason to do otherwise, our modifications to the BSD code would be released under the BSD license as well.

Since the GPL has additional requirements that I can not legally provide (according to the APSL), I could take Darwin, combine it with the Linux kernel, but if I distributed that to anyone else, there would be no license that I could give them legally, and I would thus be violating both the GPL and the APSL.

True, one of the major problems with such a scenario is that the GPL explicitly requires you to relicense the code you combine with it under the GPL (the 'viral' aspect of the GPL). Most other licenses have no such restriction. In that case, you can have multiple licenses covering different parts of a combined work. You must comply to all of them (which is impossible if they conflict). The BSD and APSL license do not conflict, so you can combine them in one project.

I think I was more clear the first time.

You were perfectly clear. The problem is that you are wrong. I have provided solid proof to back up my assertions. Unless you believe that Apple's IP lawyers are wrong, that is.

Re:transplanting?

[Elwood P Dowd]

You were perfectly clear. The problem is that you are wrong. I have provided solid proof to back up my assertions. Unless you believe that Apple's IP lawyers are wrong, that is.

Yeah, I was wrong. Yes, you have provided solid proof. Way good enough for me, at least.

Apple is giving people what they want

[groove10]

Apple is trying to please both crowds and is doing a pretty good job of it.

They are giving end-users the software and hardware that fits their needs, such as the iMusic software and the introduction of the G5. at the same time, they are not forgetting the *NIX and open source base of their current OS. Actions such as this one and the continued "giving back" of code to OSS projects exemplify this trend.

Apple seems to have its head on straight and although I don't use their products, I support them and their continued sucess. A computer monoculture is a bad thing.

Now, I might actually buy a Mac laptop if they didn't cost so damn much!

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[zojas]

check out the ibooks, they are much less expensive than you think. start at $1000 with dvd rom drive, cost around $1400 with dvd rom & cdrw. I agree the powerbooks are expensive, but I think that feature-for-feature, the ibooks can price compete with any x86 laptop, and will generally have longer battery life.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, I might actually buy a Mac laptop if they didn't cost so damn much!

They don't. For $999, you can get a brand new iBook with 128 MB of RAM and a 30 GB drive. Add a few bucks for after-market RAM, and you're set. Fully-featured laptop for slightly over $1000, not including taxes or whatever.

And that's new. You don't have to buy new. Buy last year's model instead for $700 or so.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[mst76]

check out the ibooks, they are much less expensive than you think. start at $1000 with dvd rom drive, cost around $1400 with dvd rom & cdrw.

The $999 dollar ibook only has cdrom, not dvd.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[dema]

Be careful before buying an apple laptop. Yestday my mom's Titanium Powerbook G4 did a total nose dive (not literally). After a few hours of trying all kinds of things par the Knowledge Base and Apple Support I determined the power manger chip is completely dead (meaning it won't take power from an outlet and can't recharge the barrey. So I cruised the internet for a few hours on how to get this matter handled and I ran across a good number of horror stories about people having the same problem with older laptops and Apple denying it is an issue. It appears the only option we have now is sending it in to Apple and they say they would most likely need it for a few months.

(Sorry this is off-topic)

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

Until you buy their products don't even attempt to say you support them. Mindshare is nice but Apple's never had a problem with that - it's always been marketshare. So, you go support your Dells, or if you roll your own computer, your Nvidias and ATIs, all of which "support" open source in a half-assed way because they're cheaper. Do yourself a favour and go price an iBook and factor in an aftermarket 512MB stick of RAM. Then, without looking at specifications, go test one out first-hand and compare it to a similarly priced PC laptop which you should also test out first-hand and tell me that unless you will be videogaming or encoding videos that it is not only comparable but pretty darn competitive with the PC laptops in its price range. If you've really got money to spare, check out the 12" Powerbook which is only marginally more expensive but comes with a few more niceties.

Apple is like that gorgeous woman at the party that no guy has the balls to talk to because he automatically comes up with excuses to do so - she's taken....she's out of my league...I don't have a chance. Stop oggling at her for a moment (comparing computers by their marketing specs) and talk to her (test drive the computer) and you might just get somewhere and find things are a good match.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[eclectic4]

Along with what everyone else has said, I will say that it's not that Apple's products are too expensive, it's that Apple doesn't sell cheaper computers. Theres a huge difference there.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[zojas]

oops, you're right.

ok, they start at $1000 with cdrom. you have to spend $1300 to get a dvd rom/cdrw drive equipped ibook.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[stratjakt]

Apple is like that gorgeous woman at the party...

Sure, the one with the suspiciously deep voice and pronounced Adam's Apple.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[mkelley]

cost too much? $799 for an iBook with OS X. What's expensive about that? Get a used WallStreet for cheap and install OS X. It's not like you have to use a new machine for the OS to run.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[shawnce]

Yeah those sites don't list all of the folks that don't have said issue(s). Remember the scope and numbers involved.

If it is under warranty Apple with generally replace it in a rather should period of time, sometimes they cross ship (depending on the issue and users desires).

I myself have owned 10s of PowerBooks and only one has ever developed a problem, at that was with a broken screen ribbon cable (it looks like it was damaged during manufacturing). It was replaced by Apple in 3 days (shipped my laptop to them in box they sent to me next day, got it back 2 days later). They covered all shipping.

In my experience the norm is much different then you find on the "problem" discussion sites.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[AntiOrganic]

Apple's more like a prostitute at a bachelor party, that will give you the ride of your life if you're willing to fork over $3000 for her.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[oscast]

"I agree the powerbooks are expensive, but I think that feature-for-feature, the ibooks can price compete with any x86 laptop." As are the PowerBooks. With PC desktops, you can less more and therefore pay less, but they are NOT less expensive than Macs of equal specs. The same is true for Apple's laptops.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[zojas]

can you please repost that, and rewrite it so I can understand what you're saying? Seriously, I have no idea what you were just trying to say.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[AstroDrabb]

The problem with the apple iBook for $1,299.00 is that is is a VERY low spec machine. A 900 Mhz G3 is a dog compared to a G4 and especially the nice G5's and is horrid compared to any $1,299 X86 laptop. I have never owned a mac and don't plan on it unless Apple gets smart REALLY lowers the prices. I love Linux and use it exclusively, howver I would also LOVE to use a Mac. It is just that I will not pay such high prices to have a pretty computer. If Apple would really drop those prices, they could easily replace ms windows for the average home user (I'd still stick to Linx though I could also have a nice Mac). X86 hardware has become a commodity and is very low priced now. Moving to Apple would actually be a regression and we would lose all the benefits of having affordable hardware. I also am not keen on having to get ALL my software AND hardware from one vendor. That is just the next monopoly waiting to happen. I like what Apple has been doing so far, I just hope they put out a machine that can compete against an X86 on performance AND price. I don't have a problem paying $200 - $300 more for a Mac, howevr I will not spend a $1,000+ more for a comparable system. With that extra grand I could really beef up the X86. Give me a 1Ghz+ G4 with 512MB, 40GB+ hard drive with a DVD/CDRW for around $1,200 and I would buy it in a heart beat. I can get this type of setup on X86 for $700 or so.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[BWJones]

Now, I might actually buy a Mac laptop if they didn't cost so damn much!

Actually, try pricing them out. Often they are cheaper than other Wintel products and when they are slightly more expensive, the price of admission is well worth it. For example, I'm getting emails here while folks on Slashdot are hitting my workstation server pretty frequently. At the same time, The Clash is cranking on iTunes while I am working on a manuscript in Word and creating figures for that manuscript in Photoshop and doing data analysis in IDL using *nix code originally created on an SGI. All of this at the same time with zero down time and a nice consistent GUI.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[zojas]

actually, a g3 is faster than a g4 for non-vector code. and the g5 won't be in a laptop for at least a year.

I agree that some $1300 x86 laptops will be faster than a $1300 ibook, but the x86 will also be much hotter and have at best half the battery life.

for serious number crunching, I'll stick to a desktop machine where I don't care about heat & power. but I appreciate low heat and a 4.5 hour battery life in a laptop.

and again, $1300 isn't a very high price. even the ibook with the 14" screen can be had under $2000. plus, you can run linux on the ibook too. (mine dual-boots OS X and gentoo linux).

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Hawthorne01]

Ummmn, you've never owned a Mac, and yet you claim the iBook is a dog?

Okaaaaayy.

My 700 mhz iBook was very comparable in actual performance to the laptops of the time, and at 900 mhz, it's kept pace. The battery life, size and weight of an iBook set the standards for years in the industry. If you like a space heater in you lap, by all means, get an X86. If you want to work for an afternoon without stopping to hunt for an electrical outlet, get an iBook.

"Give me a 1Ghz+ G4 with 512MB, 40GB+ hard drive with a DVD/CDRW for around $1,200 and I would buy it in a heart beat. I can get this type of setup on X86 for $700 or so,

Okay, You got it. Now go buy it.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Reverberant]

After a few hours of trying all kinds of things par the Knowledge Base and Apple Support I determined the power manger chip is completely dead (meaning it won't take power from an outlet and can't recharge the barrey.

Maybe you tried this, but I'll ask anyway: have you tried reseting NVRAM via OF? See here for details. It may not be the same problem, but it may be worth trying (assuming you can power on your machine!)

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[SubjunctiveSam]

I just bought an hp pavilion ze4420 with 256 megs of ram(64 shared w/ video though) a 40 gig hd, dvd/cd-r combo drive, and an amd athlon xp2200 for 900 dollars after 250 in rebates. Battery life is 2-3 hours, probably half as much as an ibook. Can I get an ibook with comparable speed, storage and with a dvd/cd-r?

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

All these people whining about running Linux...what you really mean, is that you want your Windows security blanket. You have the guts to play around with Linux, but you can't hack it on a WHOLE DIFFERENT PLATFORM.

You wanna support a real alternative, pull out your fucking credit card and pay for it. A Mac is definitely NOT $1,000 more than an 'equivalent' x86. An equivalent x86 doesn't exist.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[11223]

OK, let me spell it out for you:

Apple produces mid-range and high-end products. They do not produce any low-end products.

iBooks are mid-range laptops and compete quite well with comparable PC laptops.

PowerBooks are high-end laptops and blow away most other high-end PC laptops.

Apple also does not produce luggables, almost-PDA-sized laptops, laptops without CDs, laptops with less than 4.5 hours of battery life, or tablets.

If you stick to laptops you will find that Apple's laptops are highly competative.

Was that enough?

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Coneasfast]

Along with what everyone else has said, I will say that it's not that Apple's products are too expensive, it's that Apple doesn't sell cheaper computers. Theres a huge difference there.

Not quite, apple's systems are still more expensive than a similar PC system, for example:

Here is an apple system.

and Here is a similar spec PC system.

Note how the PC system is cheaper, has a faster processor (even taking in the fact that mac cpus are faster) and more memory.

This is what people are talking about.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[jceaser]

You get what you pay for. Just becouse the processor is 3 Ghz does not mean the rest of the computer is. Nor does it mean that good parts are used in it's construction. Apple would love to be able to sell a mac for less, but Apple is not willing to put cheap (crapy) parts in the computer, so, you get what you pay for.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

No thanks, I prefer girls with at least some brains and wit.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[leifm]

I've had two iBooks in the last yearish. I liked them very much. I primarly bought Apple hardware for OS X, but I was plesantly suprised by the nifty little things Apple puts into their hardware. For instance the magnetic display latch, the autosensing ethernet, and targeted FireWire disc mode. Battery life(after my defective one was replaced) was great too.

That said after having two of them die on me in a year period I don't know that I will ever buy another Apple product, and that sucks because I really like OS X. The first one is largely my fault, I dropped it, repaired it (mostly cosmetic damage) and then about a month later the backlight died on me. I had convinced my gf to buy one as well, and we shared that one for about 3 months and then about 3 weeks ago it up and died. From what I have been told it's a dead logic board. Same thing happened to another person I know. A lot of iBooks on eBay are being sold because this happened. I really like Apple products, but I can't have a machine that dies after 12 months. The second iBook was never even taken out of the house, never got wet, and in general was very well taken care of.

I've also had bad experiences with AppleCare (battery exchange where they charged me even though I'd sent the old one in on time), and from what I've read sending your dead/broken machine doesn't always work out so great.

As much as I don't want to go back my next machine will be a Thinkpad running a linux distro.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Jucius Maximus]

"Apple also does not produce luggables, almost-PDA-sized laptops, laptops without CDs, laptops with less than 4.5 hours of battery life, or tablets."

Just nitpicking here: In real world use you're not going to get more than 4h out of a 12" iBook battery unless you have the screen brightness at minimum, turn of WiFi and don't use the CD drive. But you CAN get 5h if you do all these things.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Jucius Maximus]

"(I'd still stick to Linx though I could also have a nice Mac)."

Aside from the slight typographical error, you should be aware that these are NOT mutually exclusive goals. Please look here for more information.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[leifm]

My Apple laptop gripe is right above you at the moment, so I'm probably offtopic as well, but I feel an intense need to point out it's Apple's shoddy hardware that has made me computerless for the first time in like 6 years, and I have no $ to get another one.

Prior to my iBook issues I had my sights set on a "15 Powerbook one day, now I'm afraid to drop that kind of cash on something I don't know I can rely on.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Jucius Maximus]

"I agree that some $1300 x86 laptops will be faster than a $1300 ibook, but the x86 will also be much hotter and have at best half the battery life."

Have you used an iBook when it is under duress? I ran mine for 2 weeks straight on bittorrent and after that, the TABLE was too hot to touch!

Now when I use bittorrent + iBook I hang the front of the notebook off the table so the hard drive (which is at the front) is radiating heat into the air instead of into the table (so as to avoid getting it radiated back.)

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[leifm]

Somewhere I read the average iPod owner made >= 100k per year. That number is probably fairly accurate in regard to Apple hardware in general. Sometimes I wonder if a number of Apple's customers never see a problem because they can afford to buy the next greatest thing the day it is announced and never really have any one machine for an extended period of time.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[zojas]

My ibook is only 700MHz, maybe it runs cooler than yours. Mine hasn't been too bad at the end of a 27-hour kde compiling session under gentoo linux. It was definitely very warm, but I could still touch the bottom of the ibook, no problem.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[11223]

Understood - 4hrs is what I get out of my TiBook - but when comparing to other manufacturers people will look at ACTUAL time of the Apple compared to QUOTED time of the other laptop, as if x86 vendors never lie or exaggurate their specs.

"Dude! My friend's Apple with the five year old battery only gets a half hour, but this Censpleeno gets 7.5 hours! Dude, Apples suck! Mac really needs to go Intel!"

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Jucius Maximus]

"My ibook is only 700MHz, maybe it runs cooler than yours. Mine hasn't been too bad at the end of a 27-hour kde compiling session under gentoo linux. It was definitely very warm, but I could still touch the bottom of the ibook, no problem."

Mine has a 40G drive. Maybe those get really hot or something.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[zojas]

could be, mine is only 30gb.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[valmont]

Apple is no monopoly and never will be. It is simply one of many alternatives, and, in my opinion, the strongest contender for the best overall computing experience.

Many open-source zealots (Gnu, FSF) seem to have issues with an operating system that possesses any proprietary code. That is just silly because they are alienating themselves from the one corporation that is increasing open-source-related and UNIX mindshare. Apple proudly advertises that the core underpinnings of their operating system is powered by open-source software. Apple wants people to realize that open-source software is by definition sturdier and more mature, especially when it comes to security, than closed-source alternatives such as windows.

To make things even better, Apple has released Darwin's source code to the world, so just about ANYONE can build their own alternative to Apple's operating system. And people have. You can run Darwin on just about any hardware, you'll just have to use it with X11/Gnome/KDE/whatnot versus Apple's user interface.

Gnu and FSF need to adopt a less snooty stance and understand that what is good for Apple is good for the open-source community at large and vice-versa.

There are good reasons for buying a PC laptop and there are good reasons for buying a mac laptop.

The PC will give you a better price/performance ratio, if you define performance as a faster CPU. Having dealt with my share of headaches related to windows' inherently flawed network and system-level security, getting various exotic USB devices to work in linux, dual-booting between windoz and linux to switch between application development and "office-like" tasks, random windoz system freezes, i can tell you that my definition of performance has finally evolved to be "shit just works".

As far as price goes, all i gotta say is my powerbook is already 2 years old, i've been using it EXTENSIVELY for both work (j2ee application development, office tasks, Gimp/X11, accessing shares on windoz networks) and personal stuff (iPhoto, iTunes, watching DVDs, .MAC). It never ever crashes, i recently installed a Gig of RAM (two 512MB chips) for $160 including shipping from a vendor i found on pricewatch.com. I also upgraded its internal hard drive with IBM's latest 40Gig "travelstar" HD, for $90 from a vendor i found on pricewatch.com. Basically, it has proved itself to be worth every penny and has rendered me incredibly more productive at work. Compare that to that win2k DELL laptop i used to have at work. fucking piece of shit. the mouse would move on its own. the system would freeze for no reasons. Caused me to force reboots many many times due to crashes. All those reboots eventually caused bad sectors on my hard drive which corrupted key files in my windoz profile folder, and somehow some shit had gotten corrupted on my linux partition, i couldn't even log-in half the time. The whole system became fucked after a little over a year of intense usage. Sure the DELL laptop prolly was cheap. but the resulting loss of productivity cost my company a lot of money and cost ME a lot of sleep.

but that's just my experience. most people just don't use their computers and laptops for anything serious or that mission-critical. many of those people do not mind tinkering with their systems, reformatting hard drives, recompiling linux kernels to support exotic devices. And I think this is a very valuable part of one's computing experience background. Tinkering with a system trains your brain to solve problems.

I've already been there. I no-longer wish to tinker. I want a superior computing experience, and i'll happily pay a premium for it.

I'd recommend you go to an apple store and play with the macs they have there. open terminal.app. play around in the tcsh. or switch to bash. found all the linux commands you cherish all right there. Then open some other apps.

it is not just a "pretty computer". MacOS X is a f

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[bigman8]

Hrmmm . . . well, on the front PAGE, it says its cheaper. However, you go to "Customize" the machine, and I got about $950. I could only seem to reduce it to $798. Which is closer to the Mac's specs. The only real differences were the hard drive space (much more on the Dell, but that looked like one of their "special offers"), and twice the amount of memory on the Mac. I got the slowest processor I could buy (which was still pretty darn fast). Doubling the memory on the Mac to match the Dell was only $50 . . . again, not that much more. So I don't think Apples are THAT much more expensive. Now the COOL ones are, but they are fairly close to their PC cousins in everything except processor speed, which to me is not a huge deal, since we can't seem to keep our processors busy enough anyway.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dude! My friend's Apple with the five year old battery only gets a half hour, but this Censpleeno gets 7.5 hours! Dude, Apples suck! Mac really needs to go Intel!"

Apple already does comparisons like that. "My six-year-old PC was really crappy. Windows was so slow and it crashed all the time. Then I bought a brand new Macintosh, which is much faster and it never ever crashes!"

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[11223]

I didn't say that Apple was righteous. I said that people who compare systems independently should be smart enough to not pay attention to vendor claims like that.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a beige PowerMac G3 tower that turns 5 this month. It runs like a charm, and always has.

The beige POS monitor it came with, OTOH, is barely able to keep up these days. Of course, that monitor is a re-branded Sony, so you really can't fault Apple for bad hardware there.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[ratsnapple tea]

Did you try blowing up at the AppleCare representative? Seriously. A friend of mine had an issue with her iBook that required her to send it in for repair multiple times, and the last time before she sent it in she completely blew her cool at the rep. "I can't afford to have this keep happening! I'm a fucking journalist and I'm leaving on assignment! You sold me a fucking LEMON!!"

She received a new iBook the next day.

As for my 12" PowerBook, I've had it six months and counting, and no issues so far. Maybe I should try this stunt when the new models come out, hmm? :-)

yours

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from some a few scratches (which is my fault for allowing it to rest against something that would scatch the case), my iBook works just fine and has been for about 7 months (still some time before I can declare it defective). Unlike you though I've been rather abusive to it (not on purpose). A highschooler's backpack (even when in a protective sleve) is definately a hostile environment for any laptop. So far the only hardware failure I've had is the glowing ring around the plug no longer lighting up when the battery is full, that's no big deal though.

If you have an apple frying it's own motherboard more than once you should demand AppleCare replace the entire machine because it's definately caused by some other part. From what I hear most people who have iBook motherboard problems have the exact same problem again within the same year.

If the backlight died on you after you dropped it and had other components repaired, it's not Apple's fault. Unless of course that was one of the things you lost immediately after dropping it.

Just like any company Apple is out to make a profit, but from my experience they want to keep their customers happy. If you were to complain enough they'd exchange your machine for another, most likely refurbished unless you demand a new one. Some people even suggest that you request a specific repair center (I forget which one).

Apple has good customer support, you just have to make it clear that you're unhappy with what's been happening and they'll try harder to change that.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[eclectic4]

"you have to spend $1300 to get a dvd rom/cdrw drive equipped ibook"

...but you also get 10 GB and 100 MHz (which is also a faster L2, obviously) to go along with the DVD.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[zojas]

the current ibooks with 12" screens for $1300 with dvd rom/cdrw have 40gb hard drives, not 10gb

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[zojas]

oh, I see what you mean. the $1000 ibook has a 30gb drive, the $1300 has a 40gb drive, so you get an extra 10gb with the more expensive one (along with 100mhz faster g3, and a dvdrom/cdrw drive)

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[JonathanBoyd]

In realworld use, my DVD drive is rarely required and I don't have Wifi. Without dimming the screen the whole way, I can get quite a few hours use out of it. Once when I was just using it to read pdfs, I got 8 hours use without the battery running out. Of course, now that the battery is 2 years old, I'm rather more cautious about how long I spend away from a plug.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[elemental23]

You just proved the original poster's point. Apple doesn't compete in the low-end market. The eMac is their token inexpensive machine but it's not a good representative of their product line.

Try comparing high-end Apples and Dells, particularly laptops, and get back to me.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[AstroDrabb]

I have used Macs, just never bought my own : )
I just found the price/performance ratio to high on Mac, so I stuck with the X86. I do hate how my 1.7Ghz P4 laptop practically burns me and gets at most 3 hours of batter life.

Are those eMacs any good? A 17" one looks kind of tempting.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[AstroDrabb]

Hey that sounds nice! I thought Apple messed with the bios to stop it from booting anything other then Mac OSX? How are the eMacs?

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[JonathanBoyd]

I'm a student who lives on a 4,000 student loan each year and own an iBook and iPod :^) All Mac owners I know are average people when it comes to income.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[shawnce]

I or fellow family members have used the Apple products I have bought for relatively long periods of time, 3+ year on average. Some have been in use for over 7 years (my IIci was used even longer then that, but I finally retired a couple of year ago).

In my experience most Mac's get handed down / around in families and companies, more often then trashed.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

I just bout a shitty piece of hardware that isn't even half as good as any Mac you could get, but I wonder wether Apple will sell me a superior system for the same price.

NO THEY WON'T YOU MORON.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere I read the average iPod owner made >= 100k per year.

Damn! I've gotta get me one of those. I could really use that extra income.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Tokerat]

...And with every BSOD and smoking mobo I see, I am reminded of exactly how witty those x86 fatties can get....

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Original Cynic]

Thank you!! Your comment that "Apple is trying to please both crowds and is doing a pretty good job of it." Is perfectly correct. When I look at the Industry trends I see Macro$hit, Open Source (Linux, BSD), Proprietary Unix, and the also rans. Apple, like IBM and others, has realized that there is a SERIOUS benefit to Open Source. The Open Source Community (and the rest of us cynics) need to encourage Apple (and others) to embrace Open Source. If we continue to /. every company that wants to work with Open Source we WILL end up with one of two BAD choices MACRO$hit and the SCOmbags..

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[zojas]

all modern macs can have linux installed on them. gentoo (my favorite), debian, yellowdog, all have ppc versions.

I've never used an emac. sounds like a good deal if you don't want an lcd

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[LochNess]

They changed it so that the newest Macs can't boot Mac OS 9. They did nothing about other OSes.

Re:Apple is giving people what they want

[Hawthorne01]

I needed a second machine for my home, and we went with the iMac. It's worth the extra $$$ for the small footprint, my home is getting crowded. And it was my wife, not me, who insisted we get a Mac. I wanted a Wintel box for testing, she wanted a Mac because "They just work."

The size, features and price/point of the Apple notebooks are outstanding, though. If you're looking at Apple, I'd start there. Wait a month or so, as they'll be updated soon. Having access to Apache, PHP, all my design apps (Photoshop, Illustrator) and MS Office all at once and on one machine is wonderful.

good news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I actually I wonder like a previous poster WHY every company needs to have their own license when GPL and BSD (or Apache perhaps) seem to cover the bases and you can always say "modified GPL", i.e. GPL + trademark restriction.

But on the whole this is great to hear, because I consider the FSF stamp of approval to mean "this license has no hidden traps". I.e., no weird venue change clauses, or ejection seats (if you get sued, your license terminates, if you have patents your license terminates, if you "use" the software the wrong way your license terminates) or other stupidity.

Sometimes free software folks think that these little details don't matter, but of course if you ever have to go to court, EVERY detail matters, and you agree to them!

I really don't have time to read all these stupid licenses, but when I see FSF-approved I feel a little more at ease.

Re:good news!

[h2oliu]

Why do they need to do this? You have obviously never dealt with company lawyers. They would NEVER let something through without modifying it.

Re:good news!

[Elwood P Dowd]

They need their own license so that they can guarantee that they can use any improvement it ever sees in their own closed-source product.

They also want others to be able to link to it without using the APSL, because that will allow driver developers to use it with fewer barriers.

It's almost the same as the NPL, but they need to make a new copy of it so that rights cede to Apple rather than Netscape.

Re:Apple good?

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM is good. Without it, there would be no iTunes Music Store.

Patents are good. Without them, there would be no innovation.

Only part of the OS

[brokencomputer]

Considering the fact that only part of the OS is open, wouldnt it be impossible to be compliant with GNU specifications?

Re:Only part of the OS

[Squidgee]

No, because -ALL- of Darwin is open sourced; hence, it's compliant with GNU specifications.

Re:Only part of the OS

[Squidgee]

(In that regard, of course; GNU seems to say it sucks, otherwise... =p)

Typical

[The Bungi]

And GNU's response to this? "It's not free enough", which means "it's not the GPL, therefore it sucks".

Maybe one of these days RMS will learn to appreciate the jumps and hoops companies who sell software for a living go through to do these types of things, instead of just dismissing them with "they're evil, proprietary and you shouldn't use them". Life is so much simpler when you don't have shareholders, boards of directors, lawyers and... well, money.

Re:Typical

[Ender Ryan]

Maybe it's because, surprise, they honestly don't think it's quite good enough?

It's not compatible with the GPL, which prevents all the GPLed projects from using it, which is a valid concern for most FOSS developers.

Seriously, you're just running your mouth about things you seem to know very little about, as you are wont to do when the discussion has anything to do with the FSF. Shut up. Prick.

Heh, I'm just fuckin' with ya :)

Re:Typical

[Kevin DeGraaf]

And GNU's response to this? "It's not free enough", which means "it's not the GPL, therefore it sucks". Maybe one of these days RMS will learn to [blah blah blah]

Bullshit. Free software is what it is today precisely because of RMS's 100% no-compromises attitude.

Re:Typical

[Elwood P Dowd]

They say it's "Not free enough" to APPLY TO YOUR OWN SOFTWARE. They don't say it's "not free enough" for any other purpose. They say it's fine to use.

They'd like it to be GPL compatible. If it were, then we could combine it with all this other software. There would be a giant tangible benefit to GPL compatibility. The APSL does not have this characteristic, and that's too bad. The FSF laments the lack. Give them a fucking break.

Re:Typical

[The Bungi]

Yes, I completely agree with you. Absolutely.

If it wasn't for that precise attitude, free software would be much farther along.

But no, he has to bitch and moan about "GNU/Linux" and Ximian and Bitkeeper and everything and anything he doesn't consider "appropriate" for his feverish vision of what software should be. Apparently he's forgoten that "freedom" also includes freedom to see free software in ways different than his.

The entire GNU website is one big rant dedicated to showing the world how unfair people (the very people who have helped make most of his vision true) are to him because they don't share his ideals.

Microsoft is also uncompromising. So is SCO. But I don't see everyone cheering them.

Re:Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's an accurate assesment of the current state of things, but RMS has contributed too much to be simply dismissed. Maybe he should go back to write software.

Re:Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

You quote: "they're evil, proprietary and you shouldn't use them"

But RMS didn't say that.

Why do folks always put words into RMS' mouth? The FSF said the license is incompatible with the GPL. Because it is. And the GPL is the FSF's license! Who else is going to point this out?

The FSF didn't say it "wasn't free enough". They said it was not copyleft like the GPL. It is a free software license and therefore upholds the necessary freedoms, such as: being able to use the software for any purpose, seeing the source code, and being able to give verbatim copies to others.

I think folks who complain about how picky the FSF is have never dealt with lawyers!

Or maybe, just maybe, folks just like to insult RMS whenever possible.

PS: If I were a big company like apple, I'd much prefer to give out my software under the GPL then, say, the BSD license. Makes sense doesn't it? You'll never have to compete against MSFT-Darwin for instance.

Re:Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

And GPL'd code is not compatible with the BSDL, the MPL, the Apache license, or a dozen other opensource licenses. This prevents all those fine projects from using GPL'd code, which is a valid concern for those developers.

How is Apple's license any different? It isn't.

From the perspective of a non-GPL-using opensource developer, the GPL and the APSL are equally burdensome.

Re:Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

That not entirely true. The GPL is worse since I have to relicense my code under the GPL to use GPL'ed code. The APSL only applies to Apple's code and I can combine it with BSD code.

Re:Typical

[gerardrj]

Bingo.

I like most of what RMS tries to do, and I support GNU's efforts completely, but there's one thing RMS continually overlooks: He (and GNU in general) have been trying for, what, close to 20 years now to create a complete, open source operating system under open source?
To date they have failed at making a completely usable, completely stable system that can be used for day-to-day work. Yes, many smaller parts are completely to being done, many other parts are somewhat complete, but unstable. (Linux is even further away, since they still rely on GNU for everything but the kernel).

The reason for the slowness: very few people are interested enough in completely free software to quit their jobs, depend of contributions, and live a life where they may not know where there next meal is coming from for such a trivial thing as "completely free software".

Apple is making a reasonable compromise: accept open source (and more importantly open standards) where and when possible. Use professional programmers to revise and extend the open source code base, and give the changes back to the community. All the while Apple maintains enough closed source to sell and keep the open source maintenance alive.

To use Safari as an example: As others have mentioned, khtml is the major portion of Safari, the rest is user interface stuff for bookmarks, settings, etc. When Safari first was released, there were LOTS of sites that would not render properly. Within months, Apple had patched and extended khtml to handle almost ALL published web pages properly. That alone is something that would have taken general community possibly years to complete, because there was no drive to fix the problems.

RMS has (at some point) to allow for the existence of closed source or at least for-profit coding. Otherwise nothing gets done on any sort of a reliable timeline.

No, you idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

"MacOS X" refers to Darwin and all the end-user software that sits on top. Darwin is open source. Everything else (Quartz, QuickTime, Finder, etc.) is not. By the way, Darwin has already been ported to x86.

Re:No, you idiot.

[Nick of NSTime]

By the way, Darwin has already been ported to x86.

That is indeed true, and John Carmack ported X11 to Darwin a while back.

Re:No, you idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that Torrey Lyons did the X11 port.
http://mrcla.com/XonX/

Re:No, you idiot.

[SubjunctiveSam]

I don't see where on that page it says that. And at fink.sourceforge.com, it says Carmack.

read

Re:No, you idiot.

[good soldier svejk]

Before Darwin was even released. He ported XFree86 to Rhapsody DR1 (IIRC, it might have been DR2).

Apple Publicity

[brokencomputer]

It is interesting that Apple makes no mention on thier home page about this change. I think this might be because they already have the general public believing that they are open source and telling us now that twhey erent open source until now will cause the gen. public to get annoyed or untrustworthy of apple.

Re:Apple Publicity

[DavidinAla]

No. There's no mention of it on the Apple home page because it's not a big deal except to a very few geeks. The vast, vast majority of the general public doesn't KNOW what open source is and couldn't care less about the issues that matter so much to people at the FSF.

Re:Apple Publicity

[Calibax]

Do you honestly think the world revolves around the type of open source license that people use, and that this news merits a place on Apple's home page? Of course Apple won't make a big splash about this -- it's simply isn't relevant to the vast, vast majority of people who go to the Apple web site looking for information about the company and their products. It's interesting only to programming geeks like us, and even then only to a limited subset of Apple interested geeks.

Re:Apple Publicity

[brokencomputer]

I dont know why i was moderated as flamebait. I didnt mean to start a flame at all. It was just an observation. I don't have any problem with apple's license. I am actually very happy as a long time apple user.

Re:Apple Publicity

[mandrakeroot]

Or GNU interested geeks. I also think that a lot of people in the general public don't want to know about a kernel and especially the license it is under.

Re:Apple Publicity

[cbenesch]

For somebody evaluating a software hardware platform an open source license offers flexibility and future security... (at least to some extent). And as Apple is trying to get its share of the server market, I think they will score many good points with the profession.
But of course they only will achieve that, if they don't fool around with small print, but make a serious effort, which, from what I read so far, is what they did

Re:Apple Publicity

[bursch-X]

Well the OSI acknowledged the previous version to be an OSS license as well.

It's just that the FSF now is giving their two cents.

Re:Apple Publicity

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the risk you take when you talk about things you don't understand. You may inadvertently write up nonsense in such a way that it becomes a flamebait. Next time you might want to write down your observation/speculation as a question. That way we know that you are just uneducated. It's even better if you learn on your own. Since you're new around here, I suggest you lay off the posting for a while and lurk instead.

PS1. The APSL was open source since the beginning, it just wasn't GPL-compatible. Read up on the difference. Mixing that up was one part of what made your post a flamebait.
PS2. Check your spelling. If you don't, you put the burden to decipher your post on me. It will not work in your favor when I have mod points.

Re:Apple good?

[2nd Post!]

Is there something *fundamentally* wrong with DRT and patents?

Technology is not good nor evil but dependent upon the person wielding it, yes?

The same technology that makes digital rights management is the same technology that allows for license servers (good or bad?), encryption (good or bad?), and pay per use (subscriptions, memberships, etc) (good or bad?).

Re:Apple good?

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies don't have to be absolutly good or absolutly bad -- it's quite possible for them to do some good things and some bad things at the same time. For that matter, the same is true of individuals as well.

Re:Apple good?

[proj_2501]

From :

"Aside from this, we must remember that only part of Mac OS X is being released under the APSL. Even though the fatal flaws of the APSL were fixed, and even if the practical problems were addressed, that does no good for the other parts of Mac OS X whose source code is not being released at all. We must not judge all of a company by just part of what they do. "

So no, the FSF does NOT think that Apple is good, but the FSF also has a very one-dimensional method of determining moral quality, don't they?

Right and wrong

[poptones]

Life is so much simpler when you don't have shareholders, boards of directors, lawyers and... well, money.

Right, it is. That's why this is a joke of a "free" license. You have to "have an ID" to "accept" terms of the license? Contributing to this "free" code is the closest you can come to being Apple's indentured servent. This does bring with it all sorts of "free" connotations, unfortunately none of them really embody what freedom is supposed to be about.

Re:Right and wrong

[li99sh79]

Right, it is. That's why this is a joke of a "free" license. You have to "have an ID" to "accept" terms of the license?

Yeah, so, Apple doesn't charge anything for an "AppleID." You need one to get at their knowledgebase anyways so what's the big deal?

-sam

Re:Right and wrong

[proclus]

You have to "have an ID" to "accept" terms of the license? Contributing to this "free" code is the closest you can come to being Apple's indentured servent.

Alternatively, you can bypass the license page by getting it from GNU-Darwin. It is free software after all ;-}.

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

Re:x86 port of OSX

[Jerk City Troll]

Think about it, why would ANYONE buy a Mac if not for OSX?

Probably because PowerPC architecture is vastly superior to x86. In addition to that, Apple has very strict engineering standards. They do things that make a lot of sense. If you've ever actually sat down and tinkered with or owned a Mac, you'd understand.

Even when I was looking at buying my 15" Ti Powerbook, I decided that if I hated MacOS X, I'd just run Linux or FreeBSD on it. I bought it beacuse the hardware is of exceptional quality. Offerings from most vendors in the PC market are mostly crap. There's very little money spent into engineering things well, but a lot of money invested in engineering them cheaply. I'll never lay a dime down on another piece of x86 hardware again--it's just not worth it.

GNU is not software, it's religion

[s20451]

I read that. Is it possible for an organization to be more full of itself than the FSF?

A quotation:

"... we must remember that only part of Mac OS X is being released under the APSL. Even though the fatal flaws of the APSL were fixed, and even if the practical problems were addressed, that does no good for the other parts of Mac OS X whose source code is not being released at all. We must not judge all of a company by just part of what they do."

The FSF reminds me more and more of a religion than of a software organization. I can't think of any other organization that, on the one hand, makes a big deal about freedom and liberty, and on the other hand is so moralistic about orthodoxy and monolithic thinking.

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[DAldredge]

What about the goverment of the United States?

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[generic-man]

The government concerns itself with the actual well-being of the citizens of the U.S.

GNU, on the other hand, consists of a loosely-associated group of zealots who run around yelling at people who don't use their name in vain. Unless you speak their language and laugh at their woefully outdated jokes, they judge you to be unworthy.

In short: the U.S. government matters. GNU does not.

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[feldsteins]

Amen to that. I think it's very short-sighted for the free software community to constantly knock the Establishment Corporations when they try to incorporate free software ideas. I mean think about it - you won! They're adopting your methods and models! Complaining that they're not doing it completely because they haven't entirely abandoned other methods of software developmennt/distribution is ridiculous.

If you think about it, a free software company which becomes a huge success might likely do so by also selling proprietary add-ons. I'm thinking of the linux distro which finally becomes user-friendly enough to get desktop marketshare worth a damn. Or, it could go from the other end...a traditional software company might incorporate free software but also continue to make and sell proprietary add-ons (Apple).

Both cases are likely to draw the ire of these free software fundamentalists.

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[Anonymous Coward]

The government concerns itself with the actual well-being of the citizens of the U.S.

As a 15-year-old libertarian who reads Slashdot all day, I can assure you that it does not. The government tramples our rights every day and steals our money from our own pockets. If I had a job, for example, the government would take my money away every time I got paid.

That's why I'm going to vote libertarian as soon as I'm allowed to by law. I might even sign an Internet petition or two to get Harry Browne the federal funding he deserves to run his campaign!

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Good troll, but AC's don't get too many bites. You're also way too deep to get many views (let alone replies) with a 0 starting score.

Keep the format up, but try to attach it to a higher rated comment next time. Since no one seemed to notice this one, it should be fine to reuse it. Just drop the bit about Haarry Browne -- you're going to silly there.

Good work, though. It's always good to see new trolls get off on the right foot.

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had a job, for example, the government would take my money away every time I got paid... I might even sign an Internet petition or two to get Harry Browne the federal funding he deserves to run his campaign!

You may be kidding, but where do you think the federal government will get the money you want it to give to Mr. Browne? It has something to do with taking it out of your pocket...

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[TClevenger]

The government concerns itself with the actual well-being of the citizens of the U.S.

No, the government concerns itself with the actual well-being of the population of the U.S., individual citizens be damned. Remember, in some cases, it even concerns itself with the well-being of corporations, to the detriment of its citizens.

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[vadim_t]

Uh, I don't see what's the point in complaining about that.

Deal with it, RMS is an idealist. A quite awesome one in fact. Seriously, how many people have whatever got him to practically replace Unix with something better (excluding the kernel) because of a printer driver?

You may complain all you want, but FSF matches RMS' ideals. If you don't agree with such extreme idealism you can always start your own movement, although I doubt you're one of the very few capable of that.

Yes, RMS sometimes looks too fanatical. But it's quite possible that all this wouldn't have started if he wasn't.

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[dvdeug]

The FSF reminds me more and more of a religion than of a software organization.

It's a philosophy, not religion. And, yes, it should be fairly obvious they are more interested in philosophical problems and approaches to sharing software then they are to distributing a bunch of software. Do you complain to PETA because they are a religion instead of pet club?

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[feldsteins]

Yes, RMS sometimes looks too fanatical. But it's quite possible that all this wouldn't have started if he wasn't.

Maybe you're right about that. But maybe the time has come to move beyond it. Perhaps the maturity of a movement can be measured by it's openess to mainstream implimentations rather than strict adherence to idealistic (read: unrealistic) fundamentalism.

Consider the difference between a Green party or Libertarian party candidate who expects to get no more than single digit voter support. They can "afford" to be radical. Imagine, however, that one of these guys gets elected to something. I don't think they would be forced to moderate to at least a small degree in order to accommodate...shall we say, the realities of holding actual power rather than just bitching about the peole who do? Yes I think that fits.

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[Acrimonious Coward]

Unfortunately for all of us "humans", corporations are considered "citizens" and are given the same legal rights, which I find to be rather distasteful...

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[bursch-X]

>The government concerns itself with the actual well-being of the citizens of the U.S.

And only of those--while ignoring human rights in most other parts of the world, starting wars every few years without any particular reason.

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point being?

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[s20451]

Compare the web sites of PETA and GNU. It's pretty obvious that PETA is about what you should do, while GNU is about what you should think. With that, combine the "true believer" items such as GNU's list of words you can and cannot say, and a strange focus on morality, and you have something that is practically indistinguishable from a cult, even if it is only a cult of personality.

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[japhmi]

>The government concerns itself with the actual well-being of the citizens of the U.S.

And only of those

I'd be suspicious at any government that cared more about non-citizens than citizens. A government's primary responsibility is to it's citizens. Now, that doesn't mean that they should ignore the rest of the world (what effects the world is going to effect one's country - no matter how isolated you are).

Re:GNU is not software, it's religion

[japhmi]

GNU's list of words you can and cannot say

You mean the list of "Some Confusing or Loaded Words and Phrases that are Worth Avoiding." They aren't saying that you can't say them - just theat they are loaded and understood in certain ways that one must be aware of when talking to this community. It's quite common when people are using normal words with certain meanings to warn people about the understanding of those words in that community.

And, I think that PETA cares a lot about what you think. Of course, I prefer PETA but what do I know...

The waiting is over...

[Matthias Wiesmann]

O people waiting in the Shadow of Slashdot!
Honoured Descendants of Stallman and Jobs, the Greatest and Most Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe has ever known...
The Time of Waiting is over!

Seven and a half million years our race has waited for this Great and Hopefully Enlightening Day!

The Day of the License!

Never again, never again will we wake up in the morning and think what license should I use? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I use a license or another?
For today we will finally learn once and for all the plain and simple answer to all these nagging little problems of the GPL, the APSL and the BSD licenses.

What about MSFT?

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

How many FSF approved licenses does Microsoft have? I'd guess the answer is zero.

Re:What about MSFT?

[spitzak]

Microsoft has released quite a lot of stuff (example code) public domain, which is a FSF-compatable license.

They also make available all the code to the GPL tools they sell with their Unix-compatability package, that code is real GPL.

Though I don't know if they modified anything, so perhaps that isn't really contributing any actual work they did under the GPL.

Err, is a click-thru license that alien to you?

[Paradox]

I really fail to see how you can draw a line between "click-thru license" and "indentured servitude" unless:

1. You are an anti-apple troll.
2. You have no concept what Apple actually asks for.
3. You think that there is more to a darwin developer account than agreeing to the APSL.

While the first may be true, the second and third are not. It is becoming more and more aparent that "By using this you agree.." licenses are not tenable, which is why many people are moving away from them. Apple effectively makes a click-thru license scheme and you get angry, but when Gnu contemplates it, you don't.

Silly slashdot-ite, double standards are for kids.

Re:Err, is a click-thru license that alien to you?

[jfruhlinger]

I would just add that:

I really fail to see how you can draw a line between "click-thru license" and "indentured servitude" unless...

You have no idea what actual indentured servitude was like. Sheesh.

jf

Re:Apple good?

[tarquin_fim_bim]

Patents are good. Without them, there would be no innovation.

Your spelling is atrocious! That should read:
Patents are
greed. Without them, there would be no starvation

Re:Apple good?

[Liquorman]

Patents are good. Without them, there would be no innovation.

This is an overstatement. There was much innovation in the world before patent was even a concept.

DRM=="irrational scarcity"

[Thinkit3]

So, preventing people from copying a song is irrational. Encrypting a personal e-mail is not. DRM, as I see, has basically come to mean the "evil" side of encryption.

Re:DRM=="irrational scarcity"

[arkanes]

Just as a matter of clarity, DRM is a SUBSET of encryption. Encrypting email is not DRM. It's encryption. An encryption method for email that prevented the recipient from forwarding it would be DRM. Not all encryption is DRM, but DRM neccesarily involves encryption.

If I had to put a technical term on DRM, I'd say "an encryption method that attempts to extend control past the point of decryption", meaning that DRM, rather than simply protecting data in transit, attempts to protect it even after it's been (nominally) decrypted.

That doesn't mean that DRM is innately bad, but claiming that it's not because it's just like encryption isn't true. It certainly IS true that DRM has at least the potential for far extending the rights of others, preventing you from doing things that you have a legal right to be able to do. Whether or not thats a reasonable compromise is up to you, of course.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll never lay a dime down on another piece of x86 hardware again--it's just not worth it.

Because of the cost:maintenance factor or is it because of socio-economic reasons within your region?

Freedom is not

[poptones]

life in a gated community. That ain't "free" for anyone - especially when a corporation holds the keys to the kingdom.

Re:Freedom is not

[Anonymous Coward]

tomatoe, tomatoh ... let's call the whole thing off.

Re:Freedom is not

[The Bungi]

It must have been very traumatic to have the Apple Corps barge into your home at night and thrust an iBook in your hand while holding a brushed metal gun to your head. "You will use this or wear teal, heathen!"

If you don't like life in the gated community, buy a flat downtown. Or a shack out of town. But stop whining about it.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

Not counting the high resale value of Apple Hardware. They don't depreciate in price as it is the case with x86 machines. The instant you buy a Dell computer, it's already depreciated out of the box. Good luck selling it anywhere near the same amount, much less in a year.

And Dell/Compaq laptops fall apart after a year.

Re:External Deployment

[ShieldW0lf]

Licensees will only be required to release source code of Modifications they "Externally Deploy" (new Section 1.4, and Sections 2.1, 2.2). "External Deployment" is defined to cover the external distribution of APSL'ed code or use of APSL'ed code to provide a service (including content delivery) to a third party through electronic communication with that party.

Don't know how I feel about this one...

You can't run an application service provider program without releasing changes to all your clients, and possibly the public if your clients deal with the public?

You can't run a b2b service without releasing all your changes to your distributors that use it and your clients that use it?

This is very different from the "no black box public distribution" that I previously considered the GPL to represent.

If I had a client who sold widgets, and he had to release all his source to clients who connected to his b2b setup, allowing them to leave him and then give all his internal systems to his competitor, even though he never distributed his software, I don't think he'd be wanting to buy anything I built.

Could you insulate against this by putting a "dumb layer" between your apps? You could argue that ANY system that was interacted with by the public, however indirectly, required publication... in most businesses, this would eliminate the "internal deployment" angle almost totally, unless you had a typist carrying out your data-syncronisation work

Re:x86 port of OSX

[axxackall]

why would ANYONE buy a Mac if not for OSX?

Ask this question to all people who has their Macs running Linux/PPC (Gentoo, YDL, Debian, etc - there thousands and thousands of Linux/PPC users), Mac OS 9 (or even 8 - "classic" application still run better in the original OS *AND* there are still tons of such application not ported yet to OSX *AND* there are still millions of users of Mac OS 8/9 around the world who has own reasons of not migrating to OSX), and even BSD (not OSX - original *BSD, although, there are not many Mac/BSD users).

I think that overall there are millions of Mac users who are running something different than OSX. How do you think they have got their Macs? I understand that some of them have bought their old Macs before OSX was stable/available. But I am sure that there are many of them who bough Macs *AFTER* OSX was around. I personally know many such individuals and some companies. And that makes you quoted sentence WRONG. Think about it.

Re:Apple good?

[proclus]

Is there something *fundamentally* wrong with DRT and patents?

That is an excellent question. I don't have an answer, but I think that we will bless Apple for this license in years to come

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

Re:Apple good?

[Llywelyn]

>What about the DRM (even though it's silly) on iTunes?

Is there something instrinsically bad about Apple's FairPlay DRM?

Seriously, is there anything *fundamentally* wrong with it, specifically?

> How about the patents?

This may come as a surprise, but Apple is a "company" in a "neoliberal economy" trying to turn something called a "profit."

I know that *is* shocking, isn't it?

MOD Parent Flamebait, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good job! Looking for some quick karma, eh? Well buddy, you must have at least a couple links to support your paranoia.

Re:MOD Parent Flamebait, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of paranoia, you must be really paranoid, logging in as an anonymous coward because you're afraid of being modded down.

Oh, wait.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

So I take it you live in the poor region?

Need more food stamps?

Re:Apple good?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was much innovation in the world before patent was even a concept.

Yes, you're absolutely right. After all, look at all the amazing technological innovations that came about between the dawn of recorded history and, say, the 18th century. Sure does make the people who lived in the 19th and 20th centuries look like a bunch of lazy fucks, huh?

Oh, wait. No, sorry. Got that backwards.

Guess you're just an asshat.

Right direction.

[gregarican]

As much as some PC enthuisiasts bash Apple, I like the direction they are heading. Anyone who goes into an Apple store and doesn't come away impressed with something is fooling themselves. They are sincerely trying to be innovative, inventive, and creative in engineering aesthetically-pleasing, user-friendly, and functional hardware and software. Micro$loth OTOH is simply repacking the same crap with new window dressing and new subscription schemes to keep revenue coming in.

Personally I find most of Apple stuff a bit pricey but like where they are going. This FSF move is another step in the right direction.

Hopefully some of these players can continue allying themselves to take down the many-headed hydra that is Micro$loth. Novell adopted some Java angles with Netware 5, and recently added Linux services to their support suite. Maybe Apple can be added to the picture to cover desktop OS, server OS, desktop hardware, desktop software, *NIX services, etc.

I know Apple hasn't been a collaboration proponent in the past but the sum of all parts could be a force to be reckoned with.

Re:Right direction.

[generic-man]

Micro$loth OTOH is simply repacking the same crap with new window dressing and new subscription schemes to keep revenue coming in.

As opposed to Apple's ingenius scheme:

1. Add brushed metal to interface.
2. List hundreds of sundry updates like "more brushed metal in interface."
3. Charge $129 for the update and $99 per year to "improve the experience" with .Mac.
4. Profit!

Re:Right direction.

[gregarican]

Compare a Mac OS minor release update and you'll find a lot more enhancements than a major release update for Windoze.

And most of the Windoze updates aren't updates as much as bug fixes due to all of the lazy coding that underlies Windoze products. Something as simple as checking for buffer overruns is inexcusable and it's been a problem from Windoze 95 through Windoze Server 2003!

I don't see a lot of CERT security advisories on Mac software, and I don't hear a lot of Mac users in my company complaining about their OS persistently crashing due to bishaving application software not playing well or crappy memory management.

Re:Right direction.

[generic-man]

It's clear that you just want to bash Microsoft, using childish terms like "Micro$loth" and "Windoze." If Apple had 95% of the market share, people would be exploiting the buffer overrun vulnerabilities that exist in its software.

For now, unless you (that's you, gregarican) can see the code, it's just security through unpopularity.

Unless you want to use equally childish terms like "Crapple" and "OS Sux," please stop replying.

Re:Right direction.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, now thats not the way to play nice.

Re:Right direction.

[Graymalkin]

For my $129 I got an OpenGL accelerated desktop, a system wide address book with a public API, great support for zeroconf networking and service discovery, CIFS/SMB support, and an AOL compatible instant messenger to boot. I figure I got quite a number of enhancements over the previous version of OSX. A .Mac subscription is entirely optional, I don't have one and don't miss it.

I don't see why $129 seems so expensive to you either. OSX was released in March of 2001. It didn't perform nearly as well as advertised and the update was released in September. The first update (10.1) only cost 10.0 users a penny to upgrade to a signifigant performance increase. Jaguar (10.2) was released in late August of 2002, a year and a handful of months after the original OSX release. Panther (10.3) doesn't look like it will be released until late in the fall. That's about 16 months between paid upgrades for the OS. That is only $8 a month that a copy of OSX costs. That is two less Frappucinos a month for 16 months and you've saved enough change to buy a new version of OSX. That's also assuming you buy upgrades the day they're released, there's little reason to upgrade to Panther if Jaguar's running fine and dnady for you. There's still plenty of folks running releases of 10.1 because it runs well enough for them not to justify an upgrade to 10.2. If $129 is so much you might want to reconsider your "career" as a McDonalds grease engineer.

Re:Right direction.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I go to Microsoft's web site and copy the features list from Windows XP into a comment, that makes me a shill.

If I go to Apple's web site and copy the features list from Mac OS X into a comment, that makes me "Insightful."

Re:Right direction.

[tgibbs]

Yes, I recently saw a Panther beta. $129 seems a quite reasonable price for the enhancements, which clearly go quite a ways beyond merely fixing things that should have worked right in the first place.

Re:Right direction.

[MikeMo]

So, you don't think that "innovative, inventive,..engineering aesthetically-pleasing, user-friendly and functional" should cost a bit more than "repacking the same crap with new window dressing and new subscrioption schemes"?

Re:Right direction.

[coolmacdude]

I would pay $129 just for Expose.

Re:Apple good?

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Don't forget to hit the PREVIEW button in the future before submitting your post.

Geesh... It's not hard...

well how about releasing some software under it

[asv108]

Darwin is great and all, but many of us already have a kernel to use. Apple may say they embrace open source but when are they going to release code to some of the various software that makes OSX unique? When they decided to use KHTML for Safari, I thought they would at least release the source code for Safari and not just the changes to KHTML.. Its not like Safari is innovative or anything, we already have better open source browsers, but releasing the source code would of been a nice gesture.

Re:well how about releasing some software under it

[Graymalkin]

Linux Whiner Translate-O-Matic:

Darwin is great and all, but many of us already have a kernel to use. Apple may say they embrace open source but when are they going to release code to some of the various software that makes OSX unique?

Wow I sure do like all the nifty features of OSX. I don't understand the fact that giving away the very technology that draws in customers, thus commoditizing the product, would be a stupid business move.

When they decided to use KHTML for Safari, I thought they would at least release the source code for Safari and not just the changes to KHTML.. Its not like Safari is innovative or anything, we already have better open source browsers, but releasing the source code would of been a nice gesture.

Apple should give away any and all software that draws customers to their platform. That way they no longer have to bother with selling hardware of any sort. Since their software should all be open source they can just make money selling advertisements. I'm sure they could make a couple hundred dollars a month at least. That's way more than my mom gives me!

Re:well how about releasing some software under it

[oscast]

"Its not like Safari is innovative or anything" Its not? What about Safari's SnapBack feature? Safari's bookmark manager is also an innovative feature. When first run, Safari automatically imports your IE bookmarks. That's pretty innovative if you ask me.

Re:well how about releasing some software under it

[frightenedmonkey]

Ok, they didn't release the entire safari app as open source, but there is:

• Darwin Streaming Server
• OpenPlay
• Rendezvous
• WebCore -- that's safari without the UI (including a Qt adapter library called KWQ)

There's other stuff too, although some of it is Mac OS X specific implementations of various other stuff (GCC, Kerberos, CUPS, etc.). My point is that by looking only at those high-profile projects, you're missing a few other interesting things (particularly, IMHO, the Darwin Streaming Server, a free, open-source streaming server, but then, most desktop users won't need that).

I'd suggest taking the time to actually check their projects' page out before jumping to conclusions about what they offer.

Re:well how about releasing some software under it

[asv108]

Rendezvous (zeroconfig)
WebCore (khtml)

I'm not talking about standards, protocols, etc, or re branded open source projects+changes. It would be interesting to see Apple release the full source code to some of its desktop applications. I am perfectly aware of why Apple needs to keep much of its software closed source, but it would be interesting to see Apple make good on its "embracing of open source" instead of releasing tidbits for PR purposes.

Re:well how about releasing some software under it

[qbwiz]

What good is Safari on a non-mac? It is mostly an interface with KHTML. There would be no point in porting it back to Linux or Windows, as the source code is probably almost completely OS X-specific, and the already contribute to the cross-platform KHTML.
The only people that would gain from the openning of the source code would be current users of Safari, as then enhancements to the UI could be added by other developers than Apple.

Re:well how about releasing some software under it

[frightenedmonkey]

Hmm, I think I see your point in general: you want something you can download and compile or hack on for your own desktop; you want something that has a direct effect on your own computing life. That's a perfectly reasonable request, if you take the somewhat silly point of view that Apple's primary motivation is just to please any given individual in the general open source community. It looks to me like they're simply trying to be good citizens, taking big pieces of technology like the BSD base of OS X, and returning what they've hacked on plus various other bits that they aren't necessarily using to sell the platform, which is what those desktop apps that you want are doing (of course, that's the obvious argument about why it isn't in Apple's best interests to open up other stuff). Just because they aren't releasing anything that directly affects you doesn't mean they haven't embraced open source. I also pointed out OpenPlay, which is a high-level networking technology originally developed by Apple for gaming; Darwin Streaming Server, a streaming media server that forms the basis of Quicktime Streaming Server. Those two things aren't full-on apps that are relevant to you in your daily life, but they aren't inconsequential bits of PR fluff either. In other words, they aren't trivial pieces of software.

Re:well how about releasing some software under it

[Merk]

I seem to remember that Opera had something like snapback first. And Netscape (and later Mozilla) have been importing IE bookmarks forever. The bookmark manager seems to do what Mozilla does, but not as flexibly -- i.e. in Mozilla you can either add a bookmark or file it, in Safari you can only file it.

In any case, I've never seen the use of snapback once I've started using tabs. To me, Safari just seems like a dumbed-down version of some good features from other browsers. But hey, at least it's pretty quick.

Re:well how about releasing some software under it

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple Idiot Translate-O-Matic:

Wow I sure do like getting all my hardware and software from one company. I don't understand the fact that by relying on a single company for everything makes me very vulnerable to their whims. Let's say for example, if I bought a clone PPC box and Apple decides to kill off the market cuz they can't compete, that is actually a GOOD THING. Why would you want a choice of vendors for your hardware? That would be confusing. I much prefer the single-vendor-supplies-all approach, whereby I pay whatever they ask to get their products. And hey, you know a good GUI for browsing pr0n is a godsend!

Re:well how about releasing some software under it

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the source would be pretty much useless to you. Safari is a Cocoa Application, and as such it's written in Objetive C. Cocoa is a rapid development environment, so the whole methodology used, code and way of thinking would be impossible to translate to C or even C++ without the frameworks and some major reworking.

I am however leaving out GNUStep, but that's only because it's missing a lot. Maybe in the future it will be complete enough.

thinkpads

[asv108]

Offerings from most vendors in the PC market are mostly crap. There's very little money spent into engineering things well

In the past 2 years I've had the pleasure of owning a tibook (500mhz), Ibook 2, and an IBM Thinkpad X31. The thinkpad may not be a showstopper as far as looks are concerned, but the engineering is solid, even better than the Mac notebooks I've owned.

Re:thinkpads

[oscarmv]

Agreed. But you're also going to pay for it. I'd bet the price tag on the Thinkpad wasn't lower than Apple's.

Re:thinkpads

[Anonymous Coward]

> Agreed. But you're also going to pay for it. I'd bet the price tag on the Thinkpad wasn't lower than Apple's.

The X31 price is very comparable to the 12" G4 PB. I've used both for some time. My subjective feeling is that the IBM is the more solid machine (though they're pretty close). I just love the thinkpad keyboard.

good

[dh003i]

This goes to show that the efforts of RMS have in fact been fruitful. He's constructive criticism has helped Apple to make a better license.

It's called progress. It's still not compatable with the GPL, but it is now Free Software according to the FSD.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like someone has spent a lot of time buying whatever the cheapest part is on Pricewatch. I own several macs.. And they're really NOT any higher quality than decent x86 hardware. Yes they're better than crap like low-end Gateways or $200 specials at your local computer shop. I agreed with that statement for a very long time, but honestly I've had my mind changed lately. In fact my only mac that I use regularly has had more hardware 'issues' than any of my PCs in the past year or so...

As far as PPC being a superior architecture.. Sure its nice on paper, and it may finally be getting a jumpstart again with the release of the G5... but PPC hasn't been *faster* since the days of the 604e and early G3. And my money goes where it gets the most bang for the buck. Silly little things like processor architure just don't matter to most end users unless you can explain how exactly it benefits them. I used to try to explain this to people, when I only used Macs. Then I realized its just not worth a few cents a year to have a 'more efficent' processor.

whoops didn't preview

[SubjunctiveSam]

... for the same amount of money? How much beastly apple computing power will $900 get me? Don't get me wrong, I love macs, but to try to say that their prices come anything close to good when compared to x86 systems is rediculous.

SERIOUSLY!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

I'm replying to my post because I am surprised it got modded Funny and also because I am seriously curious, not Karma whoring or being my usually dry-wit-stupid self! :) If not FSF maybe some other somewhat-open licenses? Although probrably non, I'd imagine.

Re:SERIOUSLY!

[Bombcar]

They use THIS ONE

(Check the ftp site's name!)

Not impressed

[nepheles]

Free software: Free as in speech, not beer. GNU's zealotry seems exactly the opposite of this.

Time for them to climb down from their ivory towers and grow up

Re:Not impressed

[Dashmon]

What? Why? I think they're doing exactly that. Please quote where the FSF raises the issue of money/commercialism in relation to the APSL. Oh wait, you can't, 'cause they don't.

Pay attention, people. The APSL is now really free, thanks to the efforts of the FSF. However, there are still some things that would raise issues when the APSL is used to license new software to be included in free systems. The FSF reminds people of this, and thus recommends that the APSL shouldn't be used for new software, but that it's perfectly okay to use software licensed under it. All RMS and the FSF are saying is that it could raise (legal) issues when you use the APSL, and that it's prob better to use something like the GPL. What the heck is everyone's problem?

GNU's not BSD either

[Outland Traveller]

That's why it's called the FREE software foundation and not the Somewhat-Free, Mostly-Free, Free-This-One-Time, Momentarily-Free, or Free-Enough-So-Take-It-Or-Leave-It Foundation.

One interesting thing about the GPL, is that it protects the software itself, not necessarily the authors. The FSF has come up with a unique and powerful mechanism for insuring that code and/or an application will *always* be freely distributable over its entire lifetime.

It's perfectly reasonable for them to stand up for this important principle. Many times RMS and the FSF have pointed out flaws in only slightly more compromising licenses, and many times their warnings have turned out to be farsighted.

We should all be thanking them for selflessly taking on the role of a watchdog. They serve the public good and have an excellent track record. You should really pick up a membership

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[MalleusEBHC]

Just like with the GPL, if you release code under a BSD license, it will always be freely distributable over its entire lifetime. However, unlike the GPL, code released under a BSD license can be used freely by anybody for any purpose. The biggest difference is that someone can add their code to BSD code and do whatever the hell they want, while under the GPL they must GPL their new code.

That's why it's called the FREE software foundation and not the Somewhat-Free, Mostly-Free, Free-This-One-Time, Momentarily-Free, or Free-Enough-So-Take-It-Or-Leave-It Foundation.

I think the "Free-With-Our-Exceptions Software Foundation" is most accurate.

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[rhadamanthus]

It's perfectly reasonable for them to stand up for this important principle.

I would agree with you, but the problem is that they never grant the same courtesy to anyone else.

Apple does not want to release their code under the GPL. It's perfectly reasonable for them to stand up for this important principle. However, Stallman and the other FSF "advocates" don't want to hear that. Ever. It drives me nuts to hear such blatant hypocrisy from someone who is so often touted as being "revolutionary". More like elitist and closed-minded if you ask me.

---rhad

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[orasio]

No, if you release under the BSD license, it does not have to be free over its ntire lifetime. The catch is how you define "lifetime". The FSF says that all derivative work must remain free. With BSD, anybody can take the software and sell it as proprietary software, with the subsequent loss to the user, who is the one the FSF wants to protect.

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[Anonymous Coward]

If I can't do whatever the hell I want with the supposedly "free" code, it's not free.

If I can't do whatever the hell I want, it's not a free country.

Shut up.

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[Anonymous Coward]

Not accurate.. the BSD license and GPL are both free software licenses, therefore they both let you use the software freely, they both let you change it as much as you like if you don't distribute copies, and they both let you give out unchanged copies to anyone you want.

The difference is that under the GPL, when you change the software and distribute copies (not one or the other, but both), you must license the new software the same as you got it. Under the BSD you must just include a copyright notice.

Now tell me.

Does this minor difference MAKE A FUCKING DIFFERENCE to 99% of the software world? Is a guy trying to escape 8-page EULAs and upgrade treadmills going to be happy with either one? YES!

The Free Software Foundation is concerned with Free software, not just Copyleft software.

The FSF recommends the BSD license for non-copyleft free software. Does the FreeBSD foundation recommend the GPL, ever?

I wish we could all focus on the similarites of free software licenses, and how much more flexible and useful they are than proprietary licenses, rather than engaging in petty bickering about nothing.

That's just geeks I guess, give them two things and they will instantly form two warring camps around them, and the rest of the world won't give a shit.

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[Llywelyn]

>No, if you release under the BSD license, it does not have
>to be free over its ntire lifetime.
Yes, it is.

There is nothing you can do to a tool I release under the BSD license to make it non-free.

You can include it in your proprietary software product, but that isn't making it non-free--people can still download the original source and use it as they see fit, they just can't download your changes for the same.

Thus, the BSD license says that "this source code must remain free, forever" the GPL says that "this source code and any source code that uses it must remain free, forever".

>With BSD, anybody can take the software and sell it as
>proprietary software, with the subsequent loss to the
>user, who is the one the FSF wants to protect.

Protect from what? The evil corporate software people who come in the middle of the night to eat your children? Those who choose not to release their source code?

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[RealAlaskan]

... unlike the GPL, code released under a BSD license can be used freely by anybody for any purpose.

True.

The biggest difference is that someone can add their code to BSD code and do whatever the hell they want, while under the GPL they must GPL their new code.

True again. Someone can add his code to BDS code, and restrict my freedom to use the resulting derivative work. The hypothetical someone's extra freedom can only come at the expense of the freedom of others.

Complaining about the GPL's terms is a bit like complaining that you can't go around hitting others: giving you the freedom to punch others takes away those others' freedoms. Laws against assault aren't restrictions on your freedom, they are guarantees of everyone's freedom. It's the same way with the GPL.

The FSF has very carefully thought out its license, and crafted it to ensure that code protected by the GPL, and its derivatives, will always be free for anyone to copy, distribute and use. You are free to do anything you like with GPL'ed code, EXCEPT to restrict others from having the same freedoms the author gave you.

If you LIKE the idea that someone can use your code to establish a monopoly and lock out everyone else, you included, then you should definitely use something like a BSD license for your code. If that idea bothers you, look for another license.

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[Bob Uhl]

Just like with the GPL, if you release code under a BSD license, it will always be freely distributable over its entire lifetime. However, unlike the GPL, code released under a BSD license can be used freely by anybody for any purpose. The biggest difference is that someone can add their code to BSD code and do whatever the hell they want, while under the GPL they must GPL their new code.

The FSF is not the Free Code Foundation; it is the Free Software Foundation. It is concerned for users. If you take BSDed code and incorporate it in your proprietary software, then that code will not be free, and the software will not be free, and the user thereof will most certainly not be free.

Proprietary code is evil: it prevents users from solving their problems. It gets in the way of getting the job done, which is the sole reason we have computers to begin with.

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[Bob Uhl]

If I can't do whatever the hell I want with the supposedly "free" code, it's not free.

It's not the code which is free: it's the software, and it's you. You are free to modify it (which you would not be, were it proprietary). You are free to redistribute it (which you would not be, were it proprietary). What you are not free to do is take those freedoms away from others.

As to whom free software benefits--you need only look at the example of Linux versus BSD. Which is more useful? Which is more widespread? Which is truly free, and always will be?

Why should I donate my work to a project when someone else might just take it from me? That's what the BSD does. Sure, if I'm a taker, the BSD is great--but if I'm a creator, it sucks. Whereas with the GPL, I know that my software will always be maximally useful to its users, and I know that I am very likely to get their work in return for my own.

In a way, proprietary software is more socialist: concerned with centralisation and force. Whereas free software is just that: free, concerned with liberty.

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[Malcontent]

"Protect from what? The evil corporate software people who come in the middle of the night to eat your children? Those who choose not to release their source code?"

All of the above.

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[bursch-X]

But let's face it:
The BSD license is all about the freedom of the user (and what he does with the code, i.e. whatever he/she wants) whereas the GPL only cares about the freedom of the code (and give a fuck about the user, although they say it's for our own good.)

Now, every time someone tells me I can't do this and that, "but it's for your own good", I get very skeptical. Who are they to decide what's for my good?

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[Feztaa]

Complaining about the GPL's terms is a bit like complaining that you can't go around hitting others: giving you the freedom to punch others takes away those others' freedoms. Laws against assault aren't restrictions on your freedom, they are guarantees of everyone's freedom. It's the same way with the GPL.

I like to think of it this way: With BSD, the author is free; With the GPL, the code is free.

It's a bit simplistic, but it's basically true: if your code is released under the BSD license, any programmer can take your code and do anything they want with it (including removing the freedom from the code), but if your code is released under the GPL, then any programmer can do whatever they want, AS LONG AS they don't remove the freedom from the code.

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[chthonicdaemon]

The FSF isn't forcing Apple to release their code under GPL, they are just not giving the licence that Apple chose their support as being GPL compatible. Where is the hypocrisy in that?

Remember that RMS is idealist (not really elitist) and definitely single-minded in his crusade to keep (or make) software free. Sounds like you have not really 'gotten' what these guys are trying to do.

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[psgalbraith]

That's why it's called the FREE software foundation and not the Somewhat-Free, Mostly-Free, Free-This-One-Time, Momentarily-Free, or Free-Enough-So-Take-It-Or-Leave-It Foundation.

I'd actually say that's why it's called the free SOFTWARE foundation, because they don't share the same feelings for documentation. The GFDL (i.e. documentation license) is GPL-incompatible and most likely non-free according to the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

I'd call it the GSFDL for Gnu Somewhat Free Documentation License.

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[Planesdragon]

It drives me nuts to hear such blatant hypocrisy from someone who is so often touted as being "revolutionary". More like elitist and closed-minded if you ask me.

In order to stand for something, you have to stand aginst something. The FSF doesn't stand for democracy, or open discussion, or even "freedom." They stand for "Free Software"--or, to translate from zealot-speak, "strong copyleft."

Stallman et al, if they choose, don't need to be honset, fair, or anyting else when it comes to promoting their cause. It's horribly stupid of them to be so, but they are, after all, sterling examples of the hacker argument method:

If your point is not accepted as said, restate you point again, but LOUDER.

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[be-fan]

although they say it's for our own good
>>>>>>>>>>
Its not so much for *your* good, as for the good of everybody else. You taking BSD code, and closing it up benifets only you. You developing GPL'ed code and being forced to release the changes helps everyone else. The original poster's analogy is exactly correct --- allowing indiscriminant killing helps whoever is strongest, but hurts everyone else. You supress the rights of the few for the good of everyone else.

Re:GNU's not BSD either

[Clith]

I think the "Free-With-Our-Exceptions Software Foundation" is most accurate.

"Free" refers to the software's freedom, not yours.

Under BSD you can trap the software in a pen and torture it mercilessly, forcing it to perform unnatural acts. Under GPL, the software must be released back into the wild to do as it will.

FSF' response to APSL 2.0

[dh003i]

Here is what the FSF has said about the APSL. Unlike what most people here seem to think, I don't think it's overly critical. I think it's just practical and honest.

The Apple Public Source License (APSL) version 2.0 qualifies as a free software license. Apple's lawyers worked with the FSF to produce a license that would qualify. The problems previously described on this page are still potential issues for other possible licenses, but they do not apply to version 2.0 of the APSL. We encourage everyone who uses any version of Apple Software under the APSL to use the terms of version 2.0 rather than that of any earlier license.

In version 2.0 of the APSL, the definition of "Externally Deployed" has been narrowed in a way that is appropriate for the respect of users' freedoms. It has always been the position of FSF that the freedom of Free Software is primarily for the users of that software. Technologies, like web applications, are changing the way that users interact with software. The APSL 2.0, like the Affero GPL, seeks to defend the freedom of those who use software in these novel ways, without unduly hindering the users' privacy nor freedom to use the software.

The FSF now considers the APSL to 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.

For this reason, we recommend you do not release new software using this license, even though it is ok to use and improve software which other people release under this license.

Aside from this, we must remember that only part of Mac OS X is being released under the APSL. Even though the fatal flaws of the APSL were fixed, and even if the practical problems were addressed, that does no good for the other parts of Mac OS X whose source code is not being released at all. We must not judge all of a company by just part of what they do.

Re:FSF' response to APSL 2.0

[Ibanez]

I agree with you, but feel the last paragraph might be a bit out line. They still must remember that Apple IS a for-profit corporation, and their main focus is their shareholders, hence profit. It would not be viable to release the entire OS under any form of free license, as a previous poster described well.

Blake

Re:FSF' response to APSL 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you, but feel the last paragraph might be a bit out line. They still must remember that Apple IS a for-profit corporation, and their main focus is their shareholders, hence profit. It would not be viable to release the entire OS under any form of free license, as a previous poster described well.

Yes, but it is not the job of the FREE Software Foundation to make it easier for Apple to make money. There is absolutely nothing in the world that forces Apple to get their license approved, and you can choose to use their OS or not.

Apple wants their blessing, and they got it for the license. I don't see the problem with the FSF reminding people that the OS is still not free software. You can both have your cake and eat it - it's not free software if it's not free.

This probably doesn't matter if you pirate your programs or only buy an OS upgrade for one compute now and then. We have 600 CPUs in our linux cluster. Imagine what it would cost us to pay $129 per CPU just to have the latest OS version every year. By making sure we only use free software on the system we're saving at least $75000 a year (not counting applications), and we are certain it is 100% legit.

Re:FSF' response to APSL 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

There is absolutely nothing in the world that forces Apple to get their license approved. [...] Apple wants their blessing, and they got it for the license.

Really? Did they ask?

It appears to me that Apple simply responded to the problems developers had with the previous versions of the APSL. I really doubt that they did this to become FSF approved (WTF is that worth?). It seems to me that the FSF is simply trying to get free advertising by bashing other licenses:

RMS: Apple released a new APSL. Quick, let me write up why it's evil because it's not copyleft.
RMS. Done. Post on /.

grammer & speeling is hard

[dbc001]

what does "annouced and end..." mean?

-dbc

Apple did release some of it

[Paradox]

They released their webcore library, man. That's pretty much everything safari is, save for a lot of boring user interface code. Since webcore is just a ObjC wrapper to KHTML, this is no big deal.

However, it's interesting to note that Apple did relase somehthing to the community, and I have yet to see anyone pick up on it. Apple'a "snapback" mode... This is a really useful, I daresay innovative, feature for a web browser. I use it all the time on slashdot. Especially when you have gestural input, either via a keyboard like mine (see my sig) or the cocoa gestures framework, it really makes site naviagation a breeze.

Also, Apple's method of handling bookmarks is significantly different from most. If only they'd incorperate the Omniweb (check for updates) features Safari would be one of the best browsers out there.

Re:Apple did release some of it

[JonathanBoyd]

Also, Apple's method of handling bookmarks is significantly different from most. If only they'd incorperate the Omniweb (check for updates) features Safari would be one of the best browsers out there.

The feature I miss most is the way that OmniWeb searched every part of your bookmarks' names when you were typing in the address bar. You could type 'dot' and Slashdot would come up as an option. Made it a lot easier to find pages.

Rational? Irrational?

[2nd Post!]

Uh, why is it irrational?

I have a copy of a song; I don't want you to have a copy unless you give me some money for a copy. That doesn't seem irrational.

I use technology to enforce my desire. That doesn't seem irrational either.

I don't think DRM is 'evil', I think it is a misapplication of technology.

Why is DRM any more evil than a license server to ensure no more than 10 copies of Photoshop are running on a network? Think of DRM as a massive music license server, then what is good or bad about DRM? Or a license server?

typical /. troll form

[asv108]

This is hardly a whine, I'm simply stating that Apple uses Open source for PR, and does not have commitment to open source software or ideology. Your post is a typical defensive, brainless mac zealot comeback, packed in the "translator fashion" for easy mod points. Instead of replying to my actual post, you decide to resort to stereotypical assertions and personal attacks.

Re:typical /. troll form

[Lord_Pain]

So...
You're mom won't increase your allowance?

Re:typical /. troll form

[Graymalkin]

Chin up buckeroo. The "open source" ideology is one that is software centric rather than author centric. The GPL compatible licenses the FSF fully approves are designed to provide as much movability for the software without giving the author much in the way of recompense outside of community recognition. Information may want to be free but rent and stockholders want to be paid.

You're whining because you're inately jealous of what Apple's been able to do with Free code they've used in their products or based their products off of. Apple's taken a bunch of technologies and standards that have been floating in Limbo waiting for someone to actually do something useful and made a good product out of it. Now you want them to release all of their implementations so the next version of Linux can offer all of the features without any of the development time or cost. That is plainly stupid.

Take Redevous (zeroconf/service discovery). Apple took a languishing technology and turned it into a huge feature in their OS. They've also released enough documentation and code for Rendevous to make it simplistic for any developer to work their own implementation of it. If Linux developers hopped on the good foot they could have all the Rendevous functionality they wanted and be entirely compatible with all the services Apple's working with.

Not everyone can make money selling advertisements on their website, ergo they need to sell software or even hardware. To do so you need something your competition doesn't. Apple's in a good position because they've made themselves extremely compatible with the competition and provide incentives for using their products. You can use KHTML all you want in Konq or some other browser. In OSX you can use Konq if you want but they're offering Safari. Anybody can use CUPS for printing, Apple stuck Print Center on top of it and is offering that as an incentive to use their products.

Stop your whining about Apple using OS for PR benefits only. They've put some good money into GCC, CUPS, KHTML, and making OSX fully compatible with FreeBSD. Go check your kernel compile and stop whining about Apple's use of software.

Re:typical /. troll form

[asv108]

You're whining because you're inately jealous of what Apple's been able to do with Free code they've used in their products or based their products off of.

Why would I be jealous of such a thing, considering I have an ibook?. I guess my mother's allowance must be pretty good to fund my home/office. I'm glad apple is making use of OSS, thats what it is there for, my original post was simply stating that Apple has not released anything that makes OSX interesting or desirable to non-mac users. I was never even hinting that Apple should or must release anything. I was simply stating that for all the Open Source talk that has been Spewed out by Apple's PR machine, they haven't delivered.

Not everyone can make money selling advertisements on their website, ergo they need to sell software or even hardware.

When the fuck did I ever mention advertisements or business models. Bottom line, Apple should pay up or shut up when it comes to their OSS PR.

Re:typical /. troll form

[trouser]

One lap. Three laptops. Hmmmm. And why the hell do people put tower cases on their desk instead of under it.

Oh, and I agree with you. But I'm worried about your lap. Or laps. Perhaps even lapse. Prolapse? That could give rise to prolapstop computers I suppose. Or not. Time for my pills.

Re:typical /. troll form

[asv108]

One lap. Three laptops. Hmmmm. And why the hell do people put tower cases on their desk instead of under it.

Well the 2 laptops on the right are from work. If you have the space, putting towers on top reduces dust buildup and improves airflow.

Re:typical /. troll form

[Anonymous Coward]

I was simply stating that for all the Open Source talk that has been Spewed out by Apple's PR machine, they haven't delivered.

And you were wrong. KHTML, gcc, CUPS, and so on have all been mentioned, already.

You accuse your correspondant of making a cheap kneejerk mac zealot response, but your entire argument is a cheap kneejerk anti-corporation rant.

Re:typical /. troll form

[spitzak]

I agree with most of what you say very much, but your claim that the GPL does not help the author is false. You apparently have not heard of dual licensing, which is something the original author can do. The GPL version of the code can be an excellent and very inexpensive advertisement for the code. But the author can still sell the rights to use the code in closed-source products, or may just keep some enhancements to the code secret and sell those.

Check how TrollTech is doing and their business model for details.

Re:typical /. troll form

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Apple is giving back more than most people think. Rendezvous, for example, is available as open source.

Re:typical /. troll form

[Graymalkin]

Even with dual licensing the GPL is not an author centric or even friendly license. Copylefting in and of itself is a pro-information anti-author action. That is not to say the GPL is somehow evil or a bad license. The concept of the GPL is to eliminate the control over the use of the software traditional copyright allows.

The only saving grace of Qt's licensing is the QPL which prevents the "Free" version of Qt from being used to make commercial software. In order to make commercial software developers need to fork over dough for the "Commercial" edition. If Qt was licensed only under the GPL and their commercial license TrollTech would have no way to control how their GPL edition was used. Anybody could get ahold of the GPL code and make all the commercial software they wanted with it and TrollTech wouldn't see a dime.

With GPL code you can't go an produce a proprietary version of it with added features then distributed it binary only to sell. Even if your proprietary code is a separate module or some such linking to GPL code is enough to consider the proprietary code a derivitive work and thus requires it to be covered under the GPL. Even connecting to GPL code via SOAP, CORBA, XML-RPC, and various other methods can be considered derivitive works depending on who you talk to and the time of day. The question of derivitive work is overly complex and does not lend itself well to distributing special proprietary versions of a GPL'ed codebase.

Dual licensing is not the end of a developers woes. TrollTech needs their QPL to prevent their GPL version of Qt from undermining their Commercial version. As I pointed out, the GPL itself is not friendly to software authors. The GPL combined with end use agreements or other licenses can work. The LGPL is a very good license for proprietary software developers as well. The GPL exists to make sure source code is virally free. By making the software free however, the GPL sticks authors in a bind trying to sell it. The GPL alone lets anyone take all of the authors work and redistribute it without any compensation going to the original author. That's nice for the community but not so nice for the author if she ever decided to make money off that software.

Re:typical /. troll form

[Zirtix]

You can make commercial GPL'd software that links to GPL Qt. You can't make closed-source software that links to GPL Qt when you only have a GPL-licensed copy of Qt, because of the GPL. There's no sense in which the GPL Qt undermines the proprietary license. None at all.

You're right that the GPL is in some sense 'anti-author', but who gives a fuck? The users heavily outweigh the authors. And you can still make money off authoring GPL'd software (hello RedHat). As if that was important anyway.

Re:typical /. troll form

[spitzak]

You are contradicting yourself. You say that "using the GPL is harmful to developers" which implies that developers have an interest in aquiring a non-GPL version of a program. You then say that the fact that TrollTech releases a GPL version harms their own business by removing the incentive for people to get the commercial version.

A more practical response is that all theoretical damage of the GPL is well known and is avoided in the real world. All code of any value for developing new and innovate programs is released using licenses like the LGPL, LGPL with exceptions to make it even more like public-domain, or BSD or public-domain licenses.

I write LGPL+exceptions code (the exceptions are the typical ones where you can use the library as though it was a public-domain closed source library, but if you modify any of the source code to the library you must release all the changes if you redistribute it). I know for a fact that my code would not be used if it was GPL so I am strongly encouraged to not do that. This is true of almost any writer of open-source code that is designed to be a service, and thus completely defuses any argument that it somehow harms advancement and use by anybody. I also write GPL code but that is because it is an end application, that code is useless to anybody except to make a very similar program, which I would consider the theft of my ideas and IP. Also I know that the fact that it is GPL has zero impact on the popularity of this code, because it has zero impact on the ability to run it, which is the main use.

Re:typical /. troll form

[Graymalkin]

Red Hat's money is made off selling services attached to otherwise free software. When you buy a Red Hat Pro bundle for $149 you're paying for the printed manual, phone support, and access to their non-public (faster) update service. It's a good idea not to confuse the difference between selling a service and selling a product. Red Hat couldn't sell a copy of Linux with no services for $149, CheapBytes would have put them out of business a long time ago if that were the case.

Re:typical /. troll form

[Graymalkin]

I'm not contradicting myself. Saying the GPL is "harmful" to developers and then saying TrollTech's business model is undermined by Qt's GPL license go hand in hand. Without their QPL license on top of the GPL license, Qt/Free would take over Qt/Commercial's market. No one will pay for what they can get for free. The QPL is what requires you to use Qt/Free in only non-profit products, the GPL alone doesn't stipulate that.

You yourself are running into the issue of IP and idea infringement. You've got ideas and IP you're implemented. I can download the source to your program, fork the code, then go on making my own version of that program using a bunch of your code. You might consider it theft but with the GPL you're requiring yourself to give up the bread and butter of your IP, the source code. Imagine if you were selling your application, I could buy a single copy from you and put it on CD to sell myself and not give you a dime.

You're giving away your software and are concerned about IP theft. The situation is far worse when you're trying to pay rent with your software sales. That is why the APSL is less Free than the GPL, it provides more protection and control for the code's author than the GPL allows for.

Re:typical /. troll form

[spitzak]

What you say true that if you assumme you can make a profit from selling GPL code (by either selling support, or copyrighted addon's, or just encouraging customers to buy the original version rather than a copy). TrollTech does assumme this, and yes they had to modify the GPL to their license that disallows redistribution for any profit, even of a GPL version.

However the vast majority of people, especially everybody who does not like the GPL, claim that it is a fact that you cannot make a profit selling GPL code (even though I kind of like the GPL, I can agree with this somewhat, people are cheapskates and if the free copy is legal they will get it). Therefore if you make this assumption you can assume that only the original author can profit from the GPL code, since only they can dual-license it into a form that you can make a profit from.

It is refreshing to see that even an anti-GPL advocate can admit you can make money using the GPL, however. You seem more convinced of it than I am.

Re:typical /. troll form

[Graymalkin]

I'm a best tool for the job advocate. The GPL is indeed the best tool for the job in several situations, in others it fails miserably. The original comment was in regards to Apple using Open Source soley as a PR scheme because the APSL is not as "Free" as the GPL. I think that sort of opinion is quite a bit off. In a situation where a company, Apple in this case, wants to sell a product but also release a Free product the GPL alone is not a viable license. TrollTech is in the same situation. Apple and TrollTech would not be able to produce only GPL works and expect to make any money using them.

Apple's changes to KHTML are open and available. KHTML has benefitted a great deal from the work Apple put in to tailor KHTML to their needs. This is a great example of free-but-not-as-copyleft-as-the-GPL licensing working for open source and proprietary groups. Apple got an excellent HTML rendering engine and the community got support in the form of the money Apple spent paying their developers to work on KHTML. It was a win-win situation for both groups. CUPS is in the same position, Apple's adopting its use because it is free and open and it provides them important functionality. Print Center and the Cocoa printing frameworks aren't open source but they are the money maker that supports the development of CUPS.

If someone reads and understands the GPL it is easy to see it is possible to make Free software and still make money. You just need to stack other licensing on top of the GPL in order to keep the cheapskates from taking advantage of your generosity. TrollTech has managed this by using the QPL to add usage stipulations to their GPL'ed code. Apple has done this by avoiding the GPL for a more author friendly yet still sort of Free license. The best tool for the job will usually benefit everybody in the end.

Re:typical /. troll form

[spitzak]

I agree with you completely.

Best tool for the job, and the GPL is neither always the best tool, nor is it the antichrist.

GNU-BSD?

[Espressoman]

Am I the only one that finds it vaguely amusing that we're seeing "GNU-Darwin" discussed here? Looks like GNU's being a bit of a SCO and SCO!

Now before anyone goes NUTS and starts flame-bombing me for my political incorrectness please realise I'm only **joking**!! Long live GNU! Down with SCO!!(^!) Put the GNU-gun down and nobody will get H*RT.

Well...

[extrasolar]

You just have to keep in mind that the GNU people have their own goals, which you may or may not agree with, and they are looking at these new licenses from the perspective of their own goals.

Your goals are obviously different from their goals. The practical problems they list are problems in achieving their goals. If you had practical problems achieving your own goals, you would be less likely to use their license and software too.

You have to also remember that the GNU people are not just looking at this license from the perspective of people using APSL software. They are looking at the APSL as a competitor to the GPL. If lots of people begin using the APSL to license their software just as lots of people have already licensed their software under the GPL, you are going to have a lot of software in the free software community that isn't compatible with each other. This will end up dividing the free software community and programmers are going to have to worry even more than they do now about from what software they can borrow code from and put into what programs. And Microsoft and other competitors can say publicly to the press about how distributing Linux distributions may be illegal. It would be like throwing a wrench into open source development.

What you have to understand, which the anti-GNU zealots simply can't, is that for open source software to continue and prosper is in GNU's interest. That is their major goal. All three "practical problems" relate directly to this major goal. They have been with us from the beginning and they have been looking out for us. Its because of them that the mucky and uninteresting problems of licensing has been paid attention to so carefully. They have been the ones enforcing open source licenses behind the scenes (most of them never get to court). When an open source developer has legal problems or questions, they can often turn to the GNU people for help or advice.

Are they zealots? Depends on how compatible your goals are with theirs. So, yeah, maybe a little. But don't forget that in the end they are on our side.

Re:GNU's Opinion (nobody will read, this, but...)

[hummassa]

The "practical problems" expression here means: "practical problems relating mixing (in the same project, for example) GPL-licensed software and APSL-licensed software.

Re:Apple good?

[Halo1]

Patents aren't necessarily bad for innovation, but software patents are. Look it up in this MIT study. For example, the budget of US companies spent on R&D after software patents started being granted (in the mid eighties) declined by 10% to 15%.

PS: sorry for answering your trolling.

Re:any mac guys ever seen this problem? - deja vu

[zpok]

Why do you keep posting this? You think we stupid? Us no unnerstand when someone full of shit?

As I remember correctly, the previous time you posted this exact same fairy tale, some people have pointed out you can't be doing what you describe in your post. You a flunky, a fake, a troll, so be gone.

FSF's take

[Anonymous Coward]

FSF's new comments on the license say something very interesting:

In version 2.0 of the APSL, the definition of "Externally Deployed" has been narrowed in a way that is appropriate for the respect of users' freedoms. It has always been the position of FSF that the freedom of Free Software is primarily for the users of that software. Technologies, like web applications, are changing the way that users interact with software. The APSL 2.0, like the Affero GPL, seeks to defend the freedom of those who use software in these novel ways, without unduly hindering the users' privacy nor freedom to use the software.

Are you using Mac OS 9 or earlier?

[MichaelCrawford]

All of the Mac operating systems prior to Mac OS X did not have preemptive multitasking. They used cooperative multitasking, in which a task has to explicitly yield control before another task can get any CPU time.

Apple doesn't support Mac OS X on older machines like the 8600. There is a patch that enables it to run - I tried it on my 8500 - but 64 MB is not enough memory to run OS X comfortably, so you would have excessive paging.

Also, the cost of switching a task in the "classic" Mac OS is quite expensive, because there are many "low memory globals" that are different for each task but have to be located at specific memory addresses. The solution to this is to copy them all to a temporary buffer before a task is switched out, and to copy them back into place just before the task resumes.

(While classic Mac OS supports virtual memory for the purposes of using a hard disk as a backing store, it does not offer memory protection. All of the processes as well as the system software are in a single contiguous, unprotected memory space.)

All of these problems are the whole reason Apple struggled for over a decade to write a modern operating system to replace the classic Mac OS. They failed with Pink and then Copland, so they bought NeXT, which evolved to form Mac OS X.

Re:Apple good?

[proj_2501]

The ONE TIME I forget, not only do I flub up massively, I get ridiculed!

ARGARGARGARGARG

Re:x86 port of OSX

[The Bungi]

Hey, that's a great argument. I mean, whenever someone tells me "Micro$oft is evil" I can say "oh yeah? tell that to all he people who bought Windows boxes and now are running Linux, *BSD, Plan9, Atheos, QNX, BeOS, FreeDOS and even a different version of Windows on those very same boxes! Howz dat!!"

Nothing personal - I just find it funny that Apple can be considered such a nice and great company because of that. And of course, that the mods actually agree with it.

I think I'd rather see the "their boxen are shiny!1!!" argument when making a case for Apple.

hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Free software is what it is today precisely because of RMS's 100% no-compromises attitude.

Well, that sure explains the Hurd (or Turd).

+5 funny

[Hatta]

The government concerns itself with the actual well-being of the citizens of the U.S.

Hahahah HAHAHA hahahah hah hah ha! ROFL, Good one!

Only DOWNLOAD?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the exact reason I never accepted the OpenWatcom License, and am more than a little surprised this go FSF approval:

2. Permitted Uses; Conditions & Restrictions. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Apple hereby grants You, effective on the date You accept this License and download the Original Code, a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license,... [emphasis added]

memories

[514x0r]

the first machine i bought with my own money was a 486dx2/66 with a cyrix chip.....ah the memories....brthe last i saw it it was still working as a proxy server at my last job.

Quicktime?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, where's quicktime?

Apple?

Choice Quote

[Zorbo]

"We are grateful to Richard Stallman for his many helpful comments in this process."

Re:Choice Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux Whiner Translate-O-Matic:

"We are grateful to Richard Stallman for his many helpful comments in this process."

Oh how we sometimes wish that RMS would just keep his pie-hole shut.

You know, you're wrong

[hummassa]

the GNU project and the FSFoundation are organizations which try to disseminate that for some reasons, proprietary (not commercial) software is a social problem, and one that can be viably dealt with, by making free sofware. nothing else.

When conventional Moderation fails...

[filmsmith]

I'd like to moderate, I really would (have the points, too) but the proper moderation I want to use just isn't available. (See the sig, son) So, if you would allow me...*ahem*

+1 DAMN STRAIGHT!

thank you

Re:When conventional Moderation fails...

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Damn Straight is called Insightful.

Re:memories - wrong topic

[514x0r]

not sure how that happened
this was meant for the amd bought cyrix article
i'm so terribly embarassed.

life in jonestown

[poptones]

hey I don't fault anyone for living in a gated community - if that floats yer boat better you than me. Calling such a place "free" however, is absurd.

You know, I'm beginning to take more pride in the stuff the dittoheads here mod as "troll" than I am the stuff that gets modded up. It seems as if exhibiting any critical thinking here (that doesn't tow the party line) gets a post modded as "troll."

I sure understand why perens and katz can hardly be found around here any more. this community has lost its balls to a bunch of corporate shills and jobs-droids.

Re:life in jonestown

[The Bungi]

FWIW, I think you're very jiggy with the party line. The problem is that this is apple.slashdot.org, so the rules kinda change.

Re:Apple good?

[Anonymous Coward]

That "study" has been widely discredited. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Don't be ridiculous. You have to look at THE RESULTS of research, not the dollars spent on it. We've seen more technological innovation in the fields of software and related disciplines in the last ten years than in all the rest of the history of computing combined.

Oooh... patents are evil! Patents are bad! Waa!

Whatever.

PS: sorry for answering your trolling.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy is obviously trolling. How dare you question the hive mind? Heathen!

Apple is giving people what's not theirs to give

[Dukael_Mikakis]

Our next lawsuit is still being prepared, but subscribers can preview it early.

No, seriously, how long until SCO puts down another lawsuit for Apple's open-sourcing code that contains SCO's "proprietary" work?

_____________________________________________
I crochet because I'm lonely; I'm lonely because I crochet.

GNU/*

[yerricde]

If a GNU userland (that is, a set of user programs composed largely of programs whose copyright is owned by the Free Software Foundation) is slapped on top of a kernel, the resulting system can be called "GNU/" plus the name of the kernel. For example, the name "Cygwin" stands for "Cygnus GNU/Windows".

Darwin Streaming Server

[yerricde]

At least one component of the QuickTime media architecture has been emancipated. Darwin Streaming Server is designed to serve QuickTime media over an Internet Protocol network.

idiot? where?

[yerricde]

From the linked page:

One fine day Torrey T. Lyons came along and gave the Darwin patches the attention they had been waiting for. Finally, he brought them to a new home, the official XFree86 CVS repository.

In other words, you're both right, to a point.

Dont feed the trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

this is a known troll. you fell for it.

Opensource Rendezvous

[Anonymous Coward]

If Linux developers hopped on the good foot they could have all the Rendevous functionality they wanted

If anyone wants to run with this ball, there's an opensource implementation of Rendezvous here.

Re:External Deployment

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is an important point. Could someone with better knowledge elaborate on this?

Artificial scarcity is irrational

[Thinkit3]

The truth stands among the brainwashing and blathering.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[Jon Abbott]

And that makes you quoted sentence WRONG.

Just because you think it's wrong doesn't mean that other people don't feel that way. I personally despise any version of Mac OS before 10.

Re:Apple good?

[Hatta]

emusic.com is a music service without DRM. None of the top 40 artists, but good riddance.

Re:Apple good?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there is something fundamentally wrong with DRM. It treats you as presumed criminal, it restricts legal use, it hurts the public domain (by never expiring), and it uses your own property to do it.

DRM seems a bit off-topic here, though. As far as I know, Apple does not distribute iTunes / iTMS as an Open Source application or as Free (as in speech) Software. Their DRM is closed source.

interesting

[Aeonsfx]

Its nice to see (what looks to me) like a BSD-like license. Actually, I see the GPL incompatability as a good thing because then GPLs can't just invade the code and make it incompatable with BSD and MIT-based codebases. I assume this just applies to the kernel, though I would love to see a fully non-GPL based desktop...

Re:x86 port of OSX

[Turing Machine]

They do things that make a lot of sense

And they do a lot of things that make no sense at all, such as the procedure for adding RAM to a PowerMac 9500 model.

I'm not sure what kind of store-brand crack the guys in Cupertino were smoking when they came up with that one. I mean, removing ALL cards (including the CPU), disconnecting ALL cables and physically removing the motherboard from the case just to add or remove RAM?

Yowza.

Yes, I'm bitter about spending a few hours tracking down a flaky RAM stick. Disassemble, swap sticks, reassemble, run until flakiness occurs (or doesn't).

Lather, rinse, repeat. :-)

Great link to GNU

[Anonymous Coward]

What I see is Apple trying to stop SCO type extortion in the future by somebody who has "contributed" but later changed their mind!

Re:Great link to GNU

[BigRedFish]

As an alternative viewpoint, I see them setting themselves up to scavenge the best-of-breed GPL and BSD stuff, build proprietary 'extensions', and then not release the source back. It's not like there isn't precedent. Heck, it's what OSX is.

I still remember Apple as the 'we won't share our floppy disk format' people. The 'putting one window on top of another is our IP, you can only tile' people. The ones who only have 6% share mostly because they tried to exercise monopoly pricing on hardware before they had the monopoly. Now they want to be the 'we can use your software and you can't use ours' people. Same ol' tune... Too bad, 'cuz they're stuff's usually so good (system 7-point-pi notwithstanding).

FSF gets it. Zealots and fanatics perhaps, but on the Apple licensing point, they also happen to be right.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[prockcore]

They do things that make a lot of sense.

Yeah, because having to totally tear apart an iBook just to swap out the harddrive makes a lot of sense.

Re:Apple good?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right. Emusic is a music service. Music services suck. Music stores, on the other hand, are great.

Don't take a product, wrap it up inside a subscription fee, and call it a "service." That's a con job, and a very poor one at that.

Re:Apple good?

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Well SOMEONE had to do it...

:-)

Check the big picture

[Paradox]

Were Apple to release the full Safari source, it wouldn't mean much to most people. Apple Developers would like it. No one else would. It's not like you can use the code with any other OS, and I doubt that GNUStep would handle it.

So really, it's pretty pointless to do so. Apple can appease developers just as well with a good plugin system.

OSI will approve anything

[dmiller]

Ignore the OSI, as they will approve just about anything - including licenses with pretty concerning terms (e.g. the Plan9 license). Debian and the FSF are better.

If you are selling, or distributing modified versions of software you should read or understand the license yourself (or have a lawyer do it for you). Many licenses have appalling traps in them.

There's some logic behind this...

[shylock0]

Apple has no interest in making QuickTime open source, and it's not for any malicious reasons. They want QuickTime to be as widely adopted as possible, particularly by the movie industry. They have had some success at this, namely, that nearly *all* major studios now release trailers in QuickTime format.

The problem with OSSing QuickTime is that you've lost *any* credibility for DRM with the movie studios. Regardless of the actual ability (or inability) of OSS programs to effectively implement DRM, and regardless of the merits of DRM itself, the movie industry, and big-name professional content creators in general, are going to walk away from anything that looks to them as insecure. An open source QuickTime would be seen as insecure.

I think Apple is stuck here. I don't blame them for not releasing QuickTime in OSS (besides the fact that it would remove yet *another* reason to switch to mac, because OSS QuickTime would see a Linux port faster than you can say "Linus Torvalds"), and I don't think that it's going to happen any time soon.

Anyway, there are *tons* of perfectly good OSS media handlers out there, and, if they use standard codecs (as most of them do), its generally not too complex to convert. If streaming is what you are interested, I'd see the other post (about Darwin Streaming) and try to reverse-engineer a client. It shouldn't be too hard for an ambitious programmer, as far as I can see...

Re:There's some logic behind this...

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why they cannot release Quicktime to Open source is because of the proprietary codecs used by many of the trailers. These codecs are owned by other companies. One such codec is Sorenson. That company does not want to release its codec as open source.

An open source Quicktime player would be useless without support popular QT codecs like Sorenson.

Re:There's some logic behind this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it necessary to OSS QuickTime? All respectable *n*x movie players (meaning Xine and MPlayer ;-) can already play it, using the ffmpeg (source forge) library. x86-based *n*x systems can even use the Windows DLL's or whatnot that Apple developed.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[General Sherman]

That's because apple makes the HARDWARE you silly little man. Microsoft doesn't make the hardware, they make an OS that I don't like. Apple could quite easily make it so you can't install anything but OS X on the machine, just like they killed OS 9 on the newer machines. But they don't. They know that a lot of people just like their hardware, which is of high quality. If you're going to buy a laptop, you don't want to buy a 8 lb. Dell, you want a sexy PowerBook G4.

The problem is not with the mods, it's with YOU.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about it, why would ANYONE buy a Mac if not for OSX?

Why not ask Lockheed Martin and the US Navy that?

theregister

Re:x86 port of OSX

[The Bungi]

you silly little man

WTF?

Apple could quite easily make it so you can't install anything but OS X on the machine, just like they killed OS 9 on the newer machines

Let me see if I get this right - You can't install OS 9 on a G5 (but you get the 'Classic' thing), and you consider this to be a good thing?

That makes product activation look like free candy - I can install Windows 95 OSR2 on a spankin' new 2.0 GHz P4 with everything on it (no firewire, complicated USB and outdated drivers, but still), and in fact I have done that very thing (well, on a PIII).

BTW, I don't really care (and I wasn't asking) whether or not you like Microsoft operating systems.

Re:Apple good?

[Hatta]

what's the problem with this? you pay $15 a month and you get to download thousands of mp3s. I get the music in a reasonably high quality format and can decompress, edit, mix and do anything I want with them. This is a great thing! There's more jazz on this than I'd ever hear if I had to buy it all. That's $100s of dollars of music for a $45 3 month subscription.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[Decimal Dave]

I think a solid example would be the fact that Lockheed Martin just purchased 260 Xserves with the intent of running Linux on them. This paragraph explains why:

"United States Navy submarines utilize on-board HPC clusters for the realtime image processing. These systems are revised and upgraded on a rotational basis. Lockheed Martin has chosen to move with the Apple Xserves and Yellow Dog Linux. This combination provides a solution twice as dense, less power consumptive, and higher performance than the previous solution at a similar cost. "

Don't you mean...

[Dog and Pony]

"Put the GNU-gun down and nobody will get HURD"?

Church of EMACS

[gaph]

I think it's strange that people haven't remembered that GNU is a religion, and it's name is EMACS. As a vi user myself, I've never fallen into the path of righteousness, but those who seek an approved set of morals may find it here. Those who seek immediate repentance may pay their penance here.

imagine a beowulf cluster of OSX

[axxackall]

Yes, you are correct. I've never seen "imagine a beowulf cluster of it" comment applying to OSX.

sheesh

[Doktor Memory]

When they decided to use KHTML for Safari, I thought they would at least release the source code for Safari and not just the changes to KHTML..

Would it have killed you to spend 0.12 seconds on google before opening your mouth?

http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/webco re /

That's every part of safari that matters, right there, for your FSF-approved open source development pleasure. No, the shiny front-end isn't included, but that's not going to bother too many coders considering that you can write your own frontend in as little as one line of code, or if you're feeling particularly clever, zero lines of code. (Note: while the examples given are in ProjectBuilder on MacOS X, there's no intrinsic reason why you couldn't do the same trick with GnuSTEP on Linux, and a GTK+ wrapper would only be slightly more work.)

And WebCore isn't the only "unique" OSX software that they've released the source to. Need a streaming media server? A fully functional ZeroConf implementation? A crypto-key management framework? All there for the taking.

No, Apple isn't going to release the source for iPhoto or Final Cut so you can play with them for free. Cry me a freakin' river. Then get a job.

And while I'm here: the casual, contracted form of "would have" is "would've", not "would of". Please spread the word.

DFSG free?

[GoRK]

The certification they have gotten still implies that the APSL may still have limited free-ness. I believe that the DFSG standards are a better guideline for what is really "free."

Does anyone know if the Debian people have had a chance to review the new license?

~GoRK

Copyleft is a valuable distinction.

[jbn-o]

Now, every time someone tells me I can't do this and that, "but it's for your own good", I get very skeptical. Who are they to decide what's for my good?

I don't think anyone is asking you to stop questioning the wisdom of others, but they are asking you to recognize that some freedoms can conflict with others so we need to choose which freedoms are more important. This may mean limiting what licensees are able to do in order to ensure the more desirable freedoms for everyone involved.

I think if you consider the practical ramifications of the non-copylefted free software licenses (including the new BSD license and the MIT X11 license) and if you consider what the Free Software movement set out to do, you'll see the value in distinguishing between licenses that preserve software freedom and those that don't.

Free Software is not the same as Open Source

[jbn-o]

What you have to understand, which the anti-GNU zealots simply can't, is that for open source software to continue and prosper is in GNU's interest. That is their major goal.

No, the GNU project was formed over a decade before the Open Source movement began. The Free Software movement is different from the Open Source movement. The two movements have different goals but mostly get along.

The FSF doesn't deny other licenses exist.

[jbn-o]

They want everyone to follow their ways, they do not like the thinking of other non-gnu licenses.

No, they warn about the shortcomings of other licenses that don't ensure the freedoms of free software (in the case of MIT X11 and new BSD license).

Okay, they want what's best for the open-source community, and have obviously contributed quite a lot.

Although what they want is beneficial for both the Open Source and Free Software movements, the movement they are more properly associated with is the Free Software movement, which they began over a decade before the Open Source movement started.

But does anyone think it is unfair that others (X11, BSD license, zlib, etc) accept the existence of GNU, but not the other way around (this is shown by their philosophy documents, and also the nature of the GPL).

This is simply untrue. The FSF has a widely-accepted and very useful license list which includes these licenses and suggested ways of speaking about the licenses to avoid confusion about which license you're referring to:

[I]t is risky to recommend use of ``the BSD license'', because confusion could easily occur and lead to use of the flawed original BSD license. To avoid this risk, you can suggest the X11 license instead.

RMS gives talks where he tells people why he encourages contributions to X licensed under the X11 license (matching the rest of the project) instead of making a GNU GPL fork. See the Q&A section of some of the Free Software speeches--he tells people precisely why there is no GNU GPL fork of X and why such a fork is likely to be a bad idea.

This is hardly the behavior one would expect to see if the FSF did not want to "accept the existence" of these other licenses.

Re:The FSF doesn't deny other licenses exist.

[Coneasfast]

This is simply untrue. The FSF has a widely-accepted and very useful license list which includes these licenses and suggested ways of speaking about the licenses to avoid confusion about which license you're referring to:

I believe this list of licenses has a main purpose of showing which are compatible with the GPL, and thus which you can incorporate in your GPL program.

This is hardly the behavior one would expect to see if the FSF did not want to "accept the existence" of these other licenses.

i never read that before, i will certainly take a look, but take a look at this FAQ question.

gnu quote: "Of course, your software is not a contribution to our community if it is not free, and people who value their freedom will refuse to use it. Only people willing to give up their freedom will use your software, which means that it will effectively function as an inducement for people to lose their freedom."

nobody prefers using non-free software, but those are some pretty harsh words. I value my freedom, doesnt mean i wouldn't use non-free software. The same goes for many other people out there.

As for other free software, their feeling is not this bad, they are subtle for the most part, but they only say it is ok to develop new software as non-copyleft free software as a preference to non-free

for example, i found this.

gnu quote: "Someone who uses your code in a non-free program is trying to deny freedom to others, and if you let him do it, you're failing to defend their freedom. When it comes to defending the freedom of others, to lie down and do nothing is an act of weakness, not humility."

First of all, this is untrue, others still have full access to my source code. Secondly, how is this accepting the existence of non-copyleft licenses? This is more like attacking them.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about it, why would ANYONE buy a Mac if not for OSX?

TerraSoft just sold 260 Apple XServe Boxen, sporting Yellow Dog Linux, to Lockheed Martin to install on Navy submarines.

Re:Apple good?

[Halo1]

That "study" has been widely discredited.

And the researchers were so impressed by insightful and informative critics like you that one of them together with someone else produced a a follow-up study with the same conclusions. And the European Directorate-General for Research comes to pretty much agrees in their own study.

You have to look at THE RESULTS of research, not the dollars spent on it. We've seen more technological innovation in the fields of software and related disciplines in the last ten years than in all the rest of the history of computing combined.

Suppose someone would accept that for some reason as a fact, then of course this invariably proves that this innovation is thanks to software patents, and that without software patents this would not have happened (and that we wouldn't have seen much more innovation in computer-related fields without them, instead of in the IP-litigation field). You could just as well say the innovation is thanks to the demolition of the Berlin Wall (post hoc etc). Get real...

PS: sorry for answering your trolling.

Originality never was one of your strong points I guess.

Re:Apple good?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with it? You hit the nail right on the head. You pay $15 a month whether you download anything or not. You pay $15 a month to be able to do possibly download thousands (?) of songs, but of those how many do you actually want? I've looked through the Emusic catalog, and I'd be hard pressed to find a whole album's worth of songs I know I want. So you're stuck downloading stuff at random (no streaming samples!) to see what you like. And for this massive investment of time and trouble, you get the privilege of paying $15 a month, whether you download any music that month or not.

I was on vacation in May. I was out of the country from the last week of April to May 30. I was nowhere near a computer during that time. Had I signed up for Emusic, I would have paid them $15 for absolutely nothing.

Music "services" blow. Sell me music, not some vague idea of a "service" that actually requires a ton of work on my part.

Except for new licenses created by the FSF

[psgalbraith]

In the end there is so much GPLed software that most Free Software licenses trend towards becoming GPL compatible.

Except for new licenses created by the FSF like the GFDL (Gnu Free Documention License) which is only somehwta free and incompatible with the GPL.

Sort of ironic.

But now they are on the Free Software bandwagon !

[Per Abrahamsen]

Basically, version 1.2 of the license was OSI approved Open Source, while version 2.0 is Stallman approved Free Software.

It is difficult to be GPL compatible

[Per Abrahamsen]

Mostly because the GPL requires that "no additional restrictions" on derived products. A license has to be very close to PD, or very carefully designed, to be a strict subset of the GPL.

The easiest way is actually to dual-license it (like Mozilla does with MPL/GPL), or to have a trapdoor like the LGPL, which explicitly allows you to use the GPL instead.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[General Sherman]

Install windows 95? That's like installing herpes. Never said the no OS 9 was a good thing, I was using it as an example of how apple could easily kill of YDL or anything like it. People like Apple because they encourage you to do things they hadn't though of yet with their hardware. Microsoft, on the other hand, tries to prevent you from doing things. It's a different standpoint.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[Jerk City Troll]

Yeah, because having to totally tear apart an iBook just to swap out the harddrive makes a lot of sense.

Is this a task you have to do every time you use the laptop? Is it a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly exercise? I think it's likely to fall into the most rare of these categories. I doubt you are replacing your harddrive on a regular basis. Apple hardware is engineered the Right Way for most common activities for common users and very well for uncommon activities for uncommon users in most cases. If you have trouble replacing an integral piece of that design, big deal. That's something they assume technical people are doing, so it's a lower priority. This also isn't a redundant, high-availability server either, so there's no need for the hardware to be hot-swappable in terms of seconds. Deal with it.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[lowmagnet]

And now? You pull a lever and the side drops down. The design of the 9500 is from 1995. That was 8 years ago, and a year before things really got shook up at Apple, design-wise. There is no comparison between the old beige powermacs and newer models.

Re:x86 port of OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever try swapping a harddrive out of a PC?

Freedom for everyone includes derivatives too.

[jbn-o]

nobody prefers using non-free software, but those are some pretty harsh words. I value my freedom, doesnt mean i wouldn't use non-free software. The same goes for many other people out there.

Using non-free software means not having software freedom. One can't study non-free programs to tell what they'll do, one can't change them to stop doing bad things or improve them, and sharing copies of them (or improved versions) is probably prohibited too. The more non-free software you run, the more freedom you are denied. So people who value their freedom maximize the amount of free software they run, including switching to a free software operating system and running nothing but free software on top of that.

First of all, this is untrue, others still have full access to my source code. Secondly, how is this accepting the existence of non-copyleft licenses? This is more like attacking them.

I think you're misreading their statement--they are concerned about freedom for all users including users of derivative works. When someone makes a non-free derivative of a non-copylefted free software program, freedom is denied to all the users of the non-free program. All of the above advantages for free software are stripped away in the non-free derivative. That non-free derivative might have improvements over the free program, but the value of the improvements is mitigated (if not entirely nullified) by the program being non-free. It is always advantageous to have the complete source code to the version of the program you are running, which might not be the free version of the program. So what the FSF is describing is true. You can't deny the existence of something you attack. So, what you are reading as an attack is actually something else--a warning about the practical and ethical implications of not defending freedom for all the users of free programs. This includes users of derivatives of free programs.

Re:Freedom for everyone includes derivatives too.

[Coneasfast]

You can't deny the existence of something you attack.

You misunderstood me, what i meant by 'not accepting the existence' was they dont believe it should exist (which is why i quoted that attacking statement), not that they dont know it exists. Sorry if i wasnt clear on that.

I know exactly what you are trying to say, and you are right, but you are missing my point. What I have been trying to say is the GNU takes it a step too far, they shouldn't attack non-copyleft software, eg, when they literally say (shown by my pasted quote) people who make non-copyleft software fail to defend people's freedom. This is just plain wrong. They should talk more about Free (even if copyleft only) vs. Non-free, and less of Copyleft vs. Non-copyleft free.

on another note, I still believe in more liberal, BSD style of redistribution, even if it does mean less free software a couple of years down the line. Everyone should have the right to use the code, even commercial companies (and i think we both agree commercial software wont convert the whole software to GPL just to use code from existing GPL software). I guess thats just what I will always believe in.