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Apple and the Open Source Community

Posted by timothy on from the coopt-erat-ion dept.

Dozix007 writes "Sitepoint reports an interesting article on the increasing interconnection between Apple's recently released Tiger, and the open source community. Tiger includes improved releases of Apple's directory services (LDAP), secure authentication (Kerberos), mail server (Postfix), web server (Apache) and many more features, nearly all based on existing open source software. Most significant may be the release of Rendezvous for Java, Linux/Unix and Windows. This is a zero-configuration tool for networking that includes network protocols, identification and configuration of devices and services such as printers and local/remote servers, and was based on open source technology."

3 of 473 comments (clear)

  1. It was not Open Source until they gave it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    RendezVous wasn't "based on open source". The ZeroConf standard (to which Apple contributed as well) is open, of course, as any standard necessarily is.

    The implementation, however, is Apple's. Apple wrote it, incorporated it in Mac OS X, and made the parts of it that make sense when lifted from the Mac OS X context public. They wrote stuff and opened it consequently; original work, not "based on" open source.

  2. Re:The argument isn't just between IBM & Sun a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Read the FIRST PARAGRAPH here and try not to spread FUD.

    I'm very grateful it's not true copyleft, since I've had to integrate this code into existing commercial modules. Truly "free as in freedom" licenses allow that, and Apple is to be commended for picking a license that allows this (since they could have released under a different license and bypassed any such restriction themselves as the copyright owners).

  3. Re:Yes, I am a Mac fan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    Does Mac have a repository of free software? (it's a genuine question - not a rant).
    A couple. The most popular is Fink, but Darwin Ports has a following of its own.

    Most common opensource packages compile out of the box on OS X as well, so you can roll your own of your prefer.