Apple Gifts Top WebKit Contributors with MacBooks

soundofthemoon writes "Just nine months ago, Apple started the WebKit Open Source Project. In that time, contributors have added some significant improvements to WebKit (and thus Apple's Safari browser). Today Apple gave their open source contributors a big thank-you, including rewarding the top contributors with some nifty goodies: 'As a thank you, we are giving MacBook Pro computers to twelve of our top contributors. We've also invited five of them to attend Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference 2006 on Apple's dime.' Looks like donating your time isn't a thankless job anymore."

Comments

Obvious

[Bombula]

Shoot me for stating the obvious, but this sets a good example for other companies to follow, not just in tech but across all industries.

Re:Obvious

[tibike77]

Well, it's not like this is unheard of, but not in THIS specific form :)
Can you say "X-Prize" or "DARPA Grand Challenge" ?
How about "PayPal donate link on Sourceforge" ?
Or, even cuter, "shareware" ? :D

It's on a different level (of commitment), yet it's (basically) the same thing: you work for something you care about, expect no (financial and/or direct) reward, yet, if you do it right, you end up with something.

So, yeah, always a good idea to keep hopes up for those who work for free and/or as a hobby... it's way cheaper (and on a much grander scale) as paying a lot of employees ;)

Re:Obvious

[SetupWeasel]

Good example?

Let me tell you a story about a job I had. This job paid $8.50/hr and I spent my day on the phone blocking, unblocking, and collecting payments from the customers of a certain long distance company. The Company I worked for was in financial trouble, so they started cutting back actual pay increases in favor of contests.

The rules were simple. Produce more than every one else on the floor and get paid closer to what you were worth for that month. "Brilliance!" they must have thought. They could pay us less and increase production at the same time!

Immediately, the entire business fell into two camps:

1) People who decided it was futile to play this game. These people's morale was shattered, and as a result, their production decreased.
2) People who cheated to boost production, often leaving horrified customers in their wake, thus making it futile for anyone with a sense of ethics to play the game.

I do not like the "contest" style of compensation. I believe if Apple really wanted to do something, they should compensate every person who did good work for them. That would be fair. As it stands, for every chosen one, there will be many wringing their hands, angry that their hard work goes unappreciated and uncompensated.

Re:Obvious

[Freexe]

Didn;t the royal mail in the uk have a simular, where if you were on time for work and did a good job you got entered into a prize draw to win stuff

Re:Obvious

[LootenPlunder]

theres a big difference between substituting prized for salary for contracted employees and giving rewards to people who work voluntarily. if a person is donating their time to an open source project, they obviosly dont need pay as a motivation. they really couldnt start paying a salary to everyone who works on open source projects that end up benefitting them. this adds a precedint of giving something to people in a field that usually offers little or no monatary benefit. theres no comparison to regular employment.

Re:Obvious

[asliarun]

This is different. Agreed, internal competition can actually damage morale in a company. However, what Apple has done is reward open source contribution for individuals who didn't expect the reward in the first place. This is a good thing, as it encourages open-source hackers by giving them recognition as well as by giving them an unexpected reward. Everybody likes to get recognized and rewarded, especially for something that they take intellectual pride in. Hats off to the people who take the time off from their regular work and participate in such projects, simply because they want other people to benefit and learn from their skills and contributions. They thoroughly deserve such rewards.

Back to your example, where your company screwed up was in the fact that they confused incentive/recognition with unhealthy internal competition. It takes a very good people manager to instil a culture of competitiveness while making sure that it doesn't get degenerated into a political dog-eat-dog culture. The first encourages employees to benchmark themselves against their (better) peers and helps them pull up their socks when they feel they're sliding. The key here is that the manager should balance out the weaker employees' efforts with the company's goals, and make sure that they too are recognized and rewarded, along with the star performers. The second, OTOH, makes the weaker contributors feel a sense of futility, which makes them resort to cheating or give up the race. In my experience, i've met very very few people managers who can pull off this balancing act with success.

You have a valid point that all contributors should be rewarded and duly recognized. However, the key contributors also need to be rewarded more than the others, for that is the essence of meritocracy.

Re:Obvious

[weileong]

no it's completely different. they posted the X-prize first in order to stimulate entrants etc.; here, Apple is rewarding the people who contributed *with no expectation of personal gain* (well, beyond things like satisfaction and if they use the code themselves), which is more true to the spirit of the GPL, as a complete surprise. this is much more of a real reward, and not some mercenary kind of thing.

Re:Obvious

[16K Ram Pack]

It seemed to me that the X-Prize, whilst giving some compensation was only a fraction of the amounts spent. I think the money helped to create publicity and make it look worthwhile.

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

which is more true to the spirit of the GPL, as a complete surprise

The GPL is a software licence and not some shity "work scheme". It has nothing to do with giving computers to people who work for free.

Re:Obvious

[mblase]

I believe if Apple really wanted to do something, they should compensate every person who did good work for them. That would be fair.

No, that would be employment.

Re:Obvious

[Errtu76]

I can't help but compare this to my own recent situation. I work in a hospital and we are in the process of moving all departments around because the airconditioning is being replaced throughout the entire building. Now since it's a hospital, the patients can't suffer because of it. So this means that most of the moving will have to happen after the medical staff stops working at 5pm ... or later sometimes. Needless to say that every employee made some overtime or did some thing or another to contribute to the moving. Now i've had some things i needed to take care of at home, so lately i couldn't help during weekends. Then suddenly we got the message that several people were invited to go to a dinner party, organized by the hospital. Great! Uhm, no. I was not invited. People who are working at the reception desk were invited though, even people who were on holiday during the moving. All in all i can say that about 500 people contributed to the movings, and about 100 is selected for the dinner. I said the same thing to my boss "either it's everyone, or nobody. because just selecting people at random is unfair".

Not that i would've gone to the dinner anyway, because i'm a vegetarian and they never count on that. Something else to get pissed off about, but okay ... So i've decided that i won't participate after my normal work hours anymore. I don't care if they can't move a department because they don't have enough people. They should've treated everyone the same: either everyone goes to the dinner, or nobody gets invited.

No idea what goes through the minds of our bosses when they come up with such a 'brilliant' idea. I guess they know they can't please everyone, so just let's pick some people that we need a favor from, and screw the rest.

Re:Obvious

[Bombula]

I certainly agree with you that what you call 'contest' style compensation is ineffective at best, and immoral and unethical at worst. Take it to the most macroscopic scale: the labor market worldwide. Workers in Bangladesh and the Phillipines are in 'contest' (ie: free-market competition) with workers in the US and Europe, and like you said, it's a brilliant scheme for the corporations who get to pay the lowest possible wages to those who have the highest productivity (productivity here meaning 10-year-old kids working 16 hour days in sweatshops).

Within our own countries, labor laws and unions product workers from such abuses - and I'm guessing you could have easily taken your case to a union with the possibility that you employer's practices were downright unlawful. But international law makes no such concessions, instead favoring the holy grail of 'free trade' and 'free markets', including of course the totally unregulated labor market.

What Apple is doing is quite different. They are showing genuinely generous appreciation for what is an entirely voluntary effort, and they are certainly under no obligation to do so. Comparing the two situations is comparing apples to oranges (pun fully intended).

Re:Obvious

[Mistshadow2k4]

BANG!

(I think so too.)

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, come on. You're being self-righteous. Yes, you had something to do at home. That took you out of the top 100 and put you in the next 400. So what? You wouldn't have gone anyway? Please. That's lame. Just because your a veggie, you can't go to be with everyone else? They shouldn't have invited you anyway. Glad they didn't.

Re:Obvious

[necro2607]

Except.. these developers were NOT told "the more 'effort' you spend the more likely you are to get a sweet new Mac laptop"... In fact, they weren't promised any reward of any sort. In this way Apple's reward has gone to what are very likely to be totally deserving contributors, as opposed to cheaters etc. since none of the developers knew beforehand that Apple was going to give such stuff to the top 12 contributors. :)

Re:Obvious

[JohnFluxx]

Royal mail have done a lot of crap, such as introducing 'teams' where a group is responsible for mail. Then if one team member goes ill etc, the rest of the team have to do his work, for free, with no overtime.

Re:Obvious

[somersault]

would you honestly have felt the same if you were invited and someone else didnt go-in-your-place? It is rather strange to have a dinner party because of the move, but not recognise those that actually did the work.

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Note to self: Parantheses are not (always) necessary.

Re:Obvious

[baryon351]

Your job sounds almost like a scam a friend of mine was involved in, and it sucked the life out of him. Basically, he answered an advert in the local newspaper looking for proofreaders and transcribers with guaranteed work. Indeed, when he phoned them they gave him a job on the spot.

Except the job involved bidding money for work, and if you bid the most money for a particular job, you got the work and were paid for it. You were paid good money for it which is why it looked so appealing, I think he was on $45 per hour for transcribing from news broadcasts. The only problem was with such a large pool of "employees" it wasn't unusual to find they were bidding $40 for a job that only involved an hour's transcribing. Do the math and you can see how it works.

That was a scam though, your job sounds like it ended up the same without management quite realising how bad it was.

Re:Obvious

[Tim C]

which is more true to the spirit of the GPL

How so? The GPL explicitly does not preclude the option of selling the software or of being paid to produce it. Not restricting redistribution is not the same as charging for initial production.

That said, I think this is pretty fucking cool. Apple didn't have to do this, but they chose to do so. Yes, I know it's in their best interests, but so what? A bunch of people got some cool stuff with no strings attached. Sounds pretty cool to me.

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, free as in beer or in GPL? Oh isn't that ironic.

Re:Obvious

[BVis]

How is this different from what happens in every workplace I know of? If someone's out sick, their co-workers have to pick up the slack.

Re:Obvious

[BVis]

Majorly off-topic here, but I thought I'd share something. My wife works for this dinosaur of a staffing company (she's a full-time employee of the company itself). To give you an idea of the mindset, she still has to wear full "business" attire to work, eg skirts/hose/dress shoes etc, even though there's no customer-facing at all in her role. So one year their holiday party (big fancy shindig, long-winded speeches, rubber chicken, one free drink, etc) got snowed out. It happens, we're in New England. So, rather than accept it under the banner of "stuff happens", they decided not to have the party. Ever again. Just no holiday party whatsoever, because they got snowed out one year. Fell into the "looking for an excuse" category for me, and morale took a big hit.

Re:Obvious

[funpet]

I believe if Apple really wanted to do something, they should compensate every person who did good work for them. That would be fair.

No, that would be employment.

What's unfair about employment? (I suppose there's a valid Marxist answer to this, but I'm guessing that's not what you were thinking.)

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a brilliant scheme for the corporations who get to pay the lowest possible wages to those who have the highest productivity (productivity here meaning 10-year-old kids working 16 hour days in sweatshops).

While that sounds abominable to us westerners, families in those countries actually want their children to work at those sweatshops because the pay and working conditions are so much better than the alternatives. These people see the sweatshops as a good thing, not some horrific servitude. Working for a western corporation is something to be proud of over there. Sure there are some bad apples - who are much more likely to get their factory on 60 minutes - but they're not representative.

If you don't believe me, ask one. I did.

Re:Obvious

[inphinity]

I do not like the "contest" style of compensation.

It's only a contest if they "entrants" have an idea of what they're in store for should they "win". Apple never gave any mention of any prizes, monetary or otherwise.

Re:Obvious

[Jeff DeMaagd]

"In this form" is key. A large corporation rewarding open source contributors seems to be a new thing.

Also, I don't think X-Prize or DARPA grand prize participants to give their designs away.

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

But will Apple allow the recipients to exchange those powerbooks for real laptops? Say, a top-end Dell or Alienware?

Re:Obvious

[Xiaran]

Over ten years ago a lecturer of mine at uni was, on his own and just for fun, porting Tk(as in Tcl/Tk) to make use of the Motif libraries as noone else had done it. He got about 80% done of it and got too busy to complete it. Months later silicon graphics got in touch with him regardign the libs. Apparently they wanted a Tk for Motif dfor something and were wondering if he was going to finish it and if they could use it(I beleive this was before all the attention to licensing details we have today... I think he just released it to his edu web site and only had some "it aint my fault if this code breaks something" disclaimer).

Anyways... he said he was going to finish it soon when things calmed down with his time. SGi sent him a couple of shiney workstations to encourage him to test it on their OS and hardware :)

Re:Obvious

[FireBreathingDog]

That's called a free market, idiot. How is that a scam?

If you want your car repaired and find that one place charges $100/hour for labor and another charges $90, which one are you going to pick? If you say $90, do I get to yell SCAMMER!!! SCAMMER!!! at you?

Re:Obvious

[kasparov]

Well, it is a little different. The company that was 'employing' them made huge profits on each of the jobs, while the people bidding for the jobs made very little. Now, I'm not going to say that this is 'wrong', although it makes me cringe a little. There are just too many middle-men in the world for my taste. Apparently the companies that need the transcribing pay way too much for it if there are people out there willing to do it for minimum wage...

Re:Obvious

[orkysoft]

Well, in such a case, I'd investigate which of the two is better, since the price difference is very small, it might pay to go with the better option.

Re:Obvious

[eMartin]

I think his point was that if *anyone* could "work" for Apple and get compensated, what would be the point of applying for a job there at all?

Employers choose who gets to work for them. They don't just leave their doors open so anybody can walk in, do some work, and walk out with money.

Re:Obvious

[Raptor CK]

Well, the inherent spirit seems to lean more towards sharing, rather than selling, at least when it comes to code and binaries. That's a matter of opinion, at any rate.

That said, Apple's action in this case does seem to stick to that spirit. Not to mention, it makes them look good, and hands off shiny NEW development systems to the people most likely to give even more time to the project.

The real nice part, at any rate, is that these guys aren't being compensated, but are actually rewarded for work which they want to do. That's rare in this day and age, and even if Apple is doing this to serve their own needs, it's still great for the guys donating the time.

Re:Obvious

[Breakfast Pants]

Actually they had better be careful. With bullshit lawsuits in the US they could be exposing themselves to liability. AOL was sued by its army of volunteer support and they lost, and Origin was sued for its volunteer support (councilors in Ultima Online) and they lost as well. One of the key factors was that they provided some compensation (free game time in the case of UO). However, I think another key thing was that they had shifts and hours.. which obviously isn't the case here, but the whole thing was so stupid that Apple should still tread lightly.

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

yup, absolutely. I think the X-prize winner spent about $20m to "get" that $10m. but in that case it's not so much a prize as a "subsidy" (but only for the winner... it must suck to be one of the other teams because not only did you fail to do it - has any of the other competitors actually achieved the objectives, much less being "first" at it? - they are also out the entire amount they spent).

it was a good goal/target, so I agree the x-prize isn't what you could call a "contract to do something". but it's certainly a different thing from e.g. you announce a competition to get into space, with no "reward" other than maybe a nice shiny trophy, and then after it's done you award both the trophy AND $10m worth of equipment, as an example.

- weileong

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah i agree with Raptor CK above.

I'm aware the GPL doesn't preclude "sale" and commerce. But just looking at the amount of free stuff available should be a clear sign that there's very much a "roll up our sleeves and get to work and benefit everybody" kind of sharing as a philosophy behind the GPL as well.

provocateurs like SCO et al would call this "communism" but helping your community with no expectation of monetary reward is surely not something alien to e.g. the pioneers/founders of America, I would think. I don't think someone who *only* does something if he gets a reward for it would be entirely welcome in most neighbourhoods.

- weileong

Re:Obvious

[remorseless]

There is another aspect. By giving rewards that were not expected, there is no judgement as whether Apple was fair or not. They gave a gift to whomever they thought deserved it. Since nobody was expecting anything, nobody can complain about unfairness. There is no metric on how much to give, how soon, or to whom. X-Prizes are different in this aspect too.

Re:Obvious

[SetupWeasel]

It takes a very good people manager to instil a culture of competitiveness while making sure that it doesn't get degenerated into a political dog-eat-dog culture. The first encourages employees to benchmark themselves against their (better) peers and helps them pull up their socks when they feel they're sliding.

No, it doesn't. If you make a fair system where everyone who does more gets more, you don't have a problem. When you make awards for only a certain number of people, you may do more, but still get the short end of the stick. What's worse? You have no idea how hard you'll have to work.

If you are a programmer working a 40+ hour week at a company, you likely can't compete with a jobless programmer. If you get something for your valuable effort based on how much you do or how important it is to the project, then you can walk away feeling appreciated for what work you could do. If not, you'll start to wonder why a big company like Apple couldn't do so. Where is your piece of the pie? You are not asking for more than you deserve, just the piece that was built on your back.

You have a valid point that all contributors should be rewarded and duly recognized. However, the key contributors also need to be rewarded more than the others, for that is the essence of meritocracy.

Whenever Open Source is involved with any Slashdot story, you get these fluffy, idealistic views of the world. Fine, you want to make a system based on merit? I won't stop you. At issue here is a very profitable company compensating the merits of only a very select few. This is not the fucking Red Cross. Why the hell should you give a profitable corporation your charity?

Re:Obvious

[SetupWeasel]

Employers choose who gets to work for them. They don't just leave their doors open so anybody can walk in, do some work, and walk out with money.

This is, essentially, exactly what Apple did.

Re:Obvious

[SetupWeasel]

Yes, but what now? My point is there are a lot of people now who likely feel jilted.

Never mind that a profitable company like Apple not compensating everyone who does work for them is despicable.

Re:Obvious

[Macdude]

This is different. Agreed, internal competition can actually damage morale in a company. However, what Apple has done is reward open source contribution for individuals who didn't expect the reward in the first place.

It also get's the new CPU'd systems into the hands of the people who are doing the most contributing. You know, encouraging development for the new instruction set?

Re:Obvious

[Enrique1218]

Gee, since IBM sold thier laptop/desktop business. What should they give their open source developers? Servers or workstation? I know a mainframe.

Re:Obvious

[ksheff]

Why? These people volunteered to work on the project. It's not like they were hired to do work and the boss spent the payroll in Vegas. It doesn't matter how big or how profitable a company is, if you volunteer to work for them for free, that's your problem, not theirs. Apple rewarded people when they didn't have to.

Re:Obvious

[GlassHeart]

they should compensate every person who did good work for them. That would be fair. As it stands, for every chosen one, there will be many wringing their hands, angry that their hard work goes unappreciated and uncompensated.

So if a particular hardware manufacturer sent Linus Torvalds or another specific Linux contributor some shiny new hardware and documentation in the hopes that it will gain support in the next version of Linux, any Linux contributor who didn't get one will be "wringing their hands, angry that their hard work goes unappreciated and uncompensated"?

I fear you underestimate the motives of volunteers.

Re:Obvious

[porcupine8]

Uh, perhaps I read it wrong, but it sounded to me like the "employee" was the one who had to pay the bid in order to get the job. So you bid $40 for a job that pays $45/hr, but if it turns out to only take an hour you wind up getting $5 total.

So that would be like if you had two car places that wanted to charge you $100/hr or $90/hr, and you told them that whoever would pay you $50 first gets the job - and you're not telling them what the problem is, so it might just be an oil change that they'd only make a half hour's pay on.

Re:Obvious

[porcupine8]

No, this is more like if your company had kept paying everyone what they paid them before, but suddenly handed out a Christmas bonus (that had never existed before) to the top people. Nobody was expecting it, so they weren't competing for it. The people who got it get a morale boost, the people who didn't get it are no worse off than they were before - and maybe see it as something to work a little harder for, in case the company decides to do it again sometime. But, of course, no plans to do it again are announced, so that people don't get cut-throat competitive. But you never know when you might get something extra.

It's like when I worked for Borders bookstore. They'd have secret shoppers come in now and then, and they had a whole list of things they were looking for that you had to do. Now, of course, you were supposed to do these things with every customer, but sometimes you forgot. If you got a less than perfect shop, all that would happen was a manager would remind you of what you should have done. However, if you got a perfect score, you got a free book or CD (from a pile in the back room, not the whole store). So it was good motivation to stay on top of what was going on, but didn't demoralize people by punishing them if they weren't perfect.

Re:Obvious

[Bombula]

I don't believe you because I'm an anthropologist who has lived and worked in developing countries for more than a decade, and yours is the tired and busted argument of every republican economist since the first world war, the same rationalization used by rich businessmen back through southern plantation owners to the landed gentry of feudal Europe and beyond.

Here's a summary of your argument: "It's better to have a terrible job than no job at all; therefore, these people are lucky; and just look at them - they are proud to work for our great, rich companies."

The reason why that is a load of shite is that we had the same situation at home from before the industrial revolution to the beginning of the 20th Century. Collective bargaining power - what we call unions - are what got rid of child labor and sweatshops in western countries. Before that, child labor was prevalent, along with indentured servitude and slavery. The republican idiots of the time used exactly the same argument you're using (stop me if this sounds familiar):

"It's better to have a terrible job than no job at all; therefore, these people are lucky; and just look at them - they are proud to work for our great, rich companies."

You've been brainwashed. The propaganda engine now in support of global free trade is fuelled by the same wealthy elite that owned slaves 200 years ago. It's obviously working, otherwise no person with a functioning brain would fail to see that the horrendous conditions of a totally unregulated and lawless 'free' global labor market are precisely what workers in western countries have fought so hard for over 100 years to overcome at home, let alone sing the same sad song of excuses and rationalization.

Re:Obvious

[jcr]

Here's a summary of your argument: "It's better to have a terrible job than no job at all; therefore, these people are lucky; and just look at them - they are proud to work for our great, rich companies."

That's not his argument, that's your straw man. Nevertheless, the reason why people move from subsistence farming to factory jobs, is because the jobs are in fact better than what they leave behind. It's the same reason why my grandparents left their farms to work in factories, and why the first wave of industrial workers in Great Britain did so in the 1800's. If people were being forced to work in the factories, you'd have a point, but that practice is mostly confined to the Socialist Workers' Paradises of China and North Korea.

Collective bargaining power - what we call unions - are what got rid of child labor and sweatshops in western countries.

Nope.

Capital investment, raising the marginal productivity of labor, is what made it possible to abandon child labor in the industrialized cities. Meanwhile, kids on the farms were still putting in a full day's work.

You've been brainwashed.

Project much, professor?

-jcr

Re:Obvious

[jcr]

Since nobody was expecting anything, nobody can complain about unfairness.

I think you underestimate the ingenuity of people looking for something to gripe about. ;-)

-jcr

Re:Obvious

[timeOday]

No, it doesn't. If you make a fair system where everyone who does more gets more, you don't have a problem.

That would be nice, wouldn't it. In practice, weighing contribution of different people is almost never straightforward. Some jobs come fairly close, like a team of salespeople all selling the same product in the same territory - those are the jobs that tend to use comission. Yet even in that most simple of cases, there are problems. Companies trying to establish good reputations tend to shy away from straight comission pay because it makes salespeople do things that are bad for the company in the medium and long term. And 95% of us do jobs whose value is much harder to calculate, because no 2 people on the team are doing quite the same thing.

Of course, one "solution" is to choose a simple, arbitrary policy and assume whatever it does is fair by definition. Pure communists and capitalists both fall into this camp. They see no problem so long as the Party or the invisible hand is doing whatever it does. But of course few people hold on to such a simplistic view.

Re:Obvious

[CableModemSniper]

Employers choose who gets to work for them. They don't just leave their doors open so anybody can walk in, do some work, and walk out with money.

That sounds kinda like a cool place to work.

Re:Obvious

[murr]

Depends on your definition of "large". VA Linux spread their friends & family IPO stock quite generously through the open source community, and as a result, lots of people made a nice windfall (in the lower 5 figures).

Re:Obvious

[steeviant]

I think what the GP meant is that gifting these laptops to those who have done a largely thankless task out of the goodness of their hearts is in the same spirit of giving and expecting nothing (more) in return.

I don't see how giving someone something, in recognition of what that person has given to you somehow cheapens what they have done.

Oh the irony of even suggesting that something originally done with no expectation of recompense can be cheapened.

Re:Obvious

[Bombula]

the reason why people move from subsistence farming to factory jobs, is because the jobs are in fact better than what they leave behind

Of course...Now why didn't that occur to me? Maybe because it's a pile of pure steaming bullshit, just like the rest of your tired and busted fundie argument. Of course people in Brazil, Guatemala, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and dozens of other countries cheerfully forfeit land that has been in their families for centuries in order to go work in sweatshops. It has certainly has nothing to with state-sanctioned industrialization of agriculture by multinational corporations...

If people were being forced to work in the factories, you'd have a point, but that practice is mostly confined to the Socialist Workers' Paradises of China and North Korea.

Wow, you've nailed it yet again. Sweatshops are only a bad thing if you literally chain the kids to their work tables! If it's just a matter of people being so desperately poor that they have no other options and there are no government regulations to protect them from extortion, huzzah! But wait a minute ... we no longer tolerate them in western countries ... I wonder why that could be? Oh, I forgot, you addressed that too: investment in machinery and automation made labor more efficient, and then all our Noble Corporations voluntarily abandoned their practices of paying people $1 a day for 16 hour days in favor of minimum wage and overtime! Silly me! It had nothing to do with collective bargaining power imposing regulation upon industry.

Christ, you do such a good job of making my 'brainwashed' case for me, I don't know why I bother.

Re:Obvious

[jcr]

Sorry, but you're wrong again. Nobody's putting a gun to their heads to make them leave their farms, no matter how much of a snit you work yourself into. (Well, except in China again, but I digress.)

People stream into the cities for factory jobs today for all of the same reasons that they always did. There's more money to be made working in a factory than on a farm. Of course we consider their working conditions deplorable, because you and I have a point of view that's made possible by the very high productivity of labor in our country, which again, was made possible by... Wait for it... Capital investment!

Compare the living conditions of a typical laborer in any relatively free-market country to any of the tragic socialist experiments that plagued the 20th century. QED.

Sweatshops are only a bad thing if you literally chain the kids to their work tables!

If you truly care about improving the lives of factory workers in the third world, then try promoting capital investment in their countries instead of just railing against the very thing that offers the only hope they have of a better life. Socialism promises, capitalism delivers.

Christ, you do such a good job of making my 'brainwashed' case for me, I don't know why I bother.

Fuck you too, sunshine.

-jcr

Re:Obvious

[jcr]

I forgot, you addressed that too: investment in machinery and automation made labor more efficient, and then all our Noble Corporations voluntarily abandoned their practices of paying people $1 a day for 16 hour days in favor of minimum wage and overtime! Silly me! It had nothing to do with collective bargaining power imposing regulation upon industry.

Forgot to address this..

What raised the wages of laborers was competition for labor (free market works both ways, you know). Henry Ford did more for factory workers' wages than all the "labor leaders" who ever lived.

-jcr

Re:Obvious

[Bombula]

Competition for labor is what raised prices, eh? Well, of course, silly me! Obviously employers are simply crawling all over one another in competition to see who can pay their workers the highest wages! The market is so magically ethical and just, regulation like minimum wage is just there for show - all we really need are more saints like Ford and Rockefeller!

I was going to ask you to help clarify why, to take just one recent example, GM moved 50,000 jobs to Mexico when they had a perfectly good black ghetto in Detroit to supply them with child labor, but it all makes sense now that you've enlightened me - how our pure and just corporations and their exalted leaders always Do the Right Thing, how sweatshops, child labor and slavery are OK for those noble corporations to exploit just so long as they are legal in someone else's backyard. Come to think of it, I'm glad our great companies are fighting the evils of regulation like minimum wage, overtime, workplace safety, and child labor by decimating communities at home with massive layoffs and taking their investment capital to places where people really know how to do business, like Manila and Jakarta.

We're done. I'm finished stating facts that are obvious to any thinking person. The truth has pwned you utterly without any of my help at all.

Re:Obvious

[jcr]

Competition for labor is what raised prices, eh?

Yes.

It's why people in booming economies are paid more than people in depressed economies.

all we really need are more saints like Ford and Rockefeller!

Ford and Rockefeller each made their fortunes by selling something the public wanted to buy, and doing so at lower prices than their competition. Rockefeller's kerosene was a great deal cheaper than whale oil, so people no longer had to go to bed right when the sun went down because they couldn't afford light.

Ford sold cars for far less than anyone before him, which created such a demand for his product that labor was in short supply. Upshot: he paid more than other employers, who had to raise their wages, too. Ford was actually somewhat preemptive about it; he raised his employees wages a good bit more than he absolutely needed to, because he saw the benefit of morale on their productivity.

I was going to ask you to help clarify why, to take just one recent example, GM moved 50,000 jobs to Mexico

They did so because they want to stay in business. Take a look at their SEC reports for the last decade or so: they simply can't afford to sustain the financial burden of employing a US workforce. You can thank the unions for that, BTW.

our pure and just corporations and their exalted leaders always Do the Right Thing

Try a little more stuffing in your straw man, sport. I never said they always do the right thing. They do the right thing most of the time, and if they do the wrong thing, their customers quit giving them money.

I'm finished stating facts that are obvious to any thinking person.

The most obvious fact of all is that socialism results in poverty.

Compare east and west Germany, north and south Korea, India before and after they gave up on the Soviet model of central planning, and China before and after the red dynasty decided to quit confiscating the wealth generated by anyone who showed any initiative. Look at the Baltics: industrialized countries equal to any others in Europe before WW2, bombed to rubble by two major socialist powers, recovery severely retarded under the Soviets, and now coming very nicely back to their historical levels of prosperity.

The truth has pwned you utterly without any of my help at all.

Yes, it's quite clear that you've never helped the truth in any way.

-jcr

Re:Obvious

[jonbryce]

Yes they did.

It doesn't seem to be working very well though.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1707190,00 .html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4700190.stm
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/articl e344675.ece

In fact, Royal Mail is now so bad, that I now pay a private courier to deliver my letters for me rather than pay Royal Mail to lose them for me.

Re:Obvious

[Bombula]

OK kids, one more ride because I simply can't resist, but after this we're really done.

they simply can't afford to sustain the financial burden of employing a US workforce. You can thank the unions for that, BTW.

Ah, so that's why GM destroyed Flint by outsourcing all those tens of thousands of jobs to Mexico. Except that there's this one minor detail you omitted from the story, called 'record profits'.

The most obvious fact of all is that socialism results in poverty.

That is correct. It is also irrelevant. Unless, of course, by mentioning this obvious fact you mean to imply I am a commie for thinking it is immoral, unethical, and just plain evil for anyone to exploit child labor and sweatshops anywhere in the world for any reason, even in countries full of poor brown people that aren't currently enjoying the benefits of a 'booming economy' (I know, I know, they just need more Fords and Rockefellers. The Phillipines only has 4 billionaires - if only it had a few more, good ol' trickle-down would take care of everything. The fact that they have rampant corruption and zero human rights or labor regulation has nothing to do with it...).

Speaking of trickle-down, I am reminded of how well that all worked out in the past - say, South Carolina circa 1825. Just how much benefit was trickling down to those slaves and indentured servants in that 'booming economy' I wonder, what with all the competition amongst companies and land owners to see who could pay the highest wages? You see, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that when you keep poor people in poverty with slave wages then they can't exert any buyer power (or any other kind of power) over you, and that is an awfully nice position to be in. Oh, and I forgot, when the slaves were emancipated and when child labor was abolished, well, the US economy went straight into the toilet, didn't it?

You, like so many others, buy into the entire argument that capitalism is somehow a brand new idea, but the truth is that there have been capitalists as long as there has been currency. The reason why capitalism is so successful in modern society is because it is tempered by democracy and regulation. Without those moderating influences, you simply have mercantalism, feudalism, and serfdom; you get the Phillipines or Yemen where you have a few billionaires and a hundred million men, women, and children struggling to earn a couple dollars a day. But if you'd experienced any of this firsthand instead of being an armchair philosopher whose never been outside of America, I wouldn't need to explain it to you using such small words.

Now we are really done.

Re:Obvious

[sambira]

Your examples are note worthy but not applicable to this situation. Apple did not set up a "contest". That would be something like the X-Prize. This was an unexpected reward for a job well done. There is nothing said that would indicate that this will happen in the future.

Re:Obvious

[jcr]

Ah, so that's why GM destroyed Flint

I've got a little news flash for you: Michael Moore isn't a historian.

-jcr

Re:Obvious

[duhjim]

i feel these gifts were nothing more than a penny wise and pound foolish attempt by apple at tipping their "local bartender". i wonder what their logic was for deciding to give away exactly 12 "64 MacBook Pro book computers", instead of 16, 32 or, better yet, "64", and why 5 expense paid invites to the AWDC, rather than 8 16 or 32. Bartenders never forget a large tip and the 12- 5 combo just feels a little tepid to me. i am guessing for a little bit more they could have made a much larger impression on the workers who serve them.

Re:Obvious

[Bombula]

I'm from Flint, dumbass.

Re:Obvious

[jcr]

I'm from Flint, dumbass.

So what? Do you want a medal?

Do you imagine that GM owes you something, just because they left town?

-jcr

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Golf Clap for both of you. Clap-Clap. You can't argue with a liberal, they just don't make sense. I view this thread as perfect proof. Whenever you prove them wrong, they shift the argument, and put words in your mouth. They are just pissed because we are right, and they are too stubborn to switch sides.

The problem with liberals is that they are so vocal, that they all convince each other they are correct. Most republicans don't feel a need to stand up and be a cause fighter, because, frankly, they are pretty happy with how things are going. Because liberals only hear other liberals, they start to think that republicans are in the minority. Guess what, who won the last two elections, even though all the polls said otherwise? Face it, the republicans are in the majority, and it pisses the liberals off, but they have to cater to so many differant groups to get money, they when they get in office, they still can't make the "sweeping changes for the better" Notice the only time Clinton did anything good was in his lame duck period. If you feel like this place is so horrible, and you want a socialist paradise, there are many out there for you to choose from. Just don't drink the water in any of them.

Re:Obvious

[Ohreally_factor]

The key here is that the manager should balance out the weaker employees' efforts with the company's goals, and make sure that they too are recognized and rewarded, along with the star performers.

Blake: We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize?
[Holds up prize]
Blake: Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

Re:Obvious

[Ohreally_factor]

You must be old here.

=)

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you imagine that GM owes you something, just because they left town?
Hell yeah, they owe me my bloody TAX money they got in breaks from the gov'ment. Give tax-breaks and spend, and stick ME with the bill, buttholes. That's about as conservative as a drunk sailor at a cat-house.

they simply can't afford to sustain the financial burden of employing a US workforce. You can thank the unions for that, BTW.
Kidney and heart transplants cost much, no shit. I just hope YOUR kids do not need one.
And before you go on bragging how your daddy's rich, or how well your schmuk scheister job pays, or how you saved up for the rainy day, remember, Jesus can turn it around in a day (and probably will, bad shit eventually catches up to buttholes!). I know a girl born with a silver spoon in her mouth, daddy multimillioneer, etc. etc. Then guy gets leukemia while his company went under, lost insurance, "rainy day" money dried up quick. The girl had to go get a McJob at 16! Now _I_ am paying their MedicAid thorough the fucking taxes.

It really feels bad to lose your child to an infection that could be treated with a $0.40 course of penicillin, and it don't matter shit which country you are from, it still hurts like hell. It sucks to lose your toes as a 12 y.o. kid just because the company is looking for the bottom line and not issuing you the steel-toed boots you need (and your 'capitalist heaven' country does not allow you to even sue the company).

Shut the hell up, butthole, you know crap about real life. If you want, get the hell out of your car, and spend a summer's day going the the shittiest neighbourhood in your town (you know, the one that smells like onions and cat piss), knock on some doors, and talk to people living there. No bloody shit, some of those people work 18 hours a day, and STILL cannot make ends meet. So-called 'welfare queens' have to work 40 hours a week to get their welfare check, kids grow up dumb and unattended, join gangs.

I pray to the Lord some shit like that does not happen to you or your kids. Better get your ass to church, get on your bloody knees, and start praying, arsehole.

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll make that trade!

great gift, brings me back

[conJunk]

I only went to WWDC once, when i was 17, my employer (first IT job) sent me on their dime... it was a blast, really cool, really eye-opening... giving OSS developers a free ride (and a free computer!) is just cool... i don't have much of a point... this just cool, and makes me nostalgic :)

Re:Good for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the MacBook is the first Apple notebook with an Intel chip, genius.

Re:Good for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I see they've found a way to unload all those pre-Intel Macs sitting in their warehouse.

As a thank you, we are giving MacBook Pro computers to twelve of our top contributors.

They are giving them intel versions.

It really is unlucky

[agent dero]

Never before has number 13 sucked so hard.

Sucks to be you, top 13th contributor ;)

Re:It really is unlucky

[slide-rule]

Never before has number 13 sucked so hard.

Borrowing shamelessly a quote in military training camps (and elsewhere to be sure)...
"Know what 13th place is? The first loser."

Re:It really is unlucky

[cloudmaster]

All I've got to say is that I only read this far down the page to see if anyone had posted that yet. I guess it's back to work for me, then...

Re:It really is unlucky

[chod]

I figure they probably only had a dozen open source developers working on the project to begin with. Maybe they wanted more developers working on webkit and figured this would entice others to join in.

Re:Good for Apple

[Ma�djeurtam]

I think the GP refers to the fact that the MacBooks that were shown in January were actually prototypes. Or maybe he was just trolling and that I bit :)

Let me point you to what this really is...

[heretog]

Damn cheap advertising. Hell, it works a million ways revolving around good feelings and envy. Plus they get some P.R. with all of those who will praise how great they are for doing it. Not great, smart. Not smart in a good way, smart in a 'Comcast Park Cleanup Day' way.

Re:Let me point you to what this really is...

[smallguy78]

Sadly for you, the people making that praise are also the same people rating your comments

That's what they'd like you to think

[Sux2BU]

Looks like donating your time isn't a thankless job anymore.

Perhaps I'm just a little too cynical here, but this sounds like a great way to get free labor using an open source project. You release it, give some early adopters a thank you gift, and then wait as more people contribute to the project. You leave people with the hopes that they too will get "paid" for their work. Considering the (relatively) small amount of money spent on the gift vs. hiring people to work on the project it comes off as quite a deal. You might even get free advertising.

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[Kjella]

Perhaps I'm just a little too cynical here, but this sounds like a great way to get free labor using an open source project.

Well, for one the result is an open source project. Not something Apple can just lock up. Secondly, if you're in this for the money you're seriously not thinking straight. They're giving these to their top developers. It's a trinket for what they've contributed, it's not anything like a lottery where you can "win" and get a decent wage. Apple is simply seeing a way to make people that are already interested in doing an open-source project be a little more motivated. It's a win-win situation for both. That's not a crime or anything.

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[Anonymous Coward]

So hey Apple, let's keep those laptops in their boxes, and to hell with those top 12 developers. I mean, did 'contributor' meaning change recently or what?

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[mister_tim]

I was waiting for someone to say this. Basically, that argument just shows that with the Open Source model you can't please everyone.

If a company doesn't open source, plenty of open source advocates say they should and will complain about closed environment, etc etc
If they do open source, then you get arguments like this - either that they are taking advantage of free labour, or using cheap labour.

If you accept the open source model, then things like this are the outcome. In this case, it is very nice of Apple that they rewarded some of the top contributors, which they were certainly not obliged to do.

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[mblase]

Perhaps I'm just a little too cynical here, but this sounds like a great way to get free labor using an open source project.

Considering that the whole point of using an open source project is to get software using free labor -- yeah, you're being pretty cynical.

Apple didn't have to give anybody anything in exchange for their contributions. Nobody ever expected or asked them to. This isn't an incentive to get other people to be in the "top twelve" next year; it's a "thank you" to the people who have already worked hard.

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[KingSkippus]

Perhaps I'm just a little too cynical here, but this sounds like a great way to get free labor using an open source project.

Isn't that the goal of all open source projects? (Okay, the vast majority of them?)

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[16K Ram Pack]

If you are doing OSS for direct financial reward, you'll be disappointed.

There are some complex reasons for doing it (like getting others using your code can give you feedback, bug finding, or because you are charitable, or to raise your profile).

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[Goth Biker Babe]

One thing everyone seems to have missed is that with the move over to Intel they would probably like 'their' top Open Source developers to have appropriate hardware to develop on.

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[JohnFluxx]

Oh come on. Please name a single policy/event which affects a large number of people and where everybody has been happy. I can't think of a single thing. It's rather unfair to make it out that open source people are any different. Humans and humans.

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[cowscows]

I don't think you're giving the people working on these projects enough credit. Anyone with the skills to contribute meaningfully to this project should be able to get a job that pays well enough that they could buy a laptop on their own. And I'm sure they all know that.

You see, one of the cool things (although sometimes a weakness) with open source development is that the people doing it are very often doing it for fun. It's a hobby for them, and even without the MacBook, if they weren't getting some sort of a feeling of accomplishment or something, they would've stopped doing it. Apple isn't taking advantage of people any more than the habitat for humanity takes advantage of their volunteers. While writing code is different than building homes for impoverished people, there are a lot of parallels.

In both cases, someone willingly donates their labor, for their own reasons. And in both cases, a lot of people benefit. With Habitat for humanity, the volunteers get the satisfaction of having helped with something bigger than themselves, and often gain knowledge about construction. A family without the means to buy their own house gets a decent home and their quality of life significantly improves. And society in general has one less homeless person to try and support (or if you don't believe that others should be forced to help those lazy bums, there's one less homeless person sitting around in your neighborhood).

With open source webkit, the volunteers get the satisfaction of having helped with something bigger than themselves, they've likely gained some new knowledge pertaining to computers and programming, they've potentially gained some name recognition for their effort and talents, and some of them have even gotten new laptop computers. Apple benefits by having a better piece of software included in their operating system. The rest of the world benefits because they have that exact same better piece of software that they're free to use with their own programs. Oh, and coincidentally, the fact that this particular piece of software pertains to web browsing, it stimulates more competition in the browser market, so the world gets even more better browsers.

But yeah, there are two points. The people donating their labor to this project before must have been getting some sort of happiness/satisfaction/reward for it, or they would've stopped. I've yet to hear of any sweatshops in asia where kids are forced to write code for pennies by their cruel taskmasters who keep any free laptops sent in reward. And secondly, Apple is not the only one benefiting from this. They aren't using laptops to pay people to write code for Apple, they're rewarding people who write code available to anyone. That's approaching philanthropy.

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone. You didn't miss it. And you earned that "Score 5, Insightful".

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[Ranger Rick]

Considering these folks were doing it *anyways*, I don't see how that could be the case.

I work on Fink and we've gotten little, if any, official support or thank you's from Apple, but that doesn't stop us from making OSX usable by porting *NIX apps to it. ;) ...Not that I would say no to some new hardware, I maintain KDE and it takes me nearly a week to do a full test-build from scratch.

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[1729]

If you are doing OSS for direct financial reward, you'll be disappointed.

That's just not true. Take a look at the developer lists for major OSS projects, such as gcc. There are a lot of people working on these projects for Red Hat, IBM, SUSE, Apple, various academic and government agencies, etc. Plenty of people (myself included) are paid well for OSS work.

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[16K Ram Pack]

You are right.

I didn't really write that well.

What I mean is more like when I've made a change to some OSS code I'm using for my own projects, I frequently offer changes to the author to use. I don't expect to get anything from it, like they are going to offer me a job working on it, it's just what I feel is the honourable thing to do.

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[PsychoSid]

What no Microsoft ?!?!

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the (relatively) small amount of money spent on the gift vs. hiring people to work on the project it comes off as quite a deal.

Actually, one of my friends is one of the 12, he worked on SVG (lighting for example) a number of rendering patchs and i think the JS Core, and he has been hired by Apple as well.

Re:That's what they'd like you to think

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you're not as cynical as you wish you were and just less of a contributor to progress and ideas than you could be.
Thank you to the contributors of the project, your selfless acts continue to make life a little better one bit at a time.
Who modded the parent post up? Wake up.

KHTML?

[pherthyl]

I hope some of the KHTML developers were among those getting rewarded. That's where the code originally came from after all.

Re:KHTML?

[ThePhilips]

I think that to be the case.

Apple's decision to /open-source/ WebKit was quite controversal. Apple as a big company with lots of customers has to follow some security lines. That was the culprit why WebKit became so distant to its ancesor kHTML.

The problem was that KDE and Apple has very different targets on how to release patches and etc. Some of the changes Apple did to WebKit would never be accepted by kHTML team. That in fact forked development of WebKit and kHTML.

After Slashdot bashing (it was in times of release Acid2 test), when kHTML people said that Acid2/kHTML is a very distant (low-pro) target, Apple promised to come-up with solution to the problem. The solution was to clean-up internal repository and open it up the FLOSS community. kHTML people wanted to bring standardatization work done by Apple to kHTML on one side. And on another side Apple wanted to move to newer improved version of kHTML.

Fork the it was going benefited no-one. The way things everyone wants is to have kHTML clean and strandard compliant and WebKit with some hacks and quirks to deliver top notch performance and compatibility for Apple's Safari. Hacks/quirks has always a potential to evolve into a proper solution.

So I think your guess is right: most contributors would be the kHTML team. Thou I expect some other caring souls would wander the repositories too.

P.S. Story about Apple's WebKit v. kHTML. the problem: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/28/121 5227 - and the solution http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/04/144021 3

Re:KHTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

P.S. Story about Apple's WebKit v. kHTML. the problem: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/28/121 5227 - and the solution http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/04/144021 3

The problem with kHTML vs WebKit was the Apple zealots who praised how much Apple contributed to kHTML when in fact Apple didn't do that at all. The kHTML developers didn't care if Apple contributed, but they did care that the zealots where shouting (And we all know how high the Apple zealots shout) about the wonderfull relationship beetween Apple and kHTML. There where no relationship, Apple forked kHTML a year before anouncing it, the kHTML developers was not informed about that.

When the kHTML developers enlighted us about the fact that Apple didn't contributed to kHTML (This was when safari passed Acid2) the zealots again as always missintepreted it as if the kHTML developers where jealous about Apples fork of the program. The fact is that all they said is that Apple shouldn't have credits for kHTML because they don't work on the program!

Apple realised they actully benifitted from having some status in the open source world and gave the kHTML developers the tools they needed to bring Apples patches back into the kHTML tree. This had nothing to do with "Apple promised to come-up with solution to the Acid2 problem". Apple realised they had an image problem. Their users (the zealots) where outright lying to the OSS comunity, and they couldn't be stopped because when the zealots have made up their minds on something they don't change it when some "OSS hippies" tells them they are wrong. Apple did exactly what the zealots had been shouting about, and began a relationship with kHTML. Now the zealots could go on with the tales without lying and Apple probably benefitted from loosening the grip a little on WebKit.

Basically all you wrote is just pure bullshit, and has little to no resemblance with what actully happened. But as the zealot you are you again change the truth to fit your twisted world.

Re:KHTML?

[RPoet]

"Apple's decision to /open-source/ WebKit was quite controversal."

Abiding by software licenses is "controversal" now? KHTML is LGPL so it's not like they had much choice.

Re:KHTML?

[buysse]

Poor wording by grandparent. Apple always kept to the letter of the LGPL -- they dumped source when they released binaries. One big chunk of undercommented source.

Nine months ago, that changed when Apple started exposing the VCS for WebKit and actively helping kHTML developers to integrate the WebKit improvements to KDE, and integrate the newer kHTML code to WebKit. In the initial situation, Apple benefited. After opening the repository, everybody benefited, and now Apple is saying "Thank you," in a very tangible way.

Re:KHTML?

[Lars T.]

Nice theory, but the problem were the OpenSource zealots who complained that kHTML still didn't pass Acid2. Thanks for spreading your FUD, try again next time.

Re:KHTML?

[diamondsw]

Fork the it was going benefited no-one.

Hey, new sig line!

Re:KHTML?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Basically all you wrote is just pure bullshit, and has little to no resemblance with what actully happened. But as the zealot you are you again change the truth to fit your twisted world.

Do you get a cookie or something if you use the word "zealot" a certain number of times? Regardless, what YOU wrote is bullshit.

What happened is that Apple was contributing back, but they were doing big patch dumps that took the KHTML devs a long time to sift through. Those devs were then getting annoyed with the KDE users who were asking why KHTML was taking so long to get code merged in from Apple. The devs were trying to tell people that it's not that they're lazy or technically unable, it's that they were getting these huge code dumps. So Apple open sourced WebKit and suggested the KDE folks just adopt WebKit so everybody is in sync. Those same complaining devs then refused Apple's offer.

But as an Apple-bashing zealot, you of course changed the truth to..."fit your twisted world."

Re:KHTML?

[CableModemSniper]

The didn't have to open-source webkit. WebCore is where all the KHTML code is.

NASA Worldwind

[Llynix]

NASA about a year ago sent gorgeous crystal cubes to the top contributers to their worldwind project. They had a couple of NASA logos etched on them along with our names. When the manager of the project popped into our community chat room I suggested some NASA schwag for the top contributers. I was thinking stickers/pens... something small. I was quite surprised to recieve a heavy box a couple of months later containing the perfect desktop gem.

Re:NASA Worldwind

[Bungopolis]

So THAT'S where the NASA research budget has gone!

Re:NASA Worldwind

[masklinn]

pic please

Re:NASA Worldwind

[FireBreathingDog]

That's quite a bit different. As an American taxpayer, I am legally required to contribute money to NASA's budget. If I refuse, I go to jail. So it is rather easy for NASA to take money from me to hand out trinkets to other people; it wasn't NASA's money to begin with. At least Apple is sacrificing something of its own (money) to reward people who have sacrificed something of their own (time).

Verbing nouns: Gah.

[minginqunt]

Off-topic, I know. So mod me. But...

Gah! "Gifting"? Wtf? Gift is a fucking NOUN. What's wrong with "Apple gives MacBooks to top WebKit contributors"?

It seems that the disease of corporate-speak has infected even the minds of Slashdot contributors who (a) should know better and (b) probably think they're immune.

Action this at once.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also a transitive verb... look it up...

tr.v. gifted, gifting, gifts

      1. To present something as a gift to.
      2. To endow with.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Bungopolis]

tr.v. gifted, gifting, gifts

1. To present something as a gift to.
2. To endow with.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition via http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gifts

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Mikey-San]

According to the "American Heritage Dictionary", but not according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Tsk.

Frankly, I speak English, and this half-arsed corporatisation of American colloquia needs to stop. It's not attractive, and it makes British ears very unhappy.

I speak English, too.

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/gift

gift

noun 1 a thing given willingly to someone without payment; a present. 2 a natural ability or talent. 3 informal a very easy task or unmissable opportunity.

verb 1 give as a gift, especially formally. 2 (gift with) endow (someone) with (an ability or talent). 3 gifted having exceptional talent or ability.

Hey, look at that. Looks like Oxford says you need a refresher course.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[SillyWilly]

It appears in the second edition (1989) of the full OED. The earliest reported use is from the 16th century. "1. trans. To endow or furnish with gifts (see chiefly GIFT n. 6); to endow, invest, or present with as a gift."

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Bazzalisk]

Hmmmm.

ERROR 35 CART/HORSE ORDER MISMATCH.

(I think you might find that "gift" started out as a verb sometime in the 16th century)

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[minginqunt]

Pah.

You can prove anything with facts. I don't like it. No sir, I don't like it.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[SurgeonGeneral]

Definitions are interesting, however it is the etymology of the word that will explain to the parent why his anger at the use of "gift" as a verb is a mistake.

Gift is a word that is originally derived from the ancient German word geban - which, incidently, is a verb. The word grew to be a noun, but kept its verb meaning as well.

The word gift has been used for a long time now as a verb in legal proceedings. When a person bequeths objects to people in a will, it generally is referred to as gifting. That meaning of the word has recently raised its head in major media where it seems to be a "new" use of the word, when actually it is only new to you.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[necro2607]

"Gift" as a verb? Wow, and I thought "preemptive counter-attack" was bad...

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[stud9920]

I blame it to bad parenting.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[zerocool^]

Yep. Most of our modern English comes from German through Greek. As such, we tend to follow a lot of german rules for language. The fact that the quickest way to create new words in English is to "noun-i-fy" verbs is an example of this. It happens all the time.

~Will

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Distinguished Hero]

Most of our modern English comes from German through Greek.

Wow. Just wow. Is that what they are teaching kids these days? Well, at least they don't claim it came from Arabic through Mandarin.
Consider this: The Angles and the Saxons were Germanic people from an area roughly around the current border of Germany and Denmark.
Also consider this: The Greeks considered everyone who wasn't Greek (except sometimes Romans and Punics) as barbarians.
The probability that something came into modern English from German through Greek is very very small.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[ThinkingInBinary]

<AOL>Me too!</gt>

Seriously, I freaking hate it when people use "gift" as a verb. What the hell is wrong with the verb give? It's the freaking root of the word "gift"!

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Lars T.]

He meant the language English, not the people.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Distinguished Hero]

I guess they don't teach reading comprehension in school any more either. It's ok, I guess... as long as you feel good, have high self-esteem, accept yourself and all that... and know how to use the italics tag to really drive home your point.

Please, reread my post; I was talking about the language. When the Angles and the Saxons came to Britain, they brought their language (Germanic dialect) with them, resulting in Old English (which after the Norman invasion, which introduced a lot of French/Latin vocabulary, became Middle English). The Greeks, because they considered almost everyone else barbarians would have kept their language without many loanwords or grammar from other languages, especially not Germanic languages.

The fact that I have found two people to defend the imbecilic idea that English came from German through Greek is beyond belief.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Midnight Thunder]

He meant the language English, not the people.

Even if that was what he meant he would still be wrong. English evolved from the German language of the time, yet English was also influenced by Greek and Latin.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[soundofthemoon]

My intended headline was "Apple Rewards Top WebKit Contributors with MacBooks". But that was over the 50 character limit for headlines, so I had to tweak my word choice to fit within the limit. It's ugly, I'm embarrassed, but I chose that option over leaving out the word "Top" because I felt it was more important to distinguish that not all contributors were rewarded. I blame the editors!

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[andreyw]

Still incorrect. Not greek. There was Angle language and the Saxon language, which merged, and were influenced by the then-insignificant Roman presence. After the Norman/Frankish invasion the language changed radically, becoming more latinised.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Tibor the Hun]

At first I thought that I couldn't leverage the word "gifting", but after your nice explanation, I am quite puzzled. Are you saying that we now, can leverage "gifting" in the common every-day use?

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/gift

English. From England. Dickwad.
(Replying to the parent post who said "English. From England. Dickwad")

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[lightning01]

Thanks for that. Now I can say I actually learned something interesting today. Hurrah!

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Macdude]

Gah! "Gifting"? Wtf? Gift is a fucking NOUN. What's wrong with "Apple gives MacBooks to top WebKit contributors"?

I totally agree with you. People, please! Stop verbing your nouns.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Rational]

*shrug*. Being able to verb nouns at will is one of the things I love the most about the English language (of which I'm not a native speaker). It's not really a beautiful language, but it's a really beautiful tool.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[the_pooh_experience]

Frankly, I speak English, and this half-arsed corporatisation of American colloquia needs to stop. It's not attractive, and it makes British ears very unhappy.

Not for nothing, but this verbization* of words by damn British colloquia hurts my sensitive American ears.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=corporati sation
http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=searchresul ts&freesearch=corporatisation
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/corporatisation
http://www.bartleby.com/cgi-bin/texis/webinator/ah dsearch?search_type=enty&query=corporatisation

[*]yes, I get the irony

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[poopdeville]

If you really think about it, it becomes more and more obvious that Perl was intended to be the programming language analogue of English. Not elegant or pretty, but full of useful idioms borrowed from other languages.

Off-topic, I know. But what you said reminded me of it.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Lars T.]

Given that you only talked about people, yeah, it's hard not to get the impression you talk about people. Sorry that you made that mistake, while the OP made the mistake of confusing the order in a hastily written comment. Oooh-ahh.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Val314]

> Gift is a word that is originally derived from the ancient German word geban - which, incidently, is a verb.

The funny thing about "gift" is, that there is a german word "Gift" that means poison... strange how one word can have so different meanings in two languages.
</OT>

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[skywire]

You demonstrate some knowledge of the usage of the words give and gift, but your argument that the etymology of the word shows the parent to be incorrect is invalid. You would have us believe that "gift" (by itself, as distinct from "give") was originally a verb derived from "geban", and that it "grew to be a noun, but kept its verb meaning as well." I doubt it. But even if true, then it must have lost its "verb meaning" at some point, at least in everyday, nonspecialized usage, as you yourself eventually acknowledge when you say that it has only "recently raised its head" as a synonym for "give" outside of specialized jargon. You rudely ridicule the parent poster by saying that such usage only "seems" to be a new use, and is really only "new" to him. But you have no knowledge of whether or not he is aware of the specialized use of "gift" as a verb. He was only criticizing an instance of its recent appearance as a synonym for "give". Your use of etymology to argue for the validity of such use is an example of the "etymological fallacy" (which a Google search will explain).

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[Anonymous Coward]

pwn3d!!! now that's Gibberish... from counterstrike.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[SurgeonGeneral]

Hmm, I guess no one really likes long-winded, half-arsed ramblings.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[mnemonic_]

"But if you gift them the past..."

As Calvin said

[hgavin]

Verbing weirds language

Re: As Calvin said

[KURAAKU Deibiddo]

But what does Hobbes have to say about it? This is an Apple thread, shouldn't we want the Tiger's perspective? ;)

All joking aside, it's nice to see Apple contribute to the community.

Re:As Calvin said

[Gulthek]

Verbing _words_ weirds language.

Apple has done this before

[sagefire.org]

Apple has supported GIMP-print this way for a while now. Granted, they weren't giving them laptops. But, people working on GIMP-print got iMacs and were given special discounts on buying other macs for personal use.

It's a great model. Hopefully, they will continue to do it for years to come.

Re:Apple has done this before

[Elektroschock]

I would rather call it manipulation of lead developers. Apple spents very little money and uses top developers as a advertisement plattform.

Re:Apple has done this before

[Midnight Thunder]

I would rather call it manipulation of lead developers. Apple spents very little money and uses top developers as a advertisement plattform.

It is certainly one way of looking at things. At the same time, at least these are things that the developers can actually make use of and sell for money if they want to. It certainly beats a T-Shirt saying 'I code for the pleasure of it'. Heck it was Microsoft it would be a copy of MS-Visual Studio or something. In the end, it is better than nothing. If you would prefer nothing in their position, then just say 'no-thank you'.

You missed one camp.

[douglips]

3) People who realized it was easier to sabotage the other people than to do a good job themselves.

Re:You missed one camp.

[ksheff]

and 4) the ones who worked their asses off picking up the slack for the whiners in group 1.

Re:You missed one camp.

[SetupWeasel]

Honestly, group 1 had to clean up the messes of group 2. Customers were lied to, ignored, and sometimes abused. Those with a heart had to right what was wrong.

Not quite the same

[necro2607]

Well, it's not quite the same thing. These developers were rewards *after* doing a lot of work. They did the work without any knowledge of any potential "reward". That's what makes this situation a little different. :)

Intel books...

[skingers6894]

This is cool and it puts Intel Macs into the hands of people who contribute. Maybe Apple understands that OSS contributors can't necessarily upgrade to the latest. This makes sure that the top dozen contributors to Safari get "Intellized". Smart AND nice.

Re:Intel books...

[JoeCommodore]

Yep that's what I see, I read an article that the intel Mac adoption isn't going as fast has hoped, by seeding the cream of the OSS development community with some free Mac Book Pros and admission to the Developers conference, they are probably hoping for some returns on thier investment with some intel-mac projects springing up.

Job?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like donating your time isn't a thankless job anymore.

You know - there is a fine line between receiving gifts from your mate and being a whore.

Re:Job?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion the difference is:
    Would you do it anyway?

This applies perfectly in this case also.

Re:Job?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you do it anyway?

Yes, It's a perfect way to kiss Steve Jobs butt.

Re:Job?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Uh, no, there's not a fine line at all. A whore is doing things solely for the reward. A mate is there whether they receive the gifts or not, because they want to be.

Ugh, I bit the troll, sorry. I just can't let dumbass comments go.

A nice, unnecessary PR gesture

[Burz]

So who else thinks that Apple is about to do something really uncool in the eyes of the FOSS community?

Re:hello i am a potato

[gnujoshua]

You should be moddedup higher. Give it up for the Potato!

MOD TEH EURO FAGORT DOWN PLZ KTHX

[Anonymous Coward]

You should pick up a dictionary

[sczimme]

Gift is a f*cking NOUN

It is also a verb: go read this. Of course you won't do that, so here is an excerpt:

gift Audio pronunciation of "gift" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (gft) n.

1. Something that is bestowed voluntarily and without compensation.
2. The act, right, or power of giving.
3. A talent, endowment, aptitude, or inclination.

tr.v. gifted, gifting, gifts

1. To present something as a gift to.
2. To endow with.

Go with the flow

[secretsockpuppet]

'Nice' was once a BAD word. A few hundred years ago, It meant 'stupid'.

Then it segued through some related meanings like 'picky', 'fastidious' etc

Until it began to mean 'GOOD'

Now it's been so overused that it's beginning to be used ironically, with a meaning like revoltingly sweet or cutesy, i.e. BAD...

plus ca change...

KHTML

[Doros]

So, uh, how many of the KHTML devs got MacBooks?

Re:KHTML

[Phroggy]

That depends... how many of them are currently active contributors to WebKit?

Re:Something To eBay

[v1]

2) Apple doesn't ever talk about battery life for a reaon...

I thought they said at the keynote that battery life was doubled for the macbooks ?

Nice move Apple

[HangingChad]

Nicely done. Like the styling of their hardware, it was classy. I think one lesson that every tech company should learn from Apple is that style is important. Even in development I've noticed an application can look great but not be that terrific from a technical perspective and still be received better than a technically gifted app with plain looks.

Re:Nice move Apple

[wes33]

Say, I think you may be onto something:

Even in ... I've noticed an ... can look great but not be that terrific from a ... perspective and still be received better than a ... with plain looks.

Apple GIFTS...???

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple Gifts Top WebKit Contributors with MacBooks

Verbing weirds language.

Re:Apple GIFTS...???

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Verbing weirds language.

Actually, gift is also a verb and has been one longer than it has been a noun. I find it very strange the number of people who made this same comment. I mean, who bothers to comment on a minor grammar issue, especially one where you don't even bother to make sure you are correct? Just because someone uses a word in a way you don't recall having seen it does not mean it is proper to assume they are incorrect in their usage. You are obviously in front of a computer. How hard is it too look up something in the dictionary if you think it is wrong? For me it is three clicks and much faster than posting a comment on Slashdot.

Re:Apple GIFTS...???

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I didn't say I was correct, or that it was wrong. Read the initial post again.

OK, I did. I still don't get what you are trying to say. You made up a new word, "verbing" which you then applied along with "weirds" (a not quite proper, but accepted, informal verb. I assumed your definition of "verbing" was to make something into a verb, in which context your statement implied that "gift" was not a verb. If you intended something else, explain it to me.

Re:Apple GIFTS...???

[dustmite]

GP is trying to 'get off on a technicality', clearly.

I must say I didn't believe you until I looked it up myself - indeed, "gift" is a verb. But I am a mother-tongue speaker, and a well-educated one at that, with a well above average grasp of English, and I do not recall ever actually hearing (or reading) anyone use "gifts" in this way. If it ever was common, it isn't now. It 'sounds wrong' to me. But I have to accept what the dictionary says :)

Re:Apple GIFTS...???

[Cadallin]

eh? Your post still doesn't make sense, because "gift" was "nouned" into the form we recognize it today. There was a transition in which people began to speak of "giving gifts" rather than "gifting *object*". The infinitive "to gift" is quite old and has a very specific meaning. To say, "He gifted $XXX to the YZ foundation." is quite valid english and has been for centuries!

Re:Apple GIFTS...???

[CameronGary]

My objection isn't over whether gift is a verb or a noun. It's over the clunky clumsiness of 'gifts X with Y' Why not just say 'Apple gives MacBooks to developers' ? I think that is much clearer and simpler.

Re:Apple GIFTS...???

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

My objection isn't over whether gift is a verb or a noun. It's over the clunky clumsiness of 'gifts X with Y' Why not just say 'Apple gives MacBooks to developers' ? I think that is much clearer and simpler.

So you're arguing that "Apple gives MacBooks to developers" is clearer than "Apple gifts developers with MacBooks?" Both are five words and neither phrase is more simple than the other. The one you dislike, however, makes it clear that the MacBooks are gifts, whereas your suggestion only makes it clear that they were given; whether as payment, part of a contract, or during a robbery is left to the reader to infer. I'm afraid I think you are wrong. The wording used, while less common these days, is actually a more precise way of speaking.

I must read very different materials than many of Slashdot's readers, since I do come across 'gift' as a verb upon occasion. In any case, I don't see any support for your claim that 'give' is clearer or simpler than 'gift.' Maybe instead of complaining when someone used a more precise and correct bit of proper English you should instead think about adopting it.

Re:Apple GIFTS...???

[Anonymous Coward]

Using "gift" as a verb doesn't sound the least bit weird to you?

Re:Apple GIFTS...???

[Anonymous Coward]

So the use of "gift" as a verb doesn't sound the least bit weird to you?

Re:Apple GIFTS...???

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

So the use of "gift" as a verb doesn't sound the least bit weird to you?

Actually, no not at all. I do run across 'gift' as a verb upon occasion in my reading. I can understand others might not (I read a lot), but that is not really all that important here. Just because particular word meaning is uncommon or unfamiliar does not mean you should assume it is incorrect and should not be used. That logic would result in our vocabularies shrinking more and more and the English language becoming a less expressive version that caters to the least common denominator.

Re:Apple GIFTS...???

[Anonymous Coward]

Read my second post, I didn't say it was wrong or incorrect, I said sounds weird. It sounds very weird.

"At Christmas I gift Christmas gifts to my family and friends."

"Diamonds - the gift that keeps on gifting."

"Please gift to the United Way."

"Roland Gift was a gifted singer, gifting us two hit singles with the Fine Young Cannibals in the late 1980s."

Re:Apple GIFTS...???

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You've listed four examples of why you think it sounds weird. Three of them, use both the noun and verb version of the same word. This is sort of like saying "I walk the walk" or maybe "the boxer fights a fight tomorrow." Both of these are very common examples of words that are both nouns and verbs and they also sound weird when you pair them in the same sentence. It is one of the things most speakers and writers avoid to prevent confusion and because when you use either the verb or noun form, the other is often implied. Obviously a fighter is going to fight and a gift will be gifted. The other example, "Please gift to the United Way" is a less than proper usage. It would more commonly be written, "Please gift the United Way..." It is not a synonym for 'give.'

And no, that does not sound weird to me at all. The word is usually used in more formal and cultured instances, much like other words that are not common parlance. The use for a charity is very appropriate. I've seen it used as, "Mr. Smith gifted his daughter with a significant stipend" and suchlike regularly.

Re:Apple GIFTS...???

[Anonymous Coward]

not common parlance = weird.

Re:Don't Work for 'Free'

[Anonymous Coward]

slashdot is amazing at times. These people didn't get ordered by apple, they work on this or any opensource project for their own reasons. Most of the opensource developers get paid for their work or see it as a way of giving back. The fact that a extra user (in this case apple) wants to give them a bonus for a job well done is nice and also smart (since changes are support for their new machines will be better).

If they see this as 'pay from apple' then they should not have been doing it in the first place they should have applied for a job at apple instead of their current job.

Daniel.

PS: I am a fulltime opensource developer and people pay me (we need to eat too), if someone wants to give me stuff for free as a extra thank you please do.

Re:Something To eBay

[wtmcgee]

No, steve jobs himself said that battery life would be "about the same" - which is actually pretty impressive considering the computer is much faster and has dual cores now.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10853916/site/newsweek /page/2/

Contributing has it's upsides

[Anonymous Coward]

This does not strike me as the least ovbious, working for a large, dominant and very well known software company contributing to open source, we regularaly invite, pay for, and accomodate our community developers at our annual conferences. As you all know, companies are mostly concerned about their share holders, share holders are mostly concernied with how much money the company is making, and that money comes from the consumers in the same community we so generously sponsor. So this is all really just an exercise in PR, but a damn good exercise I might add.

Every person we invite is well regarded contributor, he/she already has the fortitude and passion to help our company, and all we do in return is pay a couple of grand for hotel and flights, and bingo, we have someone who will be a life long devotee to oue cause.

It may seem a tad evil, but heck, if you didn't wake up yesterday, that's how the world goes around!

Uh, it never was.

[toby]

Looks like donating your time isn't a thankless job anymore.

How do you think we got this far, if it ever were? This verges on the 'you can't trust programmers who aren't paid' FUD.

One good deed deserves another... Bravo.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Nice to see the civility.

Now can we get back to hating each other? GOSH.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah. (OT)

[buysse]

ITYM "Don't try to confuse me with the facts." (Phil Hartman's character on NewsRadio, a crappy US sitcom that died with Phil).

Verbs and Nouns

[AlpineR]

And we all know that no English noun ever had a verb form before the corporate drones infected the language.

• A flock of birds : birds of a feather flock together
• Get some exercise : exercise at the gym
• Go to the bank : you can bank on it
• Wash your clothes : lose your socks in the wash
• A patent : patent a better mousetrap
• Come to a stop : stop the car
• Bees wax : wax the floor
• This thing called love : I love New York

And if I read "Mod me down for this, but..." one more time, I'm going to scream. Or, if I have mod points, mod you down.

AlpineR

Re:Something To eBay

[abenassi]

I thought they said at the keynote that battery life was doubled for the macbooks ? Umm, no, they did not announce battery life at all. They announced performance increases, not battery life. BTW modded "informative"?

Not bad, especially

[slapout]

considering that they aren't available to the public yet.

Was Peter Jackson wrong?

[theurge14]

"And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of men who, above all else, desire powerbooks...err MacBook Pros."

Safari for Windows?

[John_Booty]

Kudos to Apple for this generous move.

This is slightly off-topic, but while Apple's feeling generous with regards to WebKit- do you think they'd consider releasing some form of Safari for Windows?

With OSX's growing popularity, an increasing number of visitors to my websites are using Safari. Unfortunately, there's no way to test on Safari without actually buying an OSX-capable piece of hardware! Now, in *my* case, I actually went out and bought a Mini. :-) But I can tell you from personal and professional experience, a lot of developers and companies don't bother testing on Safari at all. That leads to a sub-optimal web experience for Safari users.

I realize that maintaining a version of Safari for Windows would represent a significant committment of resources. Perhaps Apple could release some kind of testing tool for Windows that, while not being a full-fledged browser, at least incorporates Safari's WebKit rendering technology. It shouldn't be that hard. I suspect that the Windows version of iTunes uses a port of WebKit to render the iTMS although I can't verify that.

(There are some online services that will show you what your pages look like in Safari - but those aren't particularly helpful for testing dynamic, data-driven sites. Better than nothing but far from an ideal solution...)

Re:Safari for Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you develop web sites on Mac, you have no way to test for IE. If you develop web sites on Linux, you can't test in Safari _or_ IE. So what is your point, that your company doesn't have the funds to provide a complete testing environment? It can't afford a Mac Mini or a used G4 ?

Re:Safari for Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

The iTunes Music Store interface is driven entirely by quicktime- not any form of html at all.

Re:Safari for Windows?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

This is slightly off-topic, but while Apple's feeling generous with regards to WebKit- do you think they'd consider releasing some form of Safari for Windows?

I doubt it, for a number of reasons. First, they have already released the core, all that is really required is the GUI bits. Apple does not really have a lot of expertise for building GUIs for Windows so it is not a casual project for them.

Second, who would use it? I mean, sure Web developers might use it for testing and maybe some users would like it and choose it instead of Firefox or Opera. Most of the users would probably be mac users forced onto Windows at work. That means they are probably not really cutting into IE's market share at all. The people willing to download an alternative OS have done so and Safari is unlikely to attract many clueless people away from IE since they have already failed to move to Firefox. The end result is quite simply more fragmentation of the non-IE Windows Web browser market, which may actually be detrimental to the adoption alternative software.

Basically, I don't think it is a wise investment of time and effort for them in the current climate. If IE were to drop significantly in market share, then it might make more sense.

Re:Safari for Windows?

[AnalystX]

Not so quick on the "not any form of html at all." SMIL can and does reside within Quicktime. Although SMIL isn't HTML specifically, it is an HTML-like language.

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime /IQ_InteractiveMovies/quicktimeandsmil/chapter_10_ section_4.html

Re:Safari for Windows?

[lurch_mojoff]

Apple may very well be considering releasing Safari for windows, or any other OS/platform for that matter. One of the main goals of the webkit/webcore team right now is to move all of the code responsible for rendering a page to webcore (the C++ part of the browser framework). This goal is best described on the page of the subproject:

Ultimately we would like WebKit to be nothing more than the embedding APIs for a given platform and infrastructure/glue code that is needed to tie into a specific platform. All of the remaining logic should move to WebCore.

And if you check the changelog of one of the recent nightly builds you'll see that a lot of work in that direction has been done. Once this goal is achieved ports like the GTK+ port will be much easier to make and will come out early alfa stage.
 
In short, it is not clear whether Apple are interested in going headlong against IE or Firefox for Windows, but even if they don't intend to make such ports themselves, they are definitely making it easier for developers who are interested in doing so to port the webkit/webcore framework to whichever OS they fancy.

Re:Safari for Windows?

[John_Booty]

Apple does not really have a lot of expertise for building GUIs for Windows so it is not a casual project for them.

Your other points are well-taken, but I'm not sure about this one. They've been building the Quicktime player for Windows for years, and iTunes is a large Windows application. Also, there are a lot of Windows programmers out there. I don't think that a lack of programmers would be an obstacle for Apple.

I agree with the other things you said, but I wasn't really thinking in terms of Apple entering the Windows browser market with Safari in order to compete with IE/Firefox/Opera. I was thinking that perhaps Apple might release some kind of testing tool... like a super bare-bones, for-developers-only browser using Safari's rendering engine. It could be available only with a free registration to the Apple Developer Connection and not be "pimped" on their consumer-oriented pages like iTunes/Win.

That should be achievable with a minimum of resources on Apples' behalf, and I could only see it as being beneficial to Apple in terms of making sure that Safari "just works" with all the websites out there from their consumers' perspective.

Re:Safari for Windows?

[Phroggy]

I suspect that the Windows version of iTunes uses a port of WebKit to render the iTMS although I can't verify that.

You suspect incorrectly. The Mac version of iTunes doesn't use WebKit either. The iTunes Music Store does use HTTP, but it does not use HTML. This might interest you; that's linked from here.

Re:Safari for Windows?

[John_Booty]

That's very interesting. I poked around just enough to see that iTMS was using HTTP, but made the incorrect assumption that it was using HTML over HTTP. Wish I could mod you Informative for that.

Re:Safari for Windows?

[marmoset]

There has already been talk on the Webkit devel list about a Windows port. If you poke around the SVN repository, you'll even see a few checkins.

Now Webkit isn't Safari, but if your goal is to be able to develop web pages on Windows that Mac users on Safari can use, than it's certainly a good start.

Agreed, if they could only...

[HotButteredHampster]

...ship some MacIntel hardware over to people developing Eclipse and Java Creator Studio, I'd be happy. I thought Java software was supposed to "just run"... Now I've got to explain to my wife why that really expensive iMac downstairs isn't doing what I told her it would be doing.

HBH

Re:Agreed, if they could only...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Java software was supposed to "just run"

You can thank Sun for that little lie.

Re:Agreed, if they could only...

[Acronym]

You need the latest Eclipse milestone (2.2M4 I think) and a recompiled SWT - then it works fine.

Re:Agreed, if they could only...

[Arandir]

Java: "Write once, cross your fingers everywhere."

Re:Something To eBay

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeech.

Talk about a crappy gift:

1) Run 90% of your software at a crawl through emulation
2) Apple doesn't ever talk about battery life for a reaon...
3) The stupidest name for a Mac, ever.
4) Great SPEC numbers, shitty real world performance - ie. par for Intel

Can't resist this one...

1) The rate at which software is being released Universal is astonishing.
http://guide.apple.com/action.lasso?-database=MacO SGuide&-layout=cgi_search&-response=/ussearch/hitl ist_universal.html&-op=bw&binaries=Universal&-maxR ecords=20&-search
2) It was stated at the MacWorld keynote where the MacBook Pros (great name!) were released that battery life would be about the same. Even if you don't believe Apple's wild claim that the MacBook Pros will sport roughly four times the performance of the PowerBook G4, maintaining the same battery life while just *doubling* performance is pretty darn good.
Oh yeah... and http://www.apple.com/batteries/
3) Subjective judgment. I happen to like the name, and I applaud Apple's move to put the word Mac in the names of their hardware. It speaks to their commitment to the platform.
4) Try one. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. I know I was.

Re:Something To eBay

[fearx]

However, in an interview later that day or the next day Steve Jobs explained that the battery life should be in line with current PowerBooks. Newsweek interview

It's Tax Time Again

[mls]

Part of me wonders how the IRS will view this.

This will either fall into the barter rules or sweepstake winnings, either way, the value of the goodies and travel is probably taxable to the developer.

Thanks Apple.

Re:It's Tax Time Again

[Anonymous Coward]

It's definitely taxable.

Re:It's Tax Time Again

[TomMorrisey]

"Apple is evil because they gave someone a large, valuable gift that they're going to have to pay taxes on." Why don't you take five minutes away from your anti-Apple crusade to go string up Alex Trebek... think of ALL THE TAXES people have been forced to pay because of winning on Jeopardy! How ridiculous.

Re:It's Tax Time Again

[mls]

I'll bite on the troll.

I wouldn't say I'm on an anti-Apple crusade, I have plenty of respect for the company, and have owned several of their systems, starting with a 1979 Apple II, and more recently an iMac and a couple iPods.

What I was commenting on was that when given taxable product only, people need to come up with the cash to pay the taxes. Like when Oprah gave all those cars away. Many people had to sell their car to get the cash to pay taxes.

At least on Jeopardy, they give you cash.

What Apple could have done, and what I've seen other companies do when they give goods away, is they could also give a percentage of the value more in cash to the recipient so they have cash on hand to pay to the tax man.

My point, if anything, was that sometimes these gifts of products aren't always well thought out.

Use the Source, Luke

[argent]

do you think they'd consider releasing some form of Safari for Windows?

You have:

* The complete source to Webkit.
* Gtk for Windows.

What else do you need for a Windows port?

Re:Use the Source, Luke

[John_Booty]

I don't quite have the skills or time to undertake a task like that. My skills are centered around database and middle-tier component development and web stuff. Porting a fairly complex GUI application to Windows is not an area I'm versed in and I don't have the weeks/months it would take to get to that point.

I see the "code it yourself" mentality you're getting at and I think it's valid in a lot of situations.

In this case, it's pretty valid to ask/hope for a solution from Apple. In general, the overlap between web developers and people that can port a complex GUI app is rather small. And this move would benefit Apple and its customers.

Re:Use the Source, Luke

[argent]

I don't quite have the skills or time to undertake a task like that.

Sounds like an opportunity for an Open Source Bounty then...

Re:Use the Source, Luke

[John_Booty]

Yes. But let Apple bear the cost of that. I already bought a Mini for testing and other purposes.

Really, this isn't a case of me "scratching an itch". This is an attempt by myself and a lot of of other web developers to make sure that sites work with Apple's web browser.

It's in Apple's best interest to make sure that as many web sites as possible work with the flagship browser that is bundled with their operating system. Apple needs web developers as much as web developers need them (perhaps even moreso) and Apple's the one with billions of dollars.

Only a few percent of my customers use Safari, while close to 100% of Apple's OSX customers use Safari. And they have tens of millions more customers than me, I assure you.

Re:Use the Source, Luke

[argent]

That's fair enough.

I still think the open source path is likely to happen sooner.

Gift as a verb

[QuincyDurant]

Yes, I saw that too, as well as examples from Henry Fielding and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Bums like that.

BrowserCam

[Colol]

BrowserCam has actually evolved beyond its old "here's a screenshot of how your page renders" strategy. You can now, for a fairly reasonable fee (especially if you go the group buy approach), access their systems live via VNC.

Granted, you'll have to deal with the latency of VNC over the Internet, but it is a solution for people who need more interactivity than old-school BrowserCam but don't want to purchase and maintain another system themselves.

Re:BrowserCam

[John_Booty]

Wow, excellent! Thanks for the tip. You're right; they have really evolved. The VNC approach is excellent and just what is needed... it was a screencap-only service when I last checked. Pricing is a bit expensive but pretty reasonable if you can split the cost with a group, as you suggested.

It would still be nice if Apple could release something to help users test WebKit/Safari on Windows directly, as a lot of developers won't be able or willing to subscribe to a service like BrowserCam.

But until then BrowserCam sounds like just what the doctor ordered. (Now I sound like I'm astroturfing for them. I've been on Slashdot since 1997 or so, I swear...)

Job offer... (Anonymous to protect the innocent)

[spicyjeff]

I was invited to WWDC on Apple's dime a few times and they do this with student's every year to some extent. It's Apple's way of getting to know you better as you will also meet with engineers and others at events and invited lunches etc. This is Apple's interviewing tactic... you never even know you are being interviewed, until they offer you a job.

Not the First Time for Apple

[cshotton]

Apple has been rewarding the open source and shareware community for a long time. In September of 1994, I was one of the recipients of Apple's first "Cool Tools" award. They identified all of the open source, public domain, and shareware authors that were making the Mac one of the best Internet-capable computers of the time. Here's a link to an old TidBITS article about the award. All the winners got PowerMac 7100s which helped get most of the Cool Tools ported to PowerPC. Maybe a bit self-serving of Apple, but they were setting the standard for recognizing good work in their third party developer community over 12 years ago. And I got MacHTTP ported to PPC in about 2 days because of it!

Re:Not the First Time for Apple

[topham]

Sure it's self serving, if you consider that Apple wants applicatiopns to be available for their platform.

I'm using an iMac Core Duo that they 'gave' me. I don't remember a big dicsussion on Slahdot about the fact everyone who licensed the Intel developer kit machines was given the opportunity to swap it for an imac Core Duo.

Swap being an interesting word since, a) they are supposed to get the devkits back anyway as per the agreement, just not yet. and b) so far they haven't actually provided any instructions on where the devkits are supposed to be sent. (and they acknowledge as much in the agreements).

I licensed a devkit with the intent to get a particular application off the ground, but I didn't find the time, I also hoped Apple would take some stepss to payback to the people who licensed the machines. Perhaps steep discount on future purchase, etc. While I wasn't precisly right as to what they would do, a free iMac wasn't quite what I was expecting. :)

Apple distributing the iMac Core Duos to developers is a good move because it will increase the likelyhood that software will effectively support the dual-core machine, since it seems that all the machines are likely to be dual-core or dual processor in the future.

If you keep the developers happy you will have applications for your platform, in which case, your users should be happy.

And F*uck Is A Verb...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>Gift is a fucking NOUN.

Fuck is a verb, and here you are using it as an ADJECTIVE. And besides which, how could the noun "noun" fuck anything except maybe the odd adverb. We need to take a page from the French and get some well-armed language police in here to kick ass and hand out some jail time.

Re:And F*uck Is A Verb...

[necro2607]

Guess you haven't heard "the word 'fuck'" - http://shop.store.yahoo.com/laughstore/wordfuck.ht ml hehehe ;)

Re:And F*uck Is A Verb...

[necro2607]

Sorry that link was a piece. Check it, text version here:

http://www.sigg3.net/myself/fuck.html

Re:And F*uck Is A Verb...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

OK, now I have to clean the coffee off my monitor.

German & Greek

[AlpineR]

It wasn't until your skillful use of bold that I realized the offending poster wrote "English comes from German through Greek". That was such an anachronism that I had to reread it three times before my brain would accept that he didn't write "English comes from Greek through German".

Maybe the poster just wrote that absent-mindedly. Is there any more merit to the statement than German is derived significantly from Greek?

AlpineR

Re:German & Greek

[zerocool^]

Yeah, that's what I meant.

Most of English is German, and a lot of the German is from Greek.

Re:German & Greek

[jerald_hams]

Gods, this thread is painful to read.

Old English was a germanic language, derived from the theoretical Proto-Germanic (not German, which is a modern language). Proto-Germanic itself descended from Proto-IndoEuropean. Old English was no more related to Greek than any other Indo-European language (such as Farsi or Sanskrit).

So no, English did not come from German through Greek or any thing like that.

Re:German & Greek

[LeninZhiv]

Well, just to back up what your first corrector was saying in a little less flamey way, you are really, really wrong about that.

1. Most of English is not German. English is a Germanic language (as is German) but this ancestry does not account for most of our vocabulary. I read somewhere that only about 500 words of modern English can actually be traced back to Anglo-Saxon (though they are important words, and Anglo-Saxon had a much bigger influence on English grammar than the other languages we get our vocabulary from.

Analogy: My last name in English, but my blood is only 1/8 English since most of my (female) ancestors came from elsewhere. English is a Germanic language in the same sense.

2. Most of English vocabulary (>50%) is LATIN in origin, and most (but not all) of those words came into the language through FRENCH, which is itself descended from Latin.

3. Not only is German not a descendent of Greek, but neither is French, nor Latin, nor in fact ANY language other than modern Greek. This is what makes your assertion so funny to someone who has studied linguistics, because Greek is a very isolated branch of the Indo-European language family (although Greek culture being the foundation of Western Civilisation, there are many vocabulary words in all Western languages that are Greek borrowings. But no languages other than modern Greek are descended from Ancient Greek.)

An actual true statement is that English is a Germanic language and most of its vocabulary comes from Latin (through Norman French). (Although "most" in the previous sentence must mean in terms of number of words, not number of words weighted by frequency of usage.)

I can understand how someone might mix up German and Germanic (different languages, different eras, the similarity of names notwithstanding) and Latin and Greek (as pillars of our classical tradition), but the end result is spectacularly wrong, on so many levels.

I recommend reading up on linguistic history, it's a fascinating field and teaches you a lot about our world, our history, and our species.

Re:German & Greek

[zerocool^]

I do know somewhat of what I'm talking about. Saying English is German, and German is Greek, was a way to dumb it down so slashdotters could get the gist of it. I have studied this.

For starters, I think the Russians would have something to disagree with you on as far as being a language that's directly descended from Greek. Not only that, the Romanovs had a semi-legitimate claim to the ruling line of Caesar. Ask Constantine 14 Paleologos next time you see him.

My goof comes in how much greek and german interaction there was (Oh, excuse me, I mean "NT Greek" and "Old/High proto-Germanic"). I still maintain that a lot of German didn't come straight out of proto-european; but I don't have the resources to check it. Anyway, there was a lot of intermingling of territories governed by the Byzantines (who spoke greek; incidentally, they called themselves "Romaioi", which is greek for roman, if that blows your pickle). The greeks (byzantines) repeatedly hired the germans to harras people for them; or, alternatively, paid them off.

But, there's less latin than people think in English. A lot of our latin root words are latin-through-greek.

Plus, most medical words are greek, etc.

~W

Re:German & Greek

[LeninZhiv]

Yikes.

As you evidently did not recognise my nick, it is Russian, which I speak fluently and (in addition, since speaking a language doesn't give one the knowledge of its origins) also know that it is descended from Slavonic, a language I also read, which in turn is also NOT descended from Greek (any more than Germanic, Persian, Italic, Sanskrit, or any other branches of our Indo-European tree). I've also spent an absurd number of years studying classics and am quite literate in Latin and Ancient Greek, and am a language geek generally (if I even needed to point that out at this point).

The tsar/caesar connexion is unrelated to linguistics, as are the reasons why Byzantine Greeks called themselves Romans. Just like Finland is often culturally grouped with the Scandinavian countries even though lingistically Swedish is more closely related to Urdu than Finnish. The kings of England claimed the throne of France for centuries too, and yet neither that nor the centuries of Norman rule before that could erase English's Germanic character and turn it into a Romance language.

You are correct that Byzantine civilisation had a lot to do with cementing the cultural influence of Greek, but the Indians were already speaking an Indo-European language for centuries before Alexander showed up there, as were the inhabitants of the European territories of the empire.

You are also correct that a huge amount of the scientific and medical terminology that people often call "Latin roots" are actually Greek roots, but such terms are neologisms anyway.

For fun I (unscientifically and hastily) counted the etymologies up in the last paragraph and got the following numbers (not counting duplicate words, and splitting "terminology" in half!):

Germanic: 14
Latin: 9.5
Greek: 1.5

* Only 'neologism' was fully Greek, ironically. Although the very next paragraph brought out "etymology" and "paragraph", but even so, not that many English words have Greek origins.

I'm sure wikipedia is a great resource to read up on a lot of this stuff, they have an article on "Historical linguistics".

Re:German & Greek

[zerocool^]

Then, I bow to your zen language skills.

I really honestly thought that Russian was derived from Greek, what with the cyrillic characters and the what-not.

I obviously need to learn more. My one semester of NT greek is clearly not doing me well. I swear, though, there were so many vocab words in my greek class that I thought were roots of modern english words.

Re:German & Greek

[skywire]

There are a good number of English words borrowed from Greek, mostly longish words that only educated folks use. But they are a small percentage of English words, and their frequency of use very low. There are also some recognizable cognates. My experience with introductory NT Greek textbooks has led me to think that they deliberately over-represent cognates and loan-words in their vocabulary lists and sample sentences, I suppose to make the student feel more comfortable.

Re:Something To eBay

[gandreas]

No, the battery life is about the same, but since they run twice as fast you get twice as much done...

You must be the 13th contributor...

[joetheappleguy]

"I didn't want a stinkin' MacStinkinBook anyway! Stoopid Apple!"

As long as we all agree...

[Provocateur]

...that the recipients don't regift http://www.kavinay.com/dictionary/regifter.php
 

Re:Something To eBay

[Overly Critical Guy]

Mac bashing, emulation bashing, and Intel bashing! You really got it all packed in there, good sir.

OK, I know there are some apple haters out there..

[DynamoJoe]

Apple can't even say thanks without getting blasted? How cynical is that? 'Boo hoo hoo, apple didn't do x' or 'apple could easily have done this since they're a supermegacorp and those're eeeeevil'.

Jesus. Get over it. If you never get "gifted" in life, maybe the problem is you.

Gifted = well "endowed"?

[necro2607]

3. A talent, endowment, aptitude, or inclination. ...
2. To endow with.

Great! Thus we have "gifted" as a versatile and very useful adjective for pointing out certain qualities in the female gender... e.g. "Hey, she's pretty gifted!" ... "Yes, Sarah is certainly a gifted student." I can just picture the lawsuits. But other than that, definitely a useful new term borne out of the abuse of language! :D

VA Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Still not completely unheard-of.

For example, for my very, very minor contribution to the Linux kernel (which was merely tickling an itch), I found myself making $32,000 on the VA Linux IPO. Same idea, although Apple's giving away something concrete instead of the opportunity to make (or lose, if the IPO stock price had shot the other way) money.

Re:Something To eBay

[kabz]

Bearing in mind that Centrino machines can often kick the ass of Pentium-4's, at vastly less power usage, I'm assuming my MacBook Pro is going to be pretty damn good.

Mac OS X should really fly on these machines, especially considering that the G4 is more of a Pentium III level chip and hasn't increased much in the way of performance for a while, and OS X performance on the G4 is pretty decent.

verb or noun

[illtron]

Look, I don't care if it *can* technically be used as a verb, but "gift" is a fucking noun.

Re:verb or noun

[Anonymous Coward]

No, "gift" is also a verb, and its usage as a verb has existed since before it was used as a noun. At least read the other threads here before you make yourself look like a fool.

Re:Job offer... (Anonymous to protect the innocent

[bill_mcgonigle]

That's a good idea. What did you mean by Anonymous?

Apple's done a good thing to be sure, but it's worth noting that the $25 movie I just sent to Tobi Oetiker to thank him for his work on MRTG must represent more of my operating budget than a dozen MacBooks does to Apple's.

This is not to detract from what they've done but to encourage them to keep going in the right direction!

Beware corporate altruism

[drix]

Looks like donating your time isn't a thankless job anymore.

Yeah, now it pays about $5 an hour.

Re:Job offer... (Anonymous to protect the innocent

[spicyjeff]

Um yeah, I forgot to check the anonymous check box on the original post as I intended. Oops, cat's out of the bag.

Lucky Number 13...

[Sr. Pato]

... Boy, would it suck to be #13 on that list. Hehe.

Re:hello i am a potato

[Anonymous Coward]

hello potato, pleased to meet you. i am a turnip.

Re:Something To eBay

[iKillCellphones]

1) Run 90% of your software at a crawl through emulation

It's not an emulator. Rosetta *translates* code.

Now if only they'd open-source...

[macserv]

...something to which I can comfortably donate my time. Preferably something Objective-C based. We can't all be wizards at algorithms, codecs, and engines; but some of us can really innovate closer to the front end. There's lots in AppKit, Foundation, and other frameworks to which I'd love to contribute.

Re:Something To eBay

[Phroggy]

2) Apple doesn't ever talk about battery life for a reaon...

As others have mentioned, Apple did say the battery life would be "about the same", but nobody's mentioned that the reason they didn't commit to any solid numbers was, they hadn't finished developing the MacBook Pro. They were demoing prototype models, and although they expect the final product to have battery life roughtly comparable to similar the PowerBooks they're replacing, the reason Apple didn't give anything definitive was that Apple didn't know what the battery life would actually end up being. They know what kind of batteries they'll be using, and they know how much power the components are supposed to draw, but since they hadn't built a production model yet, they hadn't tested a production model yet, and all they knew was roughly what the battery life should be, not what it will be.

Indian English and American English

[vistic]

Interestingly, every Indian I have ever met uses this word this way. Such as "That thing was gifted to me".

It is in Merriam-Webster as a verb, I guess it's just not what we would say in American English, normally.

Damn!

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn!

I'd just finished rewriting the entire WebKit in ASSEMBLER. I was supposed to post it to them but it looks like I forgot.

Can I still send it in and get a free puter and a trip to their conference?

What about the others?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, are IBM, Red Hat and every company with an open source strategy now morally obligated to fork over money to the developers of every open source project that they've touched? Is Microsoft now morally obligated to fork over money to everybody who answers a question on the Usenet group comp.os.microsoft-windows.programmer?

In all seriousness, what is your problem about this situation? Is it really better that they not give anybody anything than it is to give some people a gift? Or do profitable companies have a moral obligation to not use open source software without giving money to the contributors?