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Will MacIntel Kill Apple Open Source Efforts?
An anonymous reader writes in to say that "Rob Braun (OpenDarwin core developer claims Apple's open source efforts are now dead, because Apple is afraid of assisting OSx86 piracy. First, Apple withheld the source of cctools required to to build Darwin. Now it seems they are no longer releasing the source to OS X's xnu kernel. "
So they missed a chunk of headers. It's happened before, and been fixed. I see no reason at all for Apple to get out of open sourcing Darwin. They won't include the TPM related kext's, of course, but the rest should be fine.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
I am not so certain that this is true, but if so, so what? The license allows for this. It was certain that apple did OSS while it benefits them, but not when it could hurt them.
I would guess that if they do not support OSS and it ends up hurting them, they will then do a Sun and re-open it. Sun did the same with Solaris X86.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
BSD actually, not Linux.
- AMW
We see these stories all the time, I'm just wondering how often these predictions come true. One thing we know for sure is the iPod has survived many attempts on its life.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
You may now move on to other pumped-up / days-old non-dramas.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I RTFA, and I saw this in the email thread about cctools:
>>>I was amazed to find that the gas sources had been split out of cctools, so they could be provided in accordance with the GPL, but no other part of cctools was made available. So I never did get an answer to my question.
>>I see today a much more populated source tree for x86.
>>Thank you to everyone responsible.
>Indeed, I also would like to pass along my thanks, since I was one of the people to comment on this with my concern before.
Doug Moen
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
Which would fit perfectly in this story.
A minor problem is blown out of all proprortion, and it's the end of open source on OSX-x86?
-- Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?
This is a none story, unless I'm missing something. Some headers were missed off files and some assumptions are getting made from it.
Where is the proof that Apple is changing their policy?
This seems like a story designed to raise OSS hackles rather than anything useful.
Mach actually, with a BSD API and a mish mash of OSS tools.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
wondering what the british naturalist has to do with a kernel?
Darwin is used as the UNIX core of OS X. Darwin iteself is a version of the BSD UNIX operating system that offers advanced networking, services such as the Apache web server, and support for both Macintosh and UNIX file systems. It was originally released in March 1999. Darwin currently runs on PowerPC-based Macintosh computers, and is currently being ported to Intel processor-based computers and compatible systems by the Darwin community.
XNU is the name of the kernel that Apple developed for use in the Mac OS X operating system and released as open source as part of the Darwin operating system. It is a hybrid kernel combining the Mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University with components from the FreeBSD kernel as well as a C++ API for writing drivers called IOKit. XNU is an acronym for X is Not Unix.[1]
1. ^ (2005). Porting UNIX/Linux Applications to Mac OS X: Glossary. Apple Computer. URL accessed on December 13, 2005.
Calling OS X "Linux with a better UI" illustrates a profound ignorance of the OS X operating system, from the frameworks (Cocoa and its related APIs, the best application development framework bar none) to the core technologies like Mach and BSD. Ignoring its top features by dismissing it as a "proprietary system with candy coating" strikes me as counterproductively idealistic. If you feel pressure to switch, then switch! Whatever gets your job done better, and believe me, OS X gets the job done.
Not to mention that it's likely Apple just hasn't put the sources up yet in this situation. It took them a while to post the new Darwin sources, but they got them out. The only proprietary things in OS X are Aqua and related technologies.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Uh, maybe in your twisted niche Slashdot world...for most people, the coolest thing about OS X is its interface and top-notch frameworks. Who gives a damn if the Darwin source is available? Have you ever actually needed or used it?
Slashdot posters have a tendency to think their concerns represent everybody's concerns. Kind of like how we always see "Does it play Ogg?" posted, when nobody actually cares about Ogg.
"Sufferin' succotash."
See this comment. Apple made a quick mistake and fixed it, and the sources ARE available.
Next.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Apple's switch to Intel didn't kill Apple's open source efforts...
People using Apple's open-source efforts to pirate Mac OS X killed Apple's open-source efforts.
"...unnamed executives at Apple admitted that the sourcecode to Xnu had to be pulled after threats from the Church of Scientology."
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Honestly, I don't care too much about the kernel. I would however love to see open standards for NextStep/Cocoa, and then maybe more people would use it. It is really nice, but Jobs can't have his cake and eat it too.
You're a decade late
There's a free-as-in-speech implementation right here
Stick Men
You can't actually buy a copy of OSX for x86, the only versions on the shelves are PPC. So you must either be downloading it illegally or copying it from a MacIntel install disc, and unless you wipe it from your new Mac, you're installing more copies than you have licences for. So all the OSX86 users out there pirated it somehow...
Ok, this one was a false alarm. Tomorrow it won't be. I laughed as much as the next slashdot reader when Dvorak made his silly prediction of Apple on Windows but after thinking about it I think he was probably right.
Think it through folks, there isn't anything in a Macintel that won't be in every Dell this time next year. EFI is the future, we all know BIOS is on the way out and the machines that ship with Vista will most likely be EFI with EPT instead of traditional partition tables. They will also very likely be totally legacy free, USB keyboard/mouse, only SATA drives, etc. In other words, almost identical to the current crop of Apple hardware. We already know Apple hardware will run Vista and it already runs Linux.
If you think Apple is going to have a hard time justifying the premium on their hardware you are right. But the bigger problem is going to be finding a response to customers who begin to dual boot their Macintel to gain access to all of the cheap hardware on the shelves at Walmart or online at Newegg. It is device support that is going to force the issue.
In the end, Apple doesn't care about the underlying OS. Mach was handy, they only need a substrate to run their desktop environment atop. Remember that NextStep was ported to Windows once already and that NT based systems are a small sorta microkernel with one or more subsystems sitting atop it. Win32 and now Vista's stuff are but two which have existed. There was a POSIX one and an OS/2 compatibility one also in the past. Sooner or later Steve will swollow his pride and create a subsystem consisting of a modernized POSIX and NextStep and that will be OS XI. It will also ship with all of the Vista subsystem. That will allow all the device installers to run and gain the ability to run all Windows apps besides. Which also solves the Microsoft Office availibility problem.
Democrat delenda est
Might the Intel transition impact Darwin's open source status a bit? Sure, it might. It will certainly make releases a bit slower as code is reviewed and seriously sensitive bits ( if any ) removed, but I'm not sure I see the reason why Darwin builds shouldn't be able to be done going forward...
Spend a day at a supermarket. Pick 500 random people throughout the day. How many of them will be able to install OSx86 even when it's more refined? 30?
The people who will be installing Mac OS X on PCs will largely be people currently not buying Macs in the first place. Surely a fair percent will choose to go from buying Macs to buying PCs, but are you willing to bet that they'll all stay there? Drivers and official support will be lacking, as well as software updates. I'm willing to guess that a fair amount of the people that try it out will go back fairly quickly because of the experience being all the more cumbersome over time.
I'm not saying your scenario won't happen. It's *possible*. It's just not very *probable*. The rumors of Apple's death have been, are, and will continue to be, greatly exaggerated.
Ah heck, screw the journals bit; Become an analyst. IDG and Gartner expected Linux in 2005 to occupy less than 5% of INTERNET servers (i.e. just servers on the web) and less than 1% of ALL servers. These are analysts that make ~200K or so. Basically, they are paid by the industry lead to print whatever they want to say. Amazing thing is that IDG/Gartner have never been right WRT to competitors and yet everybody listens to them. Back in the late 80's/early 90's, they were talking about how OS 3x0, and AS400 would remain the dominant computers ignoring Unix on the servers and Windows on the desktop.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think that we are blowing Mac "fears" of OSX86 piracy completely out of proportion. I have a sneaking suspicion that Steve and his crew would like nothing more than OS-X86 to be available tomorrow running on hundreds of x86 PCs across the globe. Let's face it, for your average person, the OS is moot. Joe Average User wants "tools" to get work done quickly and in time to get home for little league. He could care less what the OS running things looks like.
(NB: We're assuming that consumer OSs are pretty much limited to Windows and OSx here... granted there are other user friendly OS's but they aren't really hitting the mass market....yet.)
If we consider that OS-X has a comparable suite of tools to get work done as your standard consumer friendly MS OS - then the next barrier to entry becomes cost. It's a version of the all things considered equal: most people can't tell you the difference between two HP laptops running versions of windows, so how do you explain to the guy who's trying to buy a new system at the local best buy or circuit city that these two pieces of hardware do pretty-much the same thing, but you're going to pay a 25% premium because that other one *looks* cooler. Joe Average is likely to judge technology in a simple, superficial way; one of the most superficial methods available is price. If the windows pc lets him get email and surf the "inter-web" *and* costs less welp, then that's the choice to make.
What gets interesting is when someone has made this investment and they aren't happy with windows. Currently, they're stuck. Most people don't have a geek friend that will happily burn them a user friendly distro, or spend the next three weeks teaching them how to build a BSD box. The old scenario for someone wishing to switch from windows to OsX would be something like:
Step 1: "Buy new pc that is two or three times the cost of current cheap windows box."
Step 2: "Pray that you really like OSX"
If OS-X is unlocked and allowed to roam free, then people are now free to try out OS-X with a minimal investment in the software. Don't like it? No problem, go back to windows. Shucks, if Apple was really devious, they would be paying people to create live-cd distros of OS-x86 to hand out to people so that you could have as many people trying out their OS as possible. Remember, for your average user, the benefits of an OS designed with usability in mind are too intangible for them to switch. Windows "works well enough". Joe Average User has to see, touch and feel the improvement for it to be real. The only way to get Joe Average to switch is to provide him a low risk environment where he can experience the user-interaction elation that Mac users are always going on about. Mac could have an army of people using their OS on "unsupported" non mac hardware - a great guerrilla tactics way of increasing market share.
What would have been the advantage of using Linux for the past three years instead of Mac OS X, even under the brutal worst-case regime I described above? I really don't get it.
This is exactly what I am addressing. The people who run Linux fall into roughly two camps. A) The people who hate Windows and saw MacOS as some kind of joke. B) The people who really depend on Linux and its environment of hacker-as-customer-#1 mentality.
There are a lot more of A, and when MacOS stopped sucking, finally, they immediately switched. This movement of type A moving to MacOS while type B stayed still raised a lot of questions: why aren't you moving to Mac? Questions I still get today, years later.
It's exactly the environment around MacOS X that makes it unsuitable for the type Bs. And it makes sense, there's so few of them. As Neal Stephenson said, the day [a software vendor] made a product he wanted to use was the day he shorted their stock, because he is a market of one.
Apple knifing source code releases is a symptom of where their concerns lie. It's not for hackers (which is good, if they want to keep making money), so will everyone please stop pretending it is?
I expect that Apple will put some hard_to_duplicate features in hardware to preserve their market and margin. That's what they have done before.
That could make it nasty to port osx to non-Apple platforms without severely crippling the result.
One good place for this would be a DRM/encryption chip.
I ran OS X for several months on my iBook before switching it over to gentoo. For me, the biggest issues were usability (OS X looks nice but is often very counter-intuitive) and software installation (3rd party OS X packaging systems seemed to think that software belongs in a fake root directory).
Badass Resumes
This very likely shouldn't have an effect unless they make it impossible for anyone but licensed vendors to write software for MacIntel systems which for Apple would be suicide. Without the ability to create software of your own using publicly available dev tools the Mac would become useless in the business arena. Apple would never be able to compete with Windows for corporate contracts.
It would be like Microsoft making it illegal for companies to ship C++ tools for writing Windows software. It would kill them.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Nowhere in any of the links given was "piracy" given.
I would expect the Apple PR to say something like this.
But there is no validity in the statement.
Open source would only perhaps add competition. This does not have anything to do with copy protection.
Limiting open source, and adding DRM as Apple is using it is meant to limit/stop hardware competition/cloning and limit/stop direct OSX competition/cloing.
You can always run photoshop though wine
I'm not going to use wine for anything serious. I use some programs that work fine in it, others seem to work and break every few releases. I also do not like the Windows version of Photoshop as I can't stand Windows-style MDI's. I'll stick with Macs for this until GIMP catches up.
ACPI in the new kernel is fine
I keep trying suspend and software suspend but it never has worked correctly on any machine I've tried it on. Most recently was with OpenSUSE 10.0.
and so is Wireless support
Only if you're lucky enough to find an adapter that has drivers or works under ndiswrapper.
Just as a note, Linux (Fedora) is my primary OS.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
"What would have been the advantage of using Linux for the past three years instead of Mac OS X, even under the brutal worst-case regime I described above? I really don't get it."
That's because you are not accounting for history. I'll skip the details, and bottom line it for everyone: control.
The point behind using Linux (and Free software in general) is because someday, for whatever reason, your favorite proprietary vendor can pull the rug out from under you. Even if Apple is currently the friendliest proprietary company on the face of the planet, it still has the option of saying, "As of this moment, OSX (or whatever version) will no longer run [insert your favorite software], or will no longer support [insert your favorite product]."
Free software guarantees availability regardless of the whims of the developer(s) and/or providers. It is the single most important issue in computing, and is the biggest reason why Mac and Windows are not even options to me. Having been bitten by proprietary control too many times over the years, and having experienced the significant benefits of being in control of my own infrastructure, I won't go back.
I saw this on CNN recently.
Pirates attacked a cruiseliner with machine guns today, killing several people, and demanding that passengers allow them to copy Windows(tm) and OSX(tm) from their laptops. It was tragic story, and should serve as reminder to the rest that DRM and copy protection are nessesary to fight against pirates.
Adding DRM is not about limiting competition and increasing profits. It's about saving lives.
Seriously, why? Darwin is about the last kernel I would choose for real-world usage. I use it on a daily basis, and only put up with it because the GUI layer built on top of it is nice. Get rid of Quartz/Aqua, and you're left with an over-engineered kernel that has delusions of being a microkernel. It has all of the performance problems that first-generation microkernels had and none of the stability advantages. I am used to getting a minimum of a 2x speed increase when I move my (POSIX) code from OS X to a FreeBSD box - and the OS X box I've been using has better hardware.
If Launchd is that important to you, I suggest you finish the port to FreeBSD. Or take a look at Solaris' SMF, which gives similar functionality.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Last July, Apple asked Anton Altaparmakov, lead developer of the Linux-NTFS project, to dual license the Linux-NTFS driver under the APL so that the Intel version of OS X can read/write files on Windows partitions (presumably for dual-boot computers). The problem pointed out by other Linux-NTFS developers is that the APL is not GPL compatible, and any changes made by Apple to the driver will be unusable in Linux. As one person put it:
This would open up a one-way street: towards OS X and away from GNU/Linux and any other OS based on the GPL.
Not to mention the Konqueror / Safari fiasco where Apple complied to the terms of the LGPL by the skin of their teeth, making it impossible for open source developers to port changes upstream.
In November, Apple has again tried to hijack Linux-NTFS code, this time by suggesting that it be licensed under the LGPL. This was promptly rejected by one main developer, who threatened lawsuits.
Mod parent UP! I was there and it was awful.
I had signed up for one of those new geeko-tourism packages. We had spent the last several days attached to a port, so we were excited to be nearing the CVS surrounding the galapagos, where we hoped to catch a glimpse of Darwin, or maybe a GNU.
Unfortunately our ship was soon compromised by these pirates who swooped in via the Cat5 cable. Their Captain, known as Bluetooth, just seemed to float right across to our ship, through the air; it was scary.
Anyway, they must not have known we were a civilian ship, because they kept asking to see the Colonal. I noticed that one of them had a USB key for a hand. They also tore every page out of the ship's log before they left....
Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
Piracy worked to entrench MS-DOS and later Windows, but would work against Apple.
.Mac tools for XP is free (encourages .Mac subscription sales)
Microsoft's business model involves licensing OS software as broadly as possible. That requires creating cheap licensing and allowing piracy to achieve dominant market share, while at the same time building complex licensing rules that monetize their market share control for the customers who can and will pay for it.
So, OEMs get fairly cheap licensing that allows them to sell a range of PCs from bare bones to elaborate gaming machines (with most of the software development covered by Microsoft). Microsoft then sells IT departments the related server licenses and client access licenses (per user licensing) to make their real money.
Apple is not Microsoft, and has never had a similar goal or business model. Neither did NeXT. Both aspired (driven largely by Steve Jobs) to develop and deliver state of the art hardware that ran exceptionally well integrated software. Apple's Macs were so far ahead of anything else available that the company began pricing its hardware at a significant premium, which resulted in turing the Mac platform into a hi-end brand through the 80s & 90s. NeXT, in agreements with Apple, entered the high end workstation market exclusively.
When Apple and NeXT merged, their combined control of markets wasn't spectacular: it was in the area of ~5% or less of all PCs shipped. The company targeted consumer sales, worked to regain strongholds in education, and has since delivered server products. They continue to make their money from hardware, not software licensing. In fact, the Xserve sales talk makes a big deal about how much cheaper they are when compared to Microsoft's client access style licensing.
The way Apple licenses its software should serve as a wake up call to anyone who still thinks that the company would secretly welcome piracy as an attempt to bump up its market share.
Apple already freely licenses Windows software that it believes would somehow benefit the company:
- Bonjour for Windows is free (establishes Bonjour as an industry standard)
-
- iTunes for Windows is free (iPod sales)
- QuickTime for Windows is free (establishes QT as a standard)
So if Apple thought that Mac OS X for PCs would be a clever ploy, they could throw it out there. They do know how to distribute software, are not averse to developing free tools, and understand how to create maintain platforms.
Mac OS X however, is built to sell Apple's hardware. The combination of X + Mac hardware results in a package experience that is carefully controlled and easier to maintain.
Microsoft spends a lot of its development efforts in supporting a huge array of hardware and maintaining support for decades of legacy. Apple can simply drop old cruft, release new hardware and offer immediate support for it with a new patch of OS X.
Apple built another platform along the same lines with the iPod + iTunes + FairPlay iTMS. They work well as a package. Apple isn't licensing FairPlay for the same reason: you'd end up with a splintered experience of fake competition (everybody licenses the same songs for the same price anyway from the same music cartel), and Apple would suddenly lose control of a system they now own. So the next time the iTMS gets hacked, Apple wouldn't be able to release a patch that solves their problems, but they'd have to work with all these other stores/players/devices who were also selling FairPlay systems and figure out how to patch them all.
Look at Apple's 1995 attempt at licensing: there was no benefit for Apple. No innovation really, just nimble companies that could obtain small batches of faster chips and sell off Apple's reference designs with the fastest of PPC processors available. Apple owes its shareholders those profits, and they owe their paying customers new developments and innovation.
By copying Microsoft's business model, they
This is where I part ways with a lot of open source folks. What exactly does it HURT to let Apple use this code? The code is for reading/writing NTFS, a specification which isn't officially available anyway and Apple has no control over. There is no risk of "embrace and extend" here. So what's the motivation for denying them?
Who cares whether Apple gives you back their changes or not? Could they actually make a significant improvement to Linux-NTFS? Are the Linux-NTFS developers admitting that Apple can do things that they themselves are too dumb to figure out? And anyway, why would a developer in Apple's position start making wanton changes to the code when they already know that it works? That's the whole point of using it (instead of writing from scratch) in the first place.
I'm not saying this as an Apple fan-boy, this is a free software issue. How can software truly be free (as in speech) when you place these sorts of restrictions on people who want to use it? Make whatever philosophical and ethical arguments you wish -- it's just wankery. Ultimately it boils down to pure selfishness. You don't want anybody to play your game unless they play by your rules. And this is said by those who purportedly oppose software patents and intellectual property.
Feh. Long live the BSD license.
Note that since that fiasco they have complied with almost every term requested by the Konqueror developers, setting up a cvs visible external to apple and working with the KDE developers to get them security clearance to see the apple proprietary stuff.
Just because they were slow in doing it because they were busy getting a project to market doesn't make them evil, since they did make a significant turnaround in this space. if you're going to criticise them (rightly) for following the bare minimum initially, you can at least mention that they have improved significantly since then.
I'm not saying this as an Apple fan-boy, this is a free software issue. How can software truly be free (as in speech) when you place these sorts of restrictions on people who want to use it?
Speech can be limited and still be free. Insert usual lines about yelling fire, etc.
If your goal is to ensure that everyone has access to the code (and its descendents) that you write, then the APL/BSD license is bad. Many people working on GPLed software believe in that. Otherwise you're just doing work for a commercial enterprise for free.
If your goal is to try to get as many people to use your code as possible, the BSD license is fine. If your goal is that every person in the world has the option to benefit from the code that you write, it's not. There's a place for both licenses.
Apple (from limited reading of the posts) brought nothing to the table but wanted a leg up from Linux. Unless your only goal in life is to have your code used by whoever, there's no benefit to helping Apple in this case. And Apple wasn't overly helpful to getting read/write access to HFS+ access in Linux.
"I was there and it was awful."
I'm glad to hear you made it out alive. But CNN report was missing a lot of detail. Did the ship's Kernel get GNUend down in the Raid 5 attack? Did the pirates steal anything else like a Perl, Ruby, token or Cache from the passengers?
And did anybody get the name of the pirate ship that must have just zipped out of iSight without a traceroute. The whole incident seems awful suspicious to me. These guys must have had a man-in-the-middle to hijack that ship so easily.
Ubuntu.
[Sorry, I'm just perpetuating the problem on slashdot that every *nix discussion has at least one stray Ubuntu reference!]
Who cares whether Apple gives you back their changes or not?
Obviously the Linux-NTFS people do.
Are the Linux-NTFS developers admitting that Apple can do things that they themselves are too dumb to figure out?
No.
How can software truly be free (as in speech) when you place these sorts of restrictions on people who want to use it?
The restrictions are there to ensure freedom. You might as well as the question, "how can a nation be 'free' if it has laws which put restrictions on its citizenry?"
Make whatever philosophical and ethical arguments you wish -- it's just wankery.
There are three problems with that. First, you just made a specific philosophical argument (re: freedom of speech). Second, your whole post is a governed by philosophy. Third, the whole basis behind GNU and the GPL is philosophical. You might as well tell a mathematician that their solution to the Monty Hall problem is rubbish, because it's not obvious to you, and that any mathematical arguments are "just wankery".
Ultimately it boils down to pure selfishness.
You're confusing selfishness and will. Placing software under the GPL a matter of will (such as stating, "I want this software to have these four freedoms, and to be compatible with other GPL software"), but it's not "selfish".
Feh. Long live the BSD license.
BSD and GPL have two very different, although similar, goals. The BSD license is best if you most want for your code to be used, in absolutely any way whatsoever. The GPL is best for ensuring your code remains free. Which you prefer is a very philosophical, and personal, choice, but neither is "selfish".
You don't want anybody to play your game unless they play by your rules.
That's the way life works, nobody is begging Apple to use GPL'd code. GPL'd code costs, it has obligations in the license; apple is not a special case. If apple don't want to play the GPL game then fine, the GPL isn't the only game in town; they can take thier ball and find an other court to play on.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I suppose you think the Red Cross, Salvation Army, etc. (name your favorite charitable organization) consist of a bunch greedy wankers because they only give to the "needy". After all, if they were truly charitable, they wouldn't put restrictions on their giving. They would give equally to those worth millions.
I feel sorry for you. Someday you might grow to actually understand the subject about which you've been spouting off here. And then you'll have to deal with the knowledge that you have these public comments, eternally archived to your embarrassment.
Open Source: I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
You don't want to aid anybody else around you unless they give you something in return.
No, GPL types don't want to aid them unless they're willing to give everyone something in return.
And for the record, there's nothing wrong with quid pro quo. Would you drop by my place and wash my car for me? Or hang out at Apple HQ and scrub the bathrooms for free?
Who cares whether Apple gives you back their changes or not? Could they actually make a significant improvement to Linux-NTFS?
Yeah, why not? Its not like Apple hasn't been able to make significant improvements in many areas of computing. Better error codes, better integration with languages other than C, better cross CPU support. Apple has done some unique stuff with filesystems that are virtualized on top of another very different filesystem, which is where you want to go with NTFS/LInux integration. I can think of lots of things it might offer them.
Are the Linux-NTFS developers admitting that Apple can do things that they themselves are too dumb to figure out?
I can't see why they wouldn't admit this. Apple has access to some of the best developers in the world. They can hire the very people who wrote NTFS.
I'm not saying this as an Apple fan-boy, this is a free software issue. How can software truly be free (as in speech) when you place these sorts of restrictions on people who want to use it? Make whatever philosophical and ethical arguments you wish -- it's just wankery. Ultimately it boils down to pure selfishness. You don't want anybody to play your game unless they play by your rules
Damn straight. Its called building an open source community. One of the main goals is to make it hard for people to write non open source software. The pain that apple is experiencing is deliberate. This is exactly why Microsoft is worried about academia using the GPL, because lots of commercial software starts as government / academic software. 15-20 years from now many apps might cost 3x as much to develop if they want to avoid being GPL licensed.
How can software truly be free (as in speech) when you place these sorts of restrictions on people who want to use it?
The GPL creates freedom for users of software by putting restrictions on developers. The BSD license destroys freedoms for users because it wants to empower second generation developers. Very different purpose.
pciminon said: ... So what's the motivation for denying them? Who cares whether Apple gives you back their changes or not?
What exactly does it HURT to let Apple use this code?
What [who] does it hurt? Anyone who contributed code to the Linux-NTFS drivers under GPL, thinking that their contributions would only be licensed for use by those who agree to reciprocate and give back additions.
Having the code relicensed would violate the project's contributors' expectations and would be "stealing" contributor's code for use in a close-source, commercial product for some [monetary] "benefit" to Apple and its licensees.
Besides theft of the original contributors work, piecemeal "disposal" of "GPL-assets" harms the entire "GPL community" via:
diminished martketshare and demand for GPL licensed products; and
(if changes are not returned) lost opportunity in a reduced, GPL-licensed codebase.
Disposition of all GPL contributors' rights should not be considered casually if at all. There is tangible harm that is likely in proportion to the amount of code (or work) you have donated to the GPL-licensed codebase.
People who have not contributed to the GPL-licensed codebase or have little investment in it would be less likely to feel upset or annoyed about such losses.
-l
Rethink your argument. RedHat makes the majority of its money from *support*.
I don't give a damn if people need training, or need hand-holding while they work on it, or if they're prepared to subcontract installation of software. They're making money in a market which has been *enabled* by the existence of this software, which is fine. However, they're not making a profit by directly selling software written by me as "their product". You don't find Ford complaining about the existence driving schools...
Grab.
The missing packages include a lot of support libraries for old hardware which are useless on the new platform.
Can you create a list of missing libraries that are useful and/or needed on x86 Macs?
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."