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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
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?
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.
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."
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
Well, video killed the radio star.
The prediction that Davorak reported on was flat out wrong. Apple won't do that. So what if Vista will boot on a Mac. People don't buy Macs because they don't run Windows, they buy them because they do run OS X. Why would they switch? Your argument is that they will have to move OSes because of hardware support?
What hardware support? Everything I've plugged into my Mac from the last few years has worked just fine. I plug in a USB drive and it works just fine within a few seconds, compared to a Windows XP computer which either asks me to install the generic driver, or generates 5 little pop-up balloons telling me that it found this, that, mounted this, did that, and it is ready to use. Printers? Most printers in the last few years (and most all of the big names, Epson, HP, Canon, etc.) support OS X. CD burners and such? If they are USB they use the generic USB storage drivers. If they are FireWire they use the generic FireWire storage drivers. Same with cameras and camcorders. Mice work without drivers. With everything going USB/FireWire (fewer and fewer reasons to buy expansion cards these days) work. Major manufacturers of other things (Adaptec, for example) sell products for Macs.
I see no hardware driver problem. Mac hardware is supported now, and things will only get better if Apple's market share improves.
As for switching to Windows, that makes very little sense. They would have to rip out the Windows GUI and put in the OS X GUI. That means that they would only be using the NT kernel. Why would they do that? That would put 99% of the computer world in the hands of MS. They would be beholden to MS for updates to add new features, new kinds of hardware, etc that wasn't already supported. The idea of a using a subsystem of POSIX and NextStep to make "OS XI" and run it under Vista or whatever is insane.
Basically, you are saying that Apple will, because they moved over to x86, dump 5 years of having a great OS (this doesn't include NextStep) to make a desktop environment to run on top of Windows (ala MS Bob) because of hardware drivers?
Huh?
Apple won't ditch OS X. Everyone likes OS X. Even Dell said they would sell OS X if Apple wanted to let them (I don't think they should). Moving over to EFI doesn't change things (although I would have liked OF better). They can keep their OS tied to their computers (within reason).
The idea of Apple moving to Windows is idiotic. Sorry, but it is. That would put them in direct competition with Dell and Sony and HP and such. With the margins they are used to, they would be slaughtered out of the market.
I've got $5000 that says Apple will move to quad-Cell processor based iPods before they will port their OS over to Windows (yeah, I know, makes no sense).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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.
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
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.
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.