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Mac OS X Kernel Source Now Closed
littleghoti writes "Macworld is reporting that "Thanks to pirates, or rather the fear of them, the Intel edition of Apple's OS X is now a proprietary operating system."
Mac developers and power users no longer have the freedom to alter, rebuild, and replace the OS X kernel from source code."
So, basically, without the spin.
... we suck.
... didn't want to run OS X anyway :-\
Apple: We can't seem to figure out how to stop people from taking our code and running it on none apple hardware
So, they close it up.
Awesome
Hello? Hi there. I'm 99% of the computer using market. I was just wondering why I should care about this.
/., and that /. is "supposed" to be for that 1% of the computer using market that speaks in lanquage the "norms" can't understand, but seriously would like to know why should I care? Thank you for the explanation.
And to the article sumbitter, I also do not care about your blog or how many "hits" you get so I will not click on your link. While I realize that this is
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
This is speculation and until I hear an official quote from inside the loop, it's just not true. Apple might not be releasing XNU until they figure out EFI licensning issues or until they clean it up enough not to look like it was thrown together in 2 seconds. Who knows!?
But hey, if people want to make a big deal and say "Mac OS X is now closed!" (what does that even mean?), let them.
I agree "Mac OS X is now closed!" is stupid thing to say. OS X was always closed.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Slashdot rails against Palladium nonstop for a matter of years when Microsoft is pushing Palladium as something they want to do. (And in what may just be a coincidence, as long as public pressure is on, Microsoft never actually manages to get Palladium adopted.) Then all of a sudden, Palladium crops up in all these new Macintoshes, but now that it's in fancy white plastic nobody minds, nobody cares, nobody even talks about it. Anyone left who's upset about the idea of the operating system vendor requiring you to use a chip which takes ultimate control of the machine out of the hands of the computer owner, and into the hands of the people who sold it to you? Anyone left who's not willing to support the future abuses of power that the mere presence of TPM in existing machines makes possible? One or two people? Oh, well you weren't going to buy it anyway you pirate.
Now that white plastic is involved, now all of a sudden the implicit spirit of "capitalism is a two-way negotiation, and the consumer is obligated to protect their interests by rejecting actions by producers which go to far" gives way to a new spirit of "TPM? What's that? Well, whatever. I'm sure software companies wouldn't do anything irresponsible. If you don't like it, then you don't have to use.. y'know.. a computer".
(Amusingly, through all of this the pirates aren't complaining about the TPM or the kernel source closing or anything, they're just going ahead and running the unrestricted pirated versions. What do they even have to complain about? They alone get the freedom to use their computers in the way they wish. There's this idea that you don't own your possessions, the people who sold them to you own them and they're just letting you use them as long as you live your life by the rules they demand, and this idea is one that only legal paying customers have to put up with.)
My dual g4 mac I'm posting on here is getting really, really old. I can probably stretch another couple of years of life out of it if I beef up the RAM some. After that I guess my next computer, for the first time since I got my first computer in 1986 or so, will be something other than an Apple. I don't really know or care what it is as long as it isn't running Windows, and doesn't have a TPM in it (or other chip in it that allows software to encrypt part of the computers internals to keep me from looking at it). Linux doesn't have any of the audio programs I need, doesn't have any of the image editing programs I need, can't run any of the Cocoa software I've written for private use, and doesn't have any developer platforms which even approach the elegance, speed of development, and usability of Cocoa in the first place. But the only choices the "free" market gives here are between being a criminal, being a slave, and being a miserable, freezing luddite eating bark in the woods. Option #3 is looking best right now.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
"Meanwhile, those with legitimate uses are locked out. Doesn't really make much sense to me."
It doesn't make sense to you because you're a slash-moron. All legitimate users of MacOS X and of Darwin-x86 get their binary images from Apple to use on their Apple hardware. Just because you don't like the definition of "legitimate" doesn't make you less of a moron.