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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."
This is fantastic news! It means:
1) Whiney OS X Fanboys are no longer going to say "OS X is just as open as linux" (what a stupid argument that was anyway.
2) Whiney Anti-GPL Fanboys are no longer going to point at Darwin saying "see, Apple contributes back without being forced too - why does linux have to be GPLed?"
Me? I'm just going to wait and see how much the discussion changes from the rumour that Darwin was going to close source (see this guy for a typical example.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
It was only a matter of time before Apple got pissed. If you didn't see this coming, it's time for new glasses.
Plant a tree in a developing country.
*Extremely* old news.
Also, "Mac OS X" has ALWAYS been proprietary. It's sensationalistic and shoddy journalism to say that "Mac OS X is now closed". Mac OS X has ALWAYS been closed. It's Darwin that has been open. And "Darwin" is more than a bootable OS: Darwin is Apple's open source strategy AND an OS; but the usefulness has always come from the open source components of the OS, not the usefulness of Darwin as an OS itself. Darwin's usefulness as an OS is, shall we say, "limited" at best, and always has been.
This has been beaten to death on the darwin-dev list, and there is no new information. Apple has taken no new recent action whatsoever, and in fact, the most recent action is that it has opened up more source code in the x86 tree, not less. Indeed, all of the traditional Darwin source with the notable exception of the kernel itself:
The thing that's not open in the x86 tree is xnu (the kernel), and it's not possible to create a fully bootable binary x86 Darwin OS, as it is for PPC. In the Darwin/OpenDarwin community, this has been discussed for months.
In fact, this article by Rob Braun (formerly of Apple, and a member of the OpenDarwin core team) was published in February 2006: http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200602/apple.html. This was then covered on slashdot, to which Rob issued this response: http://www.opendarwin.org/~bbraun/slashdot_respons e.html. These two discussions cover the issues very well.
I predict, however, that this Macworld UK article will be seen as "new news", and will be picked up by the tech outlets, and trumpeted, exactly as the headline hopes, as "Apple closes down OS X", even though the source for pretty much everything (except the kernel and drivers) is still available. In other words, everything that a normal person needs Darwin sources for is available. In 5 years, I can think of ONE instance where I looked to the kernel source for confirmation of something, and that was only for *confirmation*, and only because it was convenient - not because I needed to rebuild the kernel. I know of no other non-developer/programmer Mac OS X adminisrators/system engineers/enterprise users who have ever had any reason to rebuild the kernel or any drivers.
If the kernel and driver source were available, it would, however, be used for one purpose: to churn out hacks to get OS X to run on non-Apple hardware in a much faster and higher-quality way than has been possible to date. Will OS X be hacked anyway to run on non-Apple hardware, and will it continue to be, regardless? Yes. If people are willing to replace enough of the OS with the ugliness they're using to get it to work, absolutely. But it will continue to be ugly. Releasing kernel and driver source for the current iterations of OS X on x86 will only make their jobs infinitely easier, while brining little to no benefit to conventional users, power users, and administrators of OS X.
I'm sure people will find a way to make a huge deal about this, though, even though a huge deal has already been made about it in various forums, including slashdot and other tech news outlets, and on several of Apple's mailing lists.
I'd like to point out that this was my initial reaction: http://listserv.cuny.edu/Scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0602 &L=macenterprise&T=0&P=58970
Since then, Apple has posted all of the APSL sources, and it was just a legitimate, honest delay. The PPC and x86 trees are at virtual parity with the sole exception of the kernel and drivers. So I'd submit that "Apple closes down OS X" is highly inaccurate for two reasons:
- Most of OS X was never "open" to begin with; if he wants to say "Darwin", great, but I suppose "Apple closes down Darwin" wouldn't be as sensationalistic and guaranteed to get as many page v
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, as most new Macs have a Treacherous Computing Module installed and Apple sure will use it to restrict their OS from being installed in generic boxes, this doesn't surprise me the least. It's only a matter of time before the TPM is used for other purposes, such as userland DRM.
I'm glad to hear it. I'm tired of hearing Apple's base is open source and that Linux should give up and other BS. This makes it much more clear. THANK YOU APPLE!
Pirates: Arrrrr! We'll be havin' your operating system now matey...
Does anyone out there aside from free software zealots truly care about this? I don't, and I do use and customize Linux kernels on other systems.
I want my desktop and laptop to work, period. Keeping them that way is Apple's problem. I pay the (really, not all that much once you compare apples to apples, so to speak) premium in price to get a system that I can plop on my desk and run without having to be constantly tweaking and hacking on it.
This might make a big splash here, but in the real world, nobody will truly care.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Software pirates will just use IDA Pro instead of GCC to get the job done. The part they've always cared about (Don't Steal Mac OS.kext) was never open source anyway.
If Apple says that software pirates are the only reason, don't believe them.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
And now we know (well, we always knew) why Apple chose to use BSD
userland vs a GPL userland.
This should add more fuel to the debate of the merits of BSD vs GPL
lisencing.
*sigh* back to work...
But at the end of the day, Apple is a proprietary software vendor. Apple never was an open source company. But they did grasp how to utilize open source to their advantage, but it was always in a way that was really not quite in the spirit of the open source community. Yes the source code was always available for Darwin and the pieces of OS X. But rarely in patch form and often not buildable without tracking down internal header files. Working with Apple's build of OpenLDAP in Panther Server really soured me to Apple's commitment to Open Source. While the code was there, it was difficult to see just what they had changed and very hard to take their changes and apply them to the newer version of OpenLDAP. A great example of how you can use open source in a very closed way.
So this doesn't come as any surprise to me. And I really don't have any ill will towards Apple, as I understand their position they are in. But I don't agree with the position they have taken but that is their perogative.
Because as we all know, closed source software prevents piracy!
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
So you really do believe that open source software should be viral in that anyone who uses it should be forced to open up all their code?
Not that there's anything wrong with that -there are good arguments in favor of that view. The problem is that corporate reality sucks sometimes.
Darwin is as open as it ever was, minus the kernel - and the kernel is only required if you want to make Darwin a bootable OS.
3 51035
Which is pretty much useless, and always has been.
Apple can still claim the same level of openness it always has, because all of Apple's open source Darwin components and projects (things like WebKit, etc.) are still open on x86 and PPC.
Take a look:
http://developer.apple.com/opensource/
http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
See my post here for details:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=185992&cid=15
I have to wonder if some group or other won't go back to the last open version of the kernel code and fork it into a new project or maybe some alternative to Darwin? Also, what does this mean for the Darwin project?
Would something like that even be worth it without some vendor support or tie-in? It seems a shame to let such a nice chunk of code go to waste.
Transistors and Beer!!
This development just reinforces the likelihood that the Mach(-ish) kernel is going away in 10.5. If I were Apple and planning on switching to a new in-house developed kernel, I'd most definitely want to clear myself of obligations of showing it to the world... at least at first until it's clear that the code is mostly clean, by which I mean fairly efficient and exploit/bug-free.
This is an awful lot of drama though if that were the case but trying to figure out Apple's true motivations is always a crap shoot.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
"If your OS is secured by keeping the code private, pray it's never, ever, released." Only takes one slip into the public to break that "security model."
Then there's those OSes that *assume* publicity of the source code and have different expectations for ensuring security. These "published" OSes also happen to be the "more secure" OSes available.
Go figure.
P.S. I'm not only referring to GPL'ed and BSD'ed OSes. There are other published OSes, the source of which are publicly accessible.
Disclosure: Mac OS X user here. Linux user here. Reluctant Windows user here.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
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
With that attitude, you probably weren't going to legally anyway.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
The userland has nothing to do with it; people have been running GPL userland on proprietary kernels for years (decades?).
Idiotic moderation ... your comment was the best explanation I've gotten in this thread so far as to what's going on and what is and isn't closed.
I can't really think of why anyone would want to run Darwin x86 without OS X either; we've already established that it's a worse server platform than Linux for most tasks, especially database ones, and headless servers are really the only place I think there'd be a market for Darwin. And it's not like there's any dearth of server OSes and distos these days anyway. The only other people are those who want to create a platform on which to do unauthorized ports of OS X onto commodity hardware (say by hacking the kernel to remove the hardware verification portions, and creating a foundation on which to run the proprietary portions of the Mac OS).
I figured this was inevitable all along. In fact, back when people were cooing over how folks had gotten OS X to boot on commodity hardware, I speculated that it was going to drive Apple to close up more and more of its OS, and I think if it continues, we're going to see a lot of phone-home type registration systems. To be perfectly honest, as someone who's always appreciated the fact that Mac OS has never had copy protection (because it depends on having a rather largish dongle, called a Mac), I would rather see Apple do what it needs to do to head off commodity ports with licensing than have them start to include obnoxious copy-protection in the OS itself that bothers legitimate users, a la Microsoft.
Normally I'm all for technological solutions rather than legal ones, but in this case the technological ones are going to be much more of a pain in my ass, so I'd appreciate it if they didn't. The day I have to type a serial number into Mac OS X so that it can phone home to Apple, I'm going to be pretty annoyed.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
And this had to happen the very same day i was planning to alter, rebuild, and replace the OS X kernel from source code, oh well..
//WR
Even though I own an iBook G4 I don't want to!
I don't like closed systems. I don't like being given the One Way to Do Things, even if that One Way has obviously been well thought out. I don't like farting around the internet looking for software. I don't like installing all of the cruft that comes with Xcode just to get gcc. I don't like being unable to link the command line with the GUI.
I like my Freedom. I like being able to dick around with my system (at any level) when I'm bored if I feel like it. I like the feeling of doing clever things with source code. I like having centralized repositories of software. I like using a system that's been designed for ease of development.
I like GNU, I like Linux and I like being in control of _my_ computer. Granted I'm not a typical user by far, but we're out there.
What if the entire Universe were a chrooted environment with everything symlinked from the host?
I know I'm in a minority, but I used Darwin/x86 quite a bit since it had NetInfo support so I could use it for shared login, and while I could switch to everything to LDAP, it wasn't worth the effort. I currently got an Intel Macintosh, but maybe my next purchase won't be a Mac, because I do/did use Darwin quite a bit. That being said, the Macworld UK article doesn't cite sources, so where is it getting this info? I still see the xnu sources on OpenDarwin's site:
http://darwinsource.opendarwin.org/10.4.6.ppc/
This signature was left intentionally blank.
IMHO, this puts an end to the GPL vs BDS license flamewars.
If they are locking the source down, I for one would hope that it might indicate making a move to solaris. Especially after the recent news that they were porting some of Solaris' file system over to MacOS, moving over to full solaris may leverage the best of unix and the mac os GUI system.
If they did it would be appel.org
Hmmm... http://www.appel.org/
Anyway, precisely. Apple's business model is basically to be Sony (Expensive component systems that only talk to their own kind) but they get away with it because the stuff works in a way Sony only dreams, they have this ironclad against-the mainstream, shinyfunhappy thing going (sorta like VW), and they leave the most important points of generic interoperability (i.e. iTunes and iPods play MP3s) open. Darwin was not one of these.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
The point is that by going with the BSD license, the freebsd team has made sure there is a propriety OS which will always be better than theirs. It's not about the license Apple chooses, it's about open source giving them a leg up for no return.
I am trolling
I have, the SCO Group, Inc.
So what you're really saying, based on all your comments attached to this story, is that OS X was never really suited to high-performance/server/scientific computing?
Anyone who's used an XServe knows that. It's not and never has been a high performance beast, it's a decent small server that's targeted towards Windows-class admins with fewer Windows-class annoyances.
The article and the blog linked to it are somewhat trollish since Mac OS X hasn't really had an open kernel for some time. Still, this doesn't affect end useres in the slightest. With the public sources, all that could be built for PowerPC anyway was Darwin which is another BSD derivative. It's not OS X...it doesn't have Quartz, QuickTime, Java, Aqua, the Dock, Carbon, or anything else that makes OS X the operating system that it is. Those components of OS X were never open source and never will be. Where Darwin shined, however, was in opening up the source for drivers.
Some drivers can be made in user space, but a lot of drivers need to be coded in kernel space. When OS X first came out years and years ago, the procedures for writing drivers was horrid. Even today, it's still easy when writing drivers to make a coding error and get a kernel panic. Each kernel panic has a bunch of stuff in the log that allows developers to trace back the problem that caused the kernel to crash.
On PowerPC, the source code for the underlying drivers is available. This is invaluable since not only do you have the point in your code where you have a crash, but you can also figure out what IOKit or the kernel was trying to do that caused the crash. Being able to see exactly how the driver family is using your device is very helpful in figuring out either how to work around your bug or how you can remove it.
With the Intel OS X drivers, however, there is no source. You can't look back and see what the kernel is trying to do that caused your driver to soil itself. This makes debugging a pain in the neck since now, instead of being able to try and figure it out for yourself, you need to get Apple involved if you need more information. Having the PowerPC source isn't sufficient since the drivers are different between x86 and PowerPC. Case in point: right now I'm developing a USB audio device that works just fine on PowerPC but the moment you plug it into an Intel based Mac the OS kernel panics. I suspect a div by zero in the x86 driver, but I can't verify that since I can't see the source. Instead I have to rely on Apple to tell me what to fix.
Thankfully starting with Tiger a number of the more obscure kernel interfaces are actually a bit more abstracted for dlils and the like for which in the past reading kernel code and other drivers was almost the only documentation. That's still no reason for getting rid of the sources.
Although this lack of source is no new development, it really doesn't affect end users. The only people really building custom kernels for running OS X are the XPostFacto guys for running OS X on legacy hardware or PowerPC accelerators, and they never needed x86 code anyway. It affects hardware developers like myself and can make debugging a pain in the neck, especially if you don't have any of those paid-for ADC tech support incidents left.
ed
I've never found the attraction of Apple. Maybe for grandma or something
Better tell all the L.A. studios recording all the music you hear on Macs, or the film shops using Macs to edit feature films. Etc.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I happen to like fixing kernel bugs. It's fun, and it makes the bugs go away. (not suggesting that Apple should delibrately add extra bugs just for the thrill of fixing them though) Kernel source is educational too.
Oh well. I can still judge a Mac on hardware alone, and then install Linux if I get a Mac. That's what I did last time I bought a computer.
It sure irritates me to see BSD groups actually helping proprietary vendors compete against open source. Thanks buddy. Stallman got at least one thing right.
When folks feel that its ok to steal because they don't believe in a way a company does business that company will be forced to take countermeasures.
I recall a few threads back an article linked to benchmarking the new Apple laptops, a dell running a hacked (read, stolen, a DVD image most likely DL'd from
any number of sites) copy of OS X was used as an example, this is both unfair to Dell (who I hate) and Apple (who I happen to like) the OS was configured to run properly on Apple hardware and by luck ran well enough on the Dell to run some basic benchmarks.
Apple has been submitting a large amount of code for nearly all of the OS that runs underneath their closed GUI (always has been closed) and this policy is sound for a company that attempts to make a profit, if it threatened their business model they would be foolish to release it and in the case of the gui it would threaten it to have others build the gui on linux or solaris or aix. Apple continues to submit source for items that do not compromise their business model, previous to the x86 move Apple had little concern regarding their OS/look/feel appearing on anything but Apple controlled hardware, it could be done (MOL as an example) but this was always out of the reach of the general population. With the move to x86 they have to rely on DRM (hate that too) to ensure that their profit (they're a hardware company?) continues as their OS is really only sold as an upgrade (not a full version like the folks from Redmond sell) and on the condition that you are running it in the environment for which it was designed (read the shrinkwrap license, which I also hate).
I would imagine that the module(s) for TPM are very cleanly written and very easy to defeat given a little effort and a recompile, if you've looked at any of the code Apple has released you'll know this to be true, with little to stop them we could be seeing HK and/or Chinese Macs (really they are already, almost all manufactured PC's are) rolling in for a bit less then Apple could afford to profit from.
As an open source advocate I am saddened to see this, as a stockholder I am quite happy.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
99% of the computer using market doesn't read slashdot. Whether they care or not is of little relevance to this site.
Let me get this straight- one component of Darwin is closed source on one platform (just Intel). The rest of Darwin- the part that developers actually work on and need the source to- is still open, and according to other comments here that list is continuing to grow, and your response is to say that Apple might be worse than Microsoft?!? Please read the comments that preceeded yours (the ones posted by actual Darwin devs who are affected by this).
It seems that the only people who are getting wound up about this are the people who either don't like OS X to begin with or are reading the spin and missing the actual point.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
Apple got pissed that people are running OSX on non-Apple hardware, so it "took its ball and went home." Apparently Apple still doesn't realise it's a software company.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
What good is it without the kernel? Doesn't that make it just a bunch of BSD tools?
Or, as rewritten by Apple marketing for your black turtleneck wearing, latte-sipping Mac hipsters out there:
Apple is proud to announce QuickKernelTM, the completely revamped heart of Mac OS X. With patented, proprietaty innovations optimised for the high performance IntelTM Dual CoreTM architecture, QuickKernel is offered as an exlusive benefit to new Apple customers. Buy an Intel-based Macintosh today, and we'll throw in QuickKernelTM for free!
"We are excited to announce that we're making QuickKernelTM retroactively available to anyone who bought an Intel-based Mac within the past five years," CEO Steve Jobs said. "But act fast -- this free offer will not last long. We estimate QuickKernel adds at least $199 in raw speed enhancement to every Macintosh sold."
QuickKernel further boosts speed with its ClosedSourceTM architecture, which prevents performance hiccups caused by "credits," "comments" and "disclaimers" typically added to the "source code" of the open source kernel typically used to repair WindowsTM PCs. ClosedSource is delivered in a highly optimized UberBinaryTM format that is many times faster than the uncompiled source code delivered by "open source" operating system vendors.
"QuickKernel is the fastest way to deliver content to your iPod, greatly accelerating MP3 playback," Jobs said. "It also keeps your black shirt from fading in the wash, disappears scratches from your U2 EditionTM iPod and enhances the graphics on your Ruby on Rails blog."
"It's not about the license Apple chooses, it's about open source giving them a leg up for no return."
And that never happens with GPL software!
Every ISP that used Linux and doesnt contribute code back gets a leg up with no return!
Every person that uses GNU Cash gets a leg up with giving anything back!
Just about every Firefox and OO.org users gets a benefit without giving anything back.
"The point is that by going with the BSD license, the freebsd team has made sure there is a propriety OS which will always be better than theirs."
Is OS/X better than FreeBSD? From what I hear FreeBSD is a better server platform than OS/X.
The things that made OS/X better as a desktop where never OSS. Even if they had used a Linux kernel the graphics system "Quartz" and the user interface would still be closed source. The people that download a copy of OS/X would still be pirating it.
What it really comes down to is Freedom. The Freebsd team choose to release their work under the BSD license. That is their right. Since I doubt you contribute code to that project and I know I don't what right do we have to complain?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
That question has been asked and answered several times
Now those five people will have nothing to do on friday night. Mind you that's just the few that actually care about the latest and greatest out of Apple, the other 15 or 20 will just keep mucking about with what they have.
b/c if they left the source open you'd begin to see all of the hooks they were building into the kernel... hooks that will eventually be used to allow the Windows Vista kernel to be dropped into place.
This Macworld writer is a fucking idiot. I'm willing to bet that the number of people who actually recompiled their kernel on Mac OS X can be counted on the fingers of, say, two hands. For that reason, this is a total non-issue. And as others have noted, this has been the case for quite a while and, well, most of the source is still open anyway.
:|
Would that we could concentrate on some real news for a change.
iqu
I wear plaid.
I have a long ponytail.
I have a lazy eye.
I could stand to lose a few pounds.
Pretty much all nerd here.
There's no reason for anyone to care about this while they're getting work done. If you've got a product that's going to do/enable you to do the work you need it for but you don't use it because of libre/gratis masturbation, you're ridiculous.
2k at home, xp on the road, osx for layout, linux and hpux in the server closet.
--- Do you believe in the day?
First of all, Apple does not use GPL'ed code in their kernel. Second, any license be it the GPL or what have you cannot remove rights from the copyright holder which is Apple in this case.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Here's the problem, performance sucks relative to my Intel 20" iMac, it hangs frequently, and the network driver can't read the mac-addr. I also can't set the mac-address using ifconfig, so end result, is no networking. Screen resolution is also not able to match what the screen is capable of so the aspect ratio is wrong.
In short, while it's a cute hack and the novelty of seeing OS X running on Dell hardware is certainly nifty, it's far from production ready. Why did I dare to anger the Apple gods by trying to pirate OS X? I'm ok with it personally. I own 4 Mac's personally, have a G5 tower on my desk at work. My employer makes me carry this 20lb Dell around when I travel and I'm certainly not going to add weight by putting my powerbook in my luggage as well. So if I can have a few of the comforts of home-computing on the road with me, then I'll do it. It may not be completely legal, but I'm not taking any money out of anyone's pockets and I'm only using one instance of my OS X 86 license at a time.
I would suspect that the legal purchasers that are hindered and annoyed by this, if it turns out to be true, would be on the order of about 10. No, not 10 per cent. 10.
Comparing it to Sony's rootkit is beyond absurd.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I don't like farting around the internet looking for software...I like GNU, I like Linux
Those are incompatible statements.
Ok, (probably) more than 1 of you.
But I think its safe to say that you are in the vast minority on this one. It seems to me that most people moved from Linux to OS X and not the other way around.
Just out of pure curiousity, what was it about OS X that pissed you off so much? And was Linux able to fix that, or was it a matter of just choosing Linux simply because you like it better?
OS X sure isn't perfect, but for my hard-earned buck and precious little free time, it sure beats the pants off Windows or Linux.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
My 40GB iPod is about half-full. That's 20GB of music, not a single byte of which is protected by any kind of DRM. So, uh, what are you talking about?
This has been discused to death on the Darwin mailing lists. Apple doesn't want people recompiling the kernel for non-Apple hardware.
BSD started out as a bunch of tools, then they made their own kernel.
If there is demand then somebody will make an open source kernel to run instead, which would only get you the tools... Just use FreeBSD and port the few tools that are different over there.
Unless they replace MS, I don't see anybody trying to make a kernel when its easier to port the few useful parts to other OS.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
It looks like OS X is taking a few tips from the 80s. Most Unix developers are accustomed to having access to the source code for the system; this dates back to the mid-1970s when universities bought Unix licenses from AT&T including source code to study. This practice ended in the 1980s when source code licenses from AT&T started to cost nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Then, in the 1990s and 2000s, we get BSD, Linux, OpenSolaris, and even the original Unix sources (from Caldera). Having access to the source code of the kernel is useful for understanding how the system works, creating device drivers, and optimizing the performance (research experiments, for example). Removing the kernel source code is a loss. As a FreeBSD user, closed-source Unix just doesn't make sense to me, and this removes one incentive of the Mac (although I'm still planning on getting one).
Then again, NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP were completely closed source (but that was due to AT&T licensing; BSD wasn't fully unencumbered until about 1994), so I guess most NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP users who switched to the Mac have no concept of having access to source code.
It is even more entertaining to see Mac zelots having to do a complete 180 again. Only a couple of days ago, Mac users would post arguments like these:
So basically until recently, it was
I still remember the time, when some Apple users wanted to convince me that nobody needs multitasking and multiuser, for these features would be to confusing anyway.
Oh well, there goes my karma.
Quoth Cringely:
I'm told Apple has long had this running in the Cupertino lab -- Intel Macs running OS X while mixing Apple and XP applications. This is not a guess or a rumor, this something that has been demonstrated and observed by people who have since reported to me.
Very interesting...
So, is this why Goto is considered harmful?
[rimshot]
Sean
It looks like OS X is taking a few tips from the 80s.
What, unbundling the documentation tools and the compilers and even the man pages, and selling them back to you for outrageous prices?
No?
Most Unix developers are accustomed to having access to the source code for the system;
Even when I was at Berkeley working on 4BSD that wasn't true. Only the CSRG guys had access to that source, everyone else was stuck with (if they were lucky) photocopies of the Lyons book.
Having access to the source code of the kernel is useful for understanding how the system works,
Yep, and you still have that. You don't have the x86-specific stuff, but you have everything else. And there just isn't that huge a difference between systems... hell, I was debugging Digital UNIX kernel problems by referring to the FreeBSD sources in the '90s, and the differences between XNU PPC and XNU x86 are trivial by comparison.
As a FreeBSD user, closed-source Unix just doesn't make sense to me
Then stick with FreeBSD.
As a former FreeBSD committer and 386BSD patchkit maintainer, I'll continue to use the best tools I have available: Mac OS X on the desktop and FreeBSD in the server room.
Its okay to make it closed source. This is, after all, Apple. They can do no wrong.
Now, if it had been any other company, Slashdotters would be demanding public hangings at dawn...
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Both the slashdot headline and article (sorry, opinion piece) are pure speculation.
There is nothing new here, this has been the state of things for a while, no official announcement from Apple on this, and therefore no need to post such a piece with the sensationalist headline, as if this had just happened. So please check your facts before posting them as truth...
Pirates attack ships at sea.
It does everybody a disservice to call copyright infringers with a term that is used for actual crimes. In fact, the DMCA does in fact make you a criminal in some copyright infringement issues, but that is just stupid. In fact, the choice of the word 'pirate' is convenient for the people who like restricted distrbution, because it implies that copyright infringers are criminals, and that kind of concept grows in people.