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Apple Losing Touch With the OS Community?
InfoWorldMike writes to tell us that InfoWorld's Tom Yager recently had the chance to sit down and chat with Apple about their closing the OS X Kernel. From the article: "The Mac platform is an overflowing basket of raw materials for innovators and creators of all stripes. It's what Steve Jobs would fantasize about if he still worked out of his garage, and you can bet that he'd be livid to find that the vendor locked some portion of his chosen platform behind a gate without a word of notice or explanation."
Personally I find Apple very much like Microsoft. They are trying to take over as "King of the Lock-in Mountain". Go European countries that are bitchslapping them.
I will stick with OSS thanks.
Well we will always have Linux/BSD. I mean that is why they became so popular in the first place, because people wanted to kernel hack. You want to be all practical and have pretty graphics get a Mac. You want to have fun rewriting the driver stack install something open source, it's that simple.
Philosophy.
IMHO, OS-X is pretty much a closed operating system at this point. All of the innovation is dictated by Apple. BTW, I am not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, but I do believe that Apple can not claim that OS-X has the benefits (and downsides) of open source development.
but when exactly was Apple ever 'in touch' with the OS Community?
At one point it was cool to have a PowerBook to do unix dev on, but the quality of Mac hardware has plummeted now that they have been forced to turn to Intel for chips and I don't see many people rushing to trade in their existing non-Mac hardware.
With how fast Ubuntu with the new accelerated desktop is coming up to speed, I don't think I even care about OS X anymore outside of the more ascetically pleasing UI elements.
FTFA, It's not about code. It's about character.
It's also about money. Yager states that he believes Apple will open the OS back up again (eventually), and I'd have to agree. A running theme in economics is that investment (in technology) leads to increased capital. I believe the main reason that the Linux community enjoys so much capital right now is because of the years of investment. That investment was at the cost of human labor and hard work by the OSS community!
When Apple realizes that free (as in beer) investment into their business (by the OSS community) actually has a bottom dollar impact on capital, the lock on the kernel will fly open pretty quickly.
It's a non-story being touted by yet another tech columnist who's realized that pushing mac users' buttons generates site traffic. Indeed his fraction of a fraction geeks don't outweigh the larger fraction of geeks who want to use Darwin to port/pirate OS X to generic X86 hardware. Like is or not, Apple is still a business, and their goal is to make money.
My understanding was that they cannot guarantee an OSX compatible open source darwin kernel. Wouldnt this be more along the lines of a fork as opposed to being evil?
He sat down with Apple, yet he has no quotes. 95% of the "article" is his own speculation. I'm betting the 5% paraphrased from the alleged talks comes from his own mind, too.
Apple is a hardware company.
Apple happens to have an incredibly great OS and great consumer and pro apps, but when it comes to what butters Apple's bread it's all about the hardware. Apple is not, nor will it ever likely be, a software company.
Does opening the source for OS X sell more Apple hardware? Obviously not, since it allows people to use OS X on non-Apple machines. That's not in Apple's interest, and that's why they're making that more difficult to do. Apple is first and foremost a business, and no smart business would cannibalize itself to pick up a market that they don't need.
People who are dogmatic about OSS have plenty of choices in the market. Apple just isn't one of them. Somehow, I doubt Steve Jobs really loses sleep over such a small part of the market.
Personally, I don't quite get it, but this move of Apples clearly should NOT offend BSD license advocates since that is exactly what they stand for.
I think this is a perfect example of some of the tensions within the open source community too, and a key differtiator between the positions of the FSF (Stallman's group who advocates GPL-like philosophies) and the OSI (who has people like ESR who often advocate BSD over GPL tend to like it when companies like Apple do this).
To summarize, I'd say that Free Software advocates will criticize Apple's move, but Open Software Initiative advocates will hold it up as a prime example of business and open source playing nicel togehter.
Look, I've been a window user for years... I just don't understand Apple. They have vision, ideas and a damn good OS. Why do they keep shooting themselves in the foot? Mac users must be frusterated because of the one step forward and then five steps back Apple keeps taking. Why not keep it open, what are they afraid of, people actually using their desktop? I just wish Apple would realize that there is a secondary OS niche that needs to be filled and if they just jump into it they might come up as winners. When there's an opportunity to be taken they back off. They avoid conflict.... WHY?!?!? Damn you Apple! I want to use your OS! STOP MAKING IT HARD TO SWITCH!!!!!
As far as I know (not being a rabid Apple historian) when they started with the Apple I they DID in fact do the whole thing themselves, right? So what Jobs and Woz must've wanted while starting up in a garage was just the chips. They didn't expect to be handed the thing on a platter by some big existing company. Quite a difference.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I'm sorry to say this, but this is BSD's 'fault'. They put the kernel under the BSD license - a license that allows for this to happen.
In my opinion, this is why the BSD license is bad. However in many other people's opinion this is why the BSD license is good - because it gives you the freedom to fork and close source it.
Whether it's better to have the 'freedom for the code' (GPL, LGPL somewhat, etc) or the 'freedom for the person' (BSD) is of course a personal opinion.
This is yellow journalism, plain and simple. Tom Yager claims with a straight face "no story is more timely, or more broadly relevant, than this one." When asked by Apple, according to his own account, Tom Yager could provide no examples of people who had written to him to complain about this issue. Tom Yager goes on to accuse Apple of suggesting people who recompile kernels are an "underclass". Way to create a straw man, Tom Yager. How easy it is to knock that down.
Hey, Tom Yager, you claim Apple promised to make future kernels' source open? Care to point us to any supporting evidence for your spurious claim?
Steve Jobs despites all of his personality flaws, understands that much of Apple's value comes from software , not the expensive dongles they passed off as products. Locking down the OS and services to prevent... compatibility with "unauthorized platforms" is absolutely essential in maintaining that value.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Whatever. Apple got enormous press for "open sourcing" their kernel, even in mainstream newspaper outlets. The amount of sensationalism for "close sourcing" it has been a drop in the bucket.
Proprietary OSX should be expected now that Apple has gotten all it can out of the BSD code base. Let it be a lesson to the Free Software Community about the dangers of BSD style licenses. It encourages opportunism. Theo's rant earlier today is a further example.
an ill wind that blows no good
What? 5 seconds of research would have kept you from looking ignorant. You can download all the needed SDK's from MS without cost. You can even get the free (as in cost, not Freedom) versions of Visual Studio 2005 along with the free (cost) version of Sql Express.
The Visual Studio Express editions allow you to do development with C#, J#, C++ and unfortunately VB.Net.
I am not an MS fanboy, however if you are going to take a jab at MS, at least do it for a valid reason.If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
These seem like questions marketing would ask. People that are actually in charge of OS X's development wouldn't need to ask these questions because they would understand the reasons why people would want the kernel's source code.
At any rate, we still don't know why Apple hasn't released the source yet (or if they will at some point). There are some hints that there might be Intellectual Property issues involved. This post on one of Apple's Darwin mailing lists indicates that there are IP issues that precluded the release of one of their Intel ethernet drivers. If the Intel Kernel contains licensed code from Intel (for TPM or EFI or something else) or licensed code for Rosetta then they might have problems releasing the code.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
The Simple Part
Darwin is still open source, except for the x86 kernel (XNU).
This is meant to slow down / stop wholesale use of OSX on generic x86 hardware.
Everything else, including the PPC source for XNU is right there, open and available to developers. I browsed it mere minutes ago.
Apple still hasn't said that this is the final disposition of the x86 kernel, but it's what they have for now.
The Part Tom's Making Complicated
Tom's invoking everything short of motherhood and apple pie (sorry) over this.
He imagines and carries the standard for legions of people who want to compile custom x86 Darwin kernels.
(Isn't this the very definition of astroturfing - "a few people discreetly posing as mass numbers of activists advocating a specific cause"?)
He seems to claim customizing the kernel is Very Important, Real Soon, for those who simply want to, and for those who want to optimize some custom servers and thin clients / workstations that he imagines Apple will be releasing in the future.
Maybe they will. If so, they'll figure it out.
But so far, no pitchforks or torches have been spotted on Mariani Ave.
Take his argument to the logical extreme and Apple lets everyone run OSX on anything they want.
That would be Bad for the future of Apple.
He does seem to say there's some magical way for Apple to have it both ways, but doesn't say how.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"I don't understand why everyone bitches so much when a corporation makes a strategic decision that takes them one step closer to market dominance."
Maybe because as a former Apple supporter (a short-lived state of being as it turned out) I am frustrated to see them cavalierly drop the principles that got me to switch. It might be a different matter if they had already captured a 50 percent market share, or for that matter even a 20 percent market share, but their number are right where they always have been. I see all their recent moves as desperation, and quite possibly the results is that they will cease to matter at all. I just got done answering a request for advice on a non-technical forum and I couldn't honestly advise them to buy an Apple "laptop" even though my last two laptops were Apple machines. Their switch to Intel, coupled with more and more DRM orientation, legal action against well meaning users, and the dissing of the Open Source roots of their OS makes me wonder if the company hasn't suffered a stroke or something. The personality of the company has changed, and with no good reasons (roadmaps be damned), their quality control sucks and they spend more time on propagandizing than they do on actually supporting their users. I have little use for them any more. Unlike the author of the original article, I don't expect them to get better any time soon. Recent departures at the top ought to give some people a clue that something is wrong in Cupertino.
If the iPod market fails the company is history. That should give the fans nightmares.
This is the issue, right here. Apple used the open source community for attention and went ahead and dumped on them with nary a word from any of the people that covered how innovative Darwin was when it was released as open source in the first place.
A fair number of people choose to work for Apple rather than some other Silly Valley company because they're a "cool company" who did things like open source the guts of their OS. What should someone in their position think after this kind of stunt?
More alarming to me than the kernel being closed is that they didn't release any of the core source until people started complaining. Even the parts of the OS that are most useful for tinkering were an afterthought for Apple.
Wrong. Just wrong.
PowerPC wasn't cutting the mustard, otherwise Apple would still be using them. We were still stuck with bloody G4s in the laptops. Thanks to heat, they were one generation behind. With x86 Apple doesn't have to focus on hardware development and they don't have to play magic numbers to try and convince people a crappy G4 is somehow more powerful than what Intel is offering. With Intel, there is no concern as to whether they'll be around tomorrow and with the hard competition from AMD, it's a no brainer that they have to improve. On top of that, if Intel starts to go sour, there's nothing stopping them from going with AMD since there are multiple contenders in the x86 world.
Moving to Intel has allowed dual booting Windows and much improved VMs to work with Windows since the hardware no longer has to be emulated. This gets rid of a major road block for a lot of people and why I was able to sell a major client of mine on the idea of using a Mac instead of a new PC.
A Mac can run pretty much everything under the sun now, plus OS X is awesome. Seriously, PowerPC was a dead zone, just like Motorola before it. Apple no longer has to concern itself with a company that's too busy working on "other things" to update their processor line. Intel gives Macs more power, less power consumption, more versatility and more value than IBM ever could.
It's not like the concept of take over and control is limited to software. This is fundamental human behavior. Anyone ever hear of the Roman Empire?...If it's really that bad. If it is that bad, you should go make your own OS/mega-corporation that will be better than the one you are bitching about.
Rome circa 100AD
Roman Slave: This sucks
Roman Centurian: *whips slave* Quit your bitchin! If it is that bad, why don't you go start your own empire.
Roman Centurian: Ow! Well... I would but you see... You've got this thing called a Roman Legion and I've got these chains on me... Oh and I did revolt you'd kill my family and then crucify me and feed me to the lions.
Roman Centurian: Good point! Get back to work anyways! *whips slave again*
Roman Slave: Ow!
Corporate Environment 2006AD
Cubicle slave: This sucks!
Supervisor: *delegates another deadline* Quit your bitching! If it is that bad, why don't you go start your own company.
Cubicle slave: Well... I would but you see... You've got this thing called millions of dollars of investment into entry barriers of the market and I've got this NDA and contract that owns all my ideas... Oh and I did revolt you'd sue family and then crucify my VC capital and then feed me to the Patent Lawyers.
Supervisor: Good point! Get back to work! *assigns another deadline*
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Who is Apple's target market? I think the only reason they even try to appeal to geeks is because they can use the word "UNIX" like some kind of geek mating call. Aside from that they've really got nothing geeky in their linup. It's all posh bling. Look at the PC vs Mac adverts - it's all about easy to use and does the things a basic user wants to do.
Apple and Jobs don't care that they're losing touch with 'the OS community'. I doubt they ever cared much in the first place. Just enough to get Slashdot to make an Apple section.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Look closer at the passage you quoted. Here it is again:
"Has anybody ever written to you about this? How many people actually recompile their OS X kernels?" I do, for one. I rattled off some of those groups that value open source in its fullest sense. I included academia, high-performance and high-throughput computing experts, and shops that want to roll in system-level enhancements before Apple gets around to packaging them. He never says that these groups contacted him, which I sincerely doubt they did. Instead, he says that these groups value open source in its fullest sense. This may be true, but whether they are complaining about this is another matter entirely.
Taft
Really, am I the only one to perceive Apple as just a facade?
Probably not, there are lots of people without a clue.
I feel it's just a brand name for a target market, absolutely nothing more.
And all of the innovative technology they have created and or popularized was an illusion of some sort?
I still remember the KHTML fiasco (and the lengthy posts about it in Slashdot) when the white knight turned black.
Why don't you bother to go read some informed post about said, issue, you know like what the KHTML people had to say about it? Apple followed their license, used the code, made it better and gave it back. They diverged in purpose quite a bit from what Konquerer wanted, so many of the changes were hard to pull back in or were not wanted. Further, some of the developers did not like the way the code was posted (as a lump) and asked for more granularity and documentation, which the Safari team worked hard to give them. If you had any sort of a clue, you would not pick this example to complain about Apple's behavior.
In every action, every decision I see Jobs as a Gates-wanna-be. It's the same kind of company. I'm not trolling, I'm just trying to understand why Apple is loved so much. Can anyone give reasons, real reasons, for this...
I can give a lot of reasons. They listen to their customers and make products many of us geeks want and make a profit at the same time. They save a lot of us from having to use the abysmal Windows or functionality lacking Linux. They make our lives easier. The most devout Apple fanatic is usually someone who bought their first Apple machine a month ago and is still amazed by how much easier everything is. They can't understand why everyone isn't using it and just want to let everyone know. I've seen it many times.
The enthusiasm of a newbie aside, Apple consistently delivers innovations. I would be very sad to use a primary workstation without system services after Apple supplied them to me. I use them every day and when I use a Linux or Windows machine I feel like I took a step back to a more primitive era. They supply a top notch GUI with real innovations, like expose. They supply a fully functional command line environment that integrates with the graphical UI. They integrate application with one another and they run mainstream software. I can actually invoke photoshop from a usable command line. I can use one program's functionality in another. For example, I can highlight a URL in Safari and use a third party program's ability to automatically generate a bibliography citation from that HTML page and insert it into a book I'm laying out in InDesign. No other OS lets me do that without a bunch of copying and pasting. I have one dictionary. When I teach it that "SNMP" is not misspelled, all my applications know from then on. I could continue, but there is no real point.
If you use OS X for a few months as your primary workstation you will understand why so few people switch back. Naturally, a lot of people like Apple, because Apple gives them this. Now they don't do everything better than others. They are behind MS and Linux in certain areas. They do a lot of things I'm not to fond of and they do a lot of things to try to get a little more money out of people. What they don't do except in one or two very necessary areas is lock customers in and they do a good job of interoperating using standards. For this, a lot of us are appreciative.
I am frustrated to see them cavalierly drop the principles that got me to switch.
Oh, for christ's sake. TWO PEOPLE are SPECULATING as to the reasons why Apple hasn't released some of the CoreOS code YET, and everyone takes their guesses as gospel?
Did anyone consider the possibility that the code in question is being delayed because publishing it right now (in the middle of a processor transition) would probably tip their hand as to features of upcoming products?
If that code doesn't show up after we get the Intel Xserves and the Intel desktops, there might be some reason to believe that Apple's decided to give up on open-sourcing the OS. Until then, it's nothing but guesses, so can everyone can just quit going off half-cocked?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
As a representative member of two of the communities he references (academia and HPC), I can say that having the kernel closed *DOES* cause concern. We have modified and compiled alternate kernels for Mac OS X running on System X at Virginia Tech. We did, however, get the kernel source and assistance from Apple to do this. I would imagine (not being perfectly positive) that legitimate requests for kernel source *MAY* still be an option even with the closed kernel.
The one thing that Yager does fail to address is the reason WHY Apple closed the kernel. I think everyone knows that answer, but for the sake of discussion I'll inject the prominent theory. The kernel was closed so Apple could protect the code used to lock the Mac OS to Apple Intel-based hardware. Until Apple can find, or invent, a better way to secure that Mac OS X will not get into the wild, i.e., installed on non-Apple hardware, or just gives up trying and declares that they will not support it running anywhere else, the kernel source will remain closed. I do believe that Apple will re-open the entire Mac OS X source in the future, but they are presently protecting their fragile sliver of market share in the mean time. Is it an affront to the OSS community? Yeah, but it's also business. They have a product to sell and shareholders to protect. Was it uncool? Yeah. Will the recent actions be nullified and a fully open Mc OS X re-released? I believe so.
As a number-cruncher, may I politely say that most days, I really don't care. I do care that they provide good math libs (they do), or documentation that helps me optimize my code for their hardware (they do), and hardware that for some combination of price/reliability/speed, performs to my specs (they do). They also provide a good development environmnent that plays well with other compilers, and a good desktop environment that supports both native and legacy (X11) apps, which I can seamlessly link to the HPC side. For the previous generation of processors, there was IBM fortran (which made it easy to go from AIX -> OSX), and now there is Intel Fortran ( Linux -> OSX), both of which are extremely strong performers on their respective processors, and both of which make more difference to my actual runs than would the ability to recompile my kernel from scratch. Neither of those compilers are open-source either, yet we purchase them because their performance is high enough that it outweighs whatever political misgivings we may have.
As you say, the real HPC guys on the nitty-gritty end (people optimizing TCP stacks for high-performance network interfaces, for instance), will sign the NDAs, then those of us in the field will decide whether or not we can use their solution. Whether or not we can get the kernel source code is not going to matter to 98% of us. We ran Irix (closed), UNICOS (closed), AIX (closed), VMS (closed), and Linux (open), and will run OSX whether it's open or closed, as long as we get reliable simulations done in an acceptable amount of time on equipment we can stand to work with.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
He didn't give examples of people contacting him, he gave random examples (no specific names) of people he thought were recompiling the OS X kernel.
"Sufferin' succotash."
This is revisionist thinking, IMO. When the Apple ][ was introduced, it was very much in the same price range as its competition. The Macintosh was more, but then, it had a lot more invested in it all new hardware, software etc. (1/10th the price of the Lisa, at the time) Only when you got to the era of Jean-Louis Gasee et al were Apple's products seriously overpriced.
When Jobs returned, it was a conscious decision to position the line as a premium product. Even so, the pricing has almost always been near-equivalent, considering what you're buying.
The reason PCs got cheap had nothing to do with Gates. It was a side effect of the brutal race-to-the-bottom that happened in the late-'80s clone market.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas