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Apple Announces New Open Source Efforts
Today Apple announced a few expanded open source efforts. First, beginning with Mac OS X 10.4.7, the Darwin/Mac OS X kernel, known as "xnu", is again available as buildable source for the Intel platform, including EFI utilities. Second, iCal Server, Bonjour, and launchd are moving to Apache 2.0 licensing. And finally, Mac OS Forge has been launched, as the successor to OpenDarwin as a conduit for hosting projects such as WebKit that were formerly hosted by the OpenDarwin project's servers, such as WebKit. Mac OS Forge is sponsored by Apple. DarwinPorts has already moved to its own servers. Update: 08/08 01:43 GMT by J : The official Apple announcement is now out. Other fun news: Leopard will ship with Ruby on Rails.
If aqua is ever opensourced you can bet within 24 hours there would be 5 projects on sourceforge to port the gui to Linux and OpenDarwin. Then you would no longer need to have a mac to run macosx or a macosx like environment.
http://saveie6.com/
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Apple is really a solutions company. They give you the complete package to get done what you need to get done, without you worrying about the fine details. From the high end they'll sell you a server environment (Xserve + RAID + OS X Server), at the low end they'll sell you a system to let you browse the web, play with photos and make simple movies (iMac or MacBook + OS X), etc. And anywhere inbetween, they give you the tools for you to do what you want. They give you the solutions.
Sure they sell hardware, they sell software, but look where they're aiming their market, and you'll see it's really solutions they sell.
Y'know, with all the crap Apple takes here about fanbois and shit you go ahead and tell me what they do compared to what Microsoft does isn't light years better for everyone in the community.
And yeah, my MacPro order is in already.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I still can't help feeling that at least outside the USA, the future will be Linux - China, India, Brazil, Eastern Europe, and other places with low costs of living and an educated population are going to power the world's economy, and I don't see the rest of the world paying the Microsoft tax.
That said, Windows, Linux, and OS X are all good platforms for open source applications: for work I 'live' using open source applications that really run great on all three OS platforms: Emacs, Eclipse, Ruby, LaTex, OpenOffice.org, and others...
Commercial products that I rely on also run well on all three OS platforms: IntelliJ, LispWorks, and Franz Lisp.
The only commercial application that I love to use that is single platform is OmniGraffle (OS X).
I actually have a psmall oint here: as Linux gets better (and Ubuntu is approaching OS X in usability for my work, and is roughly on par with Windows), people like myself will likely use Linux and non-programers OS X or Windows.
Anyway, I checked out Apple's new OS site FTFA, and it looks useful. Some enthusiasts will likely get Apple's open source OS core up and running with X Windows, etc., and make a free distribution, but I am not sure what the point is.
Apple is opening their iCal Server to get it established as an alternative to Exchange Server. They pointed say on their website that Active Directory shops can set up Xserves to run their calendars and leave AD to user authentication, saving all those Microsoft per user Client Access Licenses.
Apple also wants people using Bonjour and would like other distros to benefit from launchd (less likely, since Linux isn't really all about biting off new ways of doing things).
I wrote up more examples of why Apple (an other commercial developers) will only release things as open source while their product has no chance of sales or market penetration otherwise, at:
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Open Source Values and the Peanut Gallery
The value proposition involved in choosing an open source strategy, and a roast of the emerging peanut gallery who are attempting to hijack and betray the free software movement.
BSD and GPL: Different Sources for Different Horses
The benefits and the motivations behind two very different styles of open source development: the BSD style license, pioneered by UC Berkeley and MIT; and the GPL invented by Richard Stallman, the founder of the free software movement.
The Revolution Will be Open Sourced!
Over the last decade, every player in the software development industry has been dramatically affected by an open source revolution. How will Apple adapt to fit into this new world? Are they leading, following, or falling behind? Do they stand to benefit from an increased adoption of open source practices, or will they simply have to change how they do business?
Apple and Open Source... Strange Buffaloes?
Tim Bray's "Time to Switch?" and John Gruber's "Why Apple Won't Open Source Its Apps" both discuss the potential risks and benefits Apple would face in open sourcing their consumer applications. Here's my take: Apple does not make fierce profits from $130 Mac OS X retail sales, and there isn't a conspiracy behind new apps not working on an old OS.
The 'Mac OS X Closed by Pirates' Myth
According to the proponents of this myth, Apple has abandoned their open source initiatives as they move to Intel, because they are afraid that, armed with the Darwin source code, pirate 3lit3 haxx0rs will p0wn them and have Mac OS X running on generic PCs. They're wrong, here's why.
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BTW, there is no chance they will open up Aqua et all as long as they can sell millions of copies at retail, duh. Even Novell isn't opening their NDS jewels. Solaris is open because nobody needs to buy it anymore.
Oh please. If you switched to OS X because you are a hard core FOSS person, you're an idiot. OS X is not open source. It never was, it never will be. Linux will ALWAYS be more open. Apple may open the kernel and various low level things, but OS X in total will not be. It's a great OS and if you want a no-fuss desktop with true Unix under it, it's great. If you want to be that hardcore ("Apple was late so forget them") then why did you choose a proprietary closed-source OS in the first place?
As for the comment that most OSes are open today, that's because you can't survive otherwise. No one has survived the desktop/server space except MS (who was once up near 100% of the market) and Apple (who bundles with their computers). Solaris is open because it wasn't profitable enough. OS/2 died. BeOS died. At this point, if you want your new general purpose desktop/server OS to have a chance in hell it has to be open source. The only way to live and be proprietary is to have a niche and run on custom or embedded hardware.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
OK - let's see the rush of support for Apple that's roughly equal to the bashing they took when Intel XNU source went dark.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Development and support of OS X is eased by the fact that Apple controls the hardware.I might agree that it can happen, but it isn't going to happen soon & there's no business reason to make OS X available on commodity PCs anytime this year like you want (which is why they didn't--Steve is, as you say, a smart dude).
It's not that open source is a flawed development methodology, but rather that there is a persistent, and unflinching lack of understanding in the OSS community of what makes Mac OS attractive to a large number of users. I'll give you a hint. It's not POSIX-ish compatibility, it's not Cocoa, it's not even the pretty Aqua widgets themselves.
People are drawn to, and continue to use Macs because of the way the userspace functions. The pretty icons catch their eye, the nifty effects wow them, but in the end, it is how all the pieces fit together as a whole, and how that larger piece works. Commonality of behavior and interaction between various applications makes the user comfortable and allows them to be more productive. The GUI is simply the glue that brings these pieces together. Mac OS applications are user-oriented, while there is still a pervasive developer-oriented ideal running through open source efforts. "If you want it to be different, just code it yourself" is still an underlying principle in many corners of OSS development that completely goes against the core Mac OS attitude, and ultimately relegates the open source community to spending the foreseeable future isolated in its current markets.
OSS efforts have been hammering away at various desktop concepts for years with little success outside the relatively small circle of open source die-hards. They put in new effects, they make spiffier icons, they do all of this, but fail to recognize that improvements to the presentation of information need to be geared to facilitating the user's interaction with it. That's not happening. The reason is ego, Not Invented Here syndrome, and a simple lack of cohesive vision that will never be remedied until there is a sea change in the way developers view their relationship with the user and one another.
Saying that all you need to do is port Aqua and people will abandon the Mac, betrays a complete lack of understanding as to why Mac users love OS X.
Apple's just trying to find a balancing point between the open source philosophy and financial viability. I love the open source idea, and I'm guessing Apple does too, but you have to make some fucking money to support yourself, end of fucking story. I've never seen any other line of work ever that gave away so many man-hours of ingenuity and labor for nothing to the whole world. I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but I will willingly burn karma to emphasize that people working on open source projects deserve compensation. The groups organized to work on the projects deserve compensation. Perhaps some open source groups will get this in the future and willingly hire translators to work with third-world countries so they can set up an open source or *nix based infrastructure for the entire government (education, military, police, revenue, legislation) in return for some tax funding or whatever.
Just my couple of my petty cents.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
The most interesting of these to me is the iCal server. This looks like it could become the best open-source competition to Microsoft Exchange. The Leopard version detailed here looks like a pretty compelling product to have as an Apache-licensed piece of code, and I could see the code getting merged into a lot of other products.
E pluribus unum
Anybody want to make a list of all the sites that announced that Darwin was now "closed source" because of the delay in releasing xnu source for Intel?
Any of those sites now care to print a retraction, and admit they actually had no solid information whatsoever, that they were building their stories up from the fact of this delay plus rampant speculation?
For a few weeks there it seemed every tech site on the planet was decrying how Apple had abandoned Open Source, was not giving anything back, was closing the kernel, and how this was going to negatively impact Apple's customers and benefit Linux on the desktop.
And now, at Apple's own developer conference (of all places) they release that source code. Isn't anyone pointing that out to the sites who said it wasn't going to happen? Or are they already claiming that the only reason Apple did it was because of their articles?
Um, no. The downside to selling PC-compatible OS X that people seem to keep forgetting is a company based in Redmond.
Without getting too much into the Linux for the desktop argument, I think its hard to deny that a PC-compatible OS X would be the biggest challenge to Windows thats ever been mounted. Unlike Linux, or BeOS, or even OS/2, Apple has an incredible combination of worldwide brand recognition, reputation for user friendliness, and a broad software base. Right now, Apple and Microsoft can manage to stay in coopetition in the OS market; Apple can take as many pot shots at Microsoft as they want, because as long as OS X only (officially) runs on Apple hardware, Apple is not in direct competition with them. The moment an OS X box appears on shelves at your local Best Buy that Apple intends for you to install on your Dell, HP or Lenovo, that wall is down.
The reason you arent going to see OS X for PCs any time soon has little to do with profit, and a lot to do with the fact that doing so means a fight to the death with Microsoftand no, I dont think Im engaging in hyperbole. In that circumstance, Microsoft would do everything they could to kill OS X dead. No Microsoft Office for Mac. No Microsoft anything for Mac. License changes to make running Windows on Mac hardware illegal. (And this is without suggesting any dirty trick like Microsoft was accused of in their fight with DR-DOS and BeOS, both of which were arguably far less threatening than OS X would be.)