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.

Comments

Official Apple announcement

[daveschroeder]

The official announcement by Ernie Prabhakar of Apple is here:

From: Ernest Prabhakar prabhaka@apple.com
Date: August 7, 2006 4:15:51 PM PDT
To: darwin-dev@lists.apple.com, fed-talk@lists.apple.com
Subject: Apple Opens Up: Kernel, Mac OS Forge, iCal Server, Bonjour, Launchd

Hi all,

In conjunction with this week's Developer Conference, we have four great pieces of news for Open Source developers:

A. Intel Kernel Sources

As of today, we are posting buildable kernel sources for Intel-based Macs alongside the usual PowerPC (and other Intel) sources, starting with Mac OS X 10.4.7. We regret the delay in readying the new kernel for release, and thank you for your patience.

http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/tarba lls/apsl/xnu-792.10.96.tar.gz

B. New "Mac OS Forge" for Community Projects

Mac OS Forge, a new community site hosted by Apple, is being created to support WebKit and other open source projects focused on Mac OS X, especially those looking to transition from OpenDarwin.org.

http://www.macosforge.org/

C. New Open Source Calendaring Server

In order to encourage community participation, source code to the new iCal Server in Leopard Server is now available on Mac OS Forge under the Apache License.*

http://collaboration.macosforge.org/

D. Apache-Licensed Bonjour and Launchd sources

To further enable and encourage cross-platform adoption, the APSL** sources for Bonjour service discovery and Launchd process management are being re-released under the Apache License and hosted on Mac OS Forge:

http://bonjour.macosforge.org/
http://launchd.macosforge.org/

Apple is more excited than ever about the power of Open Source development to create value for our (and your) products and customers. I'll be offline much of this week due to WWDC, but I look forward to working with all of you as we move forward to Leopard.

Sincerely,
Ernest Prabhakar
Open Source Product Manager, Apple
WWDC 2006, Aug 7-11, San Francisco
http://developer.apple.com/wwdc

* Apache License, Version 2.0
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html

** Apple Public Source License 2.0
http://www.opensource.apple.com/apsl/2.0.txt

And as always, Darwin and Darwin component sources are available here:

http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/

Re:Official Apple announcement

[samkass]

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.

Darwin on PC

[mnemonic_]

Is there any reason to run Darwin on a PC instead of FreeBSD or other *nix system? Everyone knows OS X has a fantastic GUI, but is there anything exceptional about its kernel?

Re:Darwin on PC

[Quantum Fizz]

These guys might have something to say about that, they've got a supercomputer of 1100 dual G5 Xserves running OS X 10.3.9. There are other OS X supercomputer and distributed cluster projects you can read about here.

Re:Darwin on PC

[oudzeeman]

vtech used a custom compiled kernel, and have also been using Linux on the cluster. I used to work for a site with a 256 node Xserve cluster that was running the latest OS X 10.4 (we started with 10.3 and switched to 10.4 shortly after it was releases). They still run an up to date 10.4 on the cluster, but now they also have a portion of the cluster running Linux, which performs better than OS X for many HPC applications. They are working on software that will interface with TORQUE/Moab to install either a Linux or OS X disk image prior to launching a job thereby allowing a fully dynamic OS X / Linux hybrid cluster. Xnu appears to have issues with its memory manager. Sites often write their own simple memory manager in order to get the best possible benchmarks for OS X. VTech did it. We did it. Ours was a IOKit driver that loaded at system boot. The first thing it did was grab about 90% of the physical RAM (contiguous). The driver had to be loaded at boot or else this would have failed. Then we wrote a library that would overload the malloc familly of functions to use our memory manager rather than the default. This ensured that our high performance app would always get physcally contiguous memory which improved cache hits and greatly improved the performance of Goto's blas libraries (he has a very low oppinion of the OS X memory manager).

Re:Darwin on PC

[m874t232]

There is little reason to run Darwin if it didn't ship with your machine: it's a decent kernel, but kernels like Linux and BSD have more hardware support, more functionality, and somewhat better performance. However, the technical differences are not large enough for Apple to bother switching right now. On the other hand, if Apple wants to move to generic PCs, porting their user environment to a Linux or BSD kernel might make a lot of sense.

In any case, Apple's future is likely in hypervisors--small kernels that allow Linux, Darwin, BSD, and NT to run on top of them. In a sense, that's what Mach was supposed to be from the beginning, but it's being achieved using different technologies now.

Re:Darwin on PC

[paulmer2003]

Am I the only one whom is irrated by the lack there of VIRTUAL CONSOLES?

Re:Darwin on PC

[quizzicus]

When making such a strong, sweeping claim, it's usually a good idea to cite a few sources.

Re:OS X

[Billly Gates]

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.

Re:OS X

[G-funk]

Already the case. No, Apple own't Open source OSX, but they will eventually put it on shelves. Because Dell would like to sell it to you. And I would like to buy it. Windows exploded and killed itself "for no raisin" for the last time this weekend, and it's getting replace with OS X. I have a mac laptop, I'm already paying for OS X. but I also have a reasonably high end wintel workstation that I've already sunk thousands into and is a year away from needing replacement. If I could buy OS X for intel to run on it I would, but I can't so thepiratebay it is. Yar!

Re:OS X

[Quantum Fizz]

No they're not, people here on slashdot are constantly bickering whether Apple is a hardware or a software company. It's both.
.

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.

Very nice ...

[Sonic McTails]

I wasn't too happy about xnu-x86 and related kernel modules being closed source because the fan controls for the MacBook Pro are software based (in AppleSMC AFAIK), and that means someone can use the source code, and modify it so the fan starts at a lower temperature which should hopefully resolving the heating issues.

OSx86

[Joe The Dragon]

How long will it take for this new kernel to make it in to OSx86

I Thought...

[redragon]

I thought Apple was evil and torpedoing the OSS efforts on OS X, because they don't want their Intel work to see the day of light, cause someone would hack OS and get it to run on home-brew hardware. Oh, or were people just being bitchy?

Re:I Thought...

[jcr]

were people just being bitchy?

Bingo.

Apple doesn't talk about unreleased products, and they won't release any code that tips their hand. The Intel kernel sources would have made it very clear what was going on with the replacements for the G5s, so they waited until today to release that code.

The lesson here is: don't jump to conclusions just because some people with an inflated sense of entitlement throw a tantrum about someone taking their time to do something.

-jcr

Re:I Thought...

[jcr]

Apple made a blunder by not releasing source in the beginning.

Guess again. Apple maintained their policy of not talking about products before they're ready, and the payoff is tens of millions of dollars worth of free publicity. Compare that to being yelled at by a couple of bloggers trolling for page hits, and it's pretty clear to anyone with an ounce of business sense (which admittedly includes very few of the open-source zealots) that they did precisely the right thing.

-jcr

Re:I Thought...

[squiggleslash]

Neither.

Apple didn't "get" Open Source (that's fine, many of us Free Software enthusiasts don't "get" Open Source either) and began deprecating it when it started to interfere with their other plans in general. The first to be deprecated was the open-sourciness, with Apple releasing code but generally not in a "community friendly" way and rarely making it easy for the community to contribute directly back.

There's no evil in that, if you're strongly opinionated about the direction code should take, and you have the resources to write it yourself, you don't necessarily want to spend time trying to integrate everyone else's changes with your own.

Some people noticed. In particular, the KHTML people got a little fed up with people pointing out that WebKit supported some feature or other that hadn't made it into KHTML yet. They explained that the changes to WebKit weren't easy to track and back-port. This was interpreted by the meeja, including Slashdot, as KHTML slapping down Apple, rather than slapping down the people who assume that simply because X is based on Y, Y can easily incorporate changes to X, and who keep flaming the developers of Y for not doing this.

Then Apple closed XNU-Intel. Yes, they did. There are several releases of XNU-Intel for which source code apparently will never be released (though who would want them?) Some people noticed. They pointed this out and were immediately hounded by a bunch of, for the most part, obnoxious Mac zealots who claimed this wasn't true because at some point in the future, Apple might change their mind, and any way, who said their mind had been made up, I mean, Apple hasn't made an official announcement, right? To make matters worse, Apple's one comment on this was so inane it simply fueled the fire. One developer at Apple, posting on an Apple mailing list, said that the talk of XNU-Intel being "closed" was "speculation" and people shouldn't assume anything.

This was meaningless and largely wrong. Those saying it was closed were right: it was. You couldn't download the source to XNU-Intel. When you're stating a fact, you're not engaging in speculation.

There was much anger at this point because many people felt lied to. Apple had been advertising the openness of Darwin for a long time, and "Team Apple*" had been loud in repeating this supposed advantage, and now, without any explanation, the core of Darwin was now closed. Team Apple responded by claiming the Apple developer who said "speculation" had actually used the word "yet", and the "yet" word was used in pretty much every response to anyone critical of Apple or simply pointing out the fact that XNU-Intel was closed. Team Apple changed tact on the "Open Source is an advantage of Mac OS X" thing too, claiming it was never Apple's intention to release a useful operating system as open source, and that nobody cares about operating system kernels anyway. Needless to say, this intensified the anger.

What do we have today?

Apple has taken considerable steps to undo the damage. There's still no real explanation as to why XNU-Intel was closed. No technologies were announced yesterday whose existance could be discerned by looking at the kernel - which has supported the Intel architecture since its original release, which has supported the Xeon CPU range even back in the Panther days, and probably long before. It was not necessary to withhold the XNU source before the release of the PowerMac G5, or, indeed, any of the recent radical changes in architecture. Meanwhile, the software-related announcements this week don't appear to have anything to do with the Tiger kernel.

So, anyway, leaving aside the nonsense that it's "been confirmed" that the withholding of the source "was due to Apple's policy of not commenting upon unreleased products", we don't have an explanatio

Re:I Thought...

[bnenning]

I don't think there's a credible alternative explanation. The "undisclosed technology" thing has been revealed to be utterly untrue.

Why? The x86 kernel sources almost certainly have references to Woodcrest and quad CPUs, which Apple wouldn't have wanted to expose until the hardware announcements.

What about WebKit?

[cblack]

But what about WebKit, or other projects like it, such as WebKit?

You prefer Miicrosoft?

[bobalu]

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.

Re:You prefer Miicrosoft?

[Nataku564]

Wait ... VB a plus point for Microsoft? You know, you almost had me up until that one.

Both Windows and OS X are good for OS apps, but...

[MarkWatson]

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.

Re:Alot of damage needs to be undone

[Quantum Fizz]

I'm the opposite. I used to be a FOSS zealot, I've run Linux since 1998, I've gone out of my way to write reports in LaTeX instead of Word and to do presentations in OpenOffice instead of Powerpoint, etc. But now my time is worth more than a few bucks, and putzing around with my Linux box is getting too annoying.
.

So last year when my GF got a Mac Mini and I started using OS X, I've come to realize that I'll gratefully pay money for Quality closed-source software. I've since even bought iWork '06, and I never would have thought I'd pay money for an Office Suite.

So what you say might be true for a select few of the harder-core FOSS zealots, but I don't see why FOSS zealots would have even been on the Mac platform anyway if they're as zealous as to switch merely for the closing of Xnu. But anyway, for the rest of the 99% of the computing populace, this OSS initiative will be welcomed.

Re:Alot of damage needs to be undone

[Millenniumman]

There might have been 3 people who switched during the couple of months before apple released xnu for intel because of that. And I doubt there were that many.

Re:OS X

[Noksagt]

Apple own't Open source OSX, but they will eventually put it on shelves. Because Dell would like to sell it to you. And I would like to buy it.

Apple doesn't cater to the commodity market. So, no they won't do this.

but I also have a reasonably high end wintel workstation that I've already sunk thousands into and is a year away from needing replacement. If I could buy OS X for intel to run on it I would

And I thinkthey'd rather sell you a new $1000+ computer rather than selling you the $100 software (which would increase their costs by having to develop, test, and support a wide variety of configurations).

No actually they are open for a purpose

[DECS]

As noted in my various articles on Apple and OSS, companies open things for strategic purposes.

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:

---

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.

---

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.

Re:Alot of damage needs to be undone

[MBCook]

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.

(tapping foot)

[jpellino]

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.

PowerPC is to remain open

[Wesley Felter]

XNU/PowerPC has been open source for years. That's why people were surprised when the source for the x86 version was not released.

Re:OS X

[flithm]

If you're trying to argue that the hardware market is somehow more profitable than the software one I think you're sadly mistaken. If Apple were smart (which they are) they would rather sell you $350-$1000 dollar software and make TONS of ROI rather than try to compete in the tight hardware market which is currently on a downward trend.

No one will believe me, just as no one believed me when I said as soon as Apple releases OSX intel, it'll run on commodity hardware -- but it'll happen. Because Steve is smart dude.

Why not open J2SE mods?

[Vardamir]

I'm rather annoyed that Apple has chosen not to open their modifications to J2SE 1.5 and greater, since the project is now open source and can even be built on Windows by anyone that wants to ... kind of ironic it can't be built on a supposedly more open operating system.

The reason I really care is that I can't use anything but Java 1.4 on our OS 10.3 systems; I have no interest in upgrading to 10.4 except for the fact that Apple refuses to port J2SE to such an old and outdated os as OS 10.3 .....

Re:First post (from a mac)

[NosTROLLdamus]

A little slow... you must not be using an intel one.

Re:OS X

[pyite]

From the high end they'll sell you a server environment (Xserve + RAID + OS X Server)

Just as a point of clarification... Apple's solutions in this arena are more like mid end. The high mid end, at best.

The problem with Apple's SAN offerings is that while there is some redundancy in the box, you can't connect the same array to two SAN fabrics. This is a serious drawback for any true "high end" work.

Re:OS X

[Noksagt]

If you're trying to argue that the hardware market is somehow more profitable than the software one I think you're sadly mistaken.

That isn't what I was suggesting at all. You can develop high ROI & loyal repeat customers by providing an end-to-end solution. The game is to sell iPods, iBooks, and OS X to their customers, just as Microsoft's game is to sell Windows+WindowsMobile+Office. Even microsoft does sell hardware where they can. With the commoditization of the PC, there isn't a lot of space for that. They play where it is profitable & there aren't hugely dominant players & where the average customer is willing to get something better than a commodity (such as input devices).

Development and support of OS X is eased by the fact that Apple controls the hardware.

No one will believe me, just as no one believed me when I said as soon as Apple releases OSX intel, it'll run on commodity hardware -- but it'll happen. Because Steve is smart dude.

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).

Re:OS X

[Noksagt]

I'm rather stumped what this wide variety of configurations is that you speak of.

One easy example is that Rosetta relies on SSE3. Apple has released an OS that takes advantage of features not found on "legacy" chips (including rather recent ones). While allowing a "designed for Mac!" brand could be useful, but I doubt anything would be branded that wasn't also high-end & so wouldn't be that much cheaper. (And, to respond to other posters:the markup on bleeding edge hardware is quite high.)

I think that the outright sale of their O.S. to the unwashed masses who don't have the hardware to run it (and run it well) would be suicide. They might develop a rather small niche geek market, who wants a lower-end new PC (rather than a new high end one direct from Apple) with OS X, assuming that piracy in this demographic wouldn't be rampant.

But they'd have many, many more people who would buy it & just couldn't run the damn thing or would refuse to buy it (or a Mac) after hearing of others who couldn't run the damn thing.

Re:Not allowed by Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's Java contract with Sun does not allow it to give away any of it's Mac OS JVM code.

Blame Sun.

Not Apple.

Re:Alot of damage needs to be undone

[MyDixieWrecked]

BeOS died because of Microsoft.

During the whole antitrust thing, Be had gone to the DoJ and presented their case to them stating that, basically, with all the evidence they had, it was an open and shut case against M$. the DoJ, for whatever reasons, decided to instead focus on the fact that IE was bundled and embedded inside windows.

Be's case was that M$ was using unfair business practices to force them out of the industry. the M$ contract, to bundle and pre-install windows with your computers was that you were not allowed to sell any other operating system software, even if you bundle windows in addition to Windows, whether it's installed or not, or sold separately.

I believe it was Toshiba that was in talks with Be to bundle their OS as a dual-boot option, but M$ started throwing their lawyers at them.

The reason this didn't hit mainstream was that this contractual agreement between vendors and M$ was protected as a trade secret.

Re:OS X

[Noksagt]

They control the fact that they have no legacy components & can take advantage of recent technologies. Every MacIntel has SSE3. If Apple (or any other dev) wants to make an app that takes advantage of that (sucha as Rosetta), they'll be able to. They don't have to test on low-end PC hardware or every single component you can shove in a PCI slot from manufacturers that have died. The minimum hardware for a MacIntel is considerably higher than the average PC that is on someone's desk right now.

To shrinkwrap OS X & sell it to the Dell users of the world, they'd have to either develop & test like crazy on the lowend hardware (and pull out their hair when asked why low-end systems can't do some of the really cool stuff) or they'd have to specify minimum system requirements which the average user might not be able to see if they meet.

Re:OS X

[Y-Crate]

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.

Your post is a perfect example of why open source is not making any real headway into the desktop arena.

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.

Re:OS X

[imemyself]

Would that really be open source then?

Re:Retraction?

[Lord Kano]

Douche is the French word for "shower", if you want to insult someone it should be douche bag or douchebag.

LK

Apple is simply trying to strike a balance...

[TheNoxx]

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.

Re:Apple is simply trying to strike a balance...

[nick.ian.k]

Perhaps you are confused about what the community understands already, and will consider other perspectives in the future?

Your statement implies that people contributing to open source and/or free software projects/efforts/whatever aren't always compensated, and also that compensation equates with financial gian. Contribution alone suggests that there is some interest already at stake. This list is by no means comprehensive, but here are some common motivations:

1) Challenge. Perhaps someone's working on something because the matter at hand intrigues them and is a good way to flex their mental muscles and solve an interesting problem.

2) Practical application. The task at hand may be somewhere between fascinating and dull, but the contributor has a problem that they need to solve somehow, and either starting a project that's FS/OSS or contributing to an existing one somehow helps to solve the problem, either in one go or incrementally approaching a solution.

3) Facillitating "The Greater Good" relevant to one's own field of interests. Things done out of the goodness of one's own heart are typically geareed towards furthering a particular ideal, community, or some goal; that is, the well-meaning, altruistic behavior occurs because, if nothing else, the acting body has some interest at stake, in this case wanting to better or facilitate an application or other project that crosses into other fields of personal interest.

4) Material/financial gain. Yes, it does happen: some folks do indeed get paid directly to work on stuff that gets put out under GPL or whatever other give-back license might be appropriate. They get paid to put something together because someone needs it, and then the code gets put back out there so fewer people have to waste time solving the same problem twice.

That's an over-reduction, mind you, but I felt compelled to remind you that there's often more at stake than *just money*. If that was really the prime motivation, a lot fewer people would being opting to work jobs that require intellectual engagement and consideration, problem solving, etc. Remember, cents aren't always just petty in terms of exchange rate, but interpretive value as well. :)

Re:Apple is simply trying to strike a balance...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree completely.

There is nothing wrong with free software. I've written some myself. However, I object strenuously to GPL style "free" software that forces me to release my software under the same license if I use it. None of my software went out GPL. If you want to make it free, make it *completely* free. Don't tie a huge pile of strings onto it and call it free, because it isn't.

The huge fallacy of the software market is that software should be free because it has no material cost. Such logic completely disregards the value of the labor that went into writing (and maintaining!) the code. The principles that underly the philosophy of the FSF are closer to communism that most modern day communist regimes. Both would have the hard working and diligent stripped of the products of their labor.

Thankfully, the FSF does not appear to believe that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Apple fell in love with Ruby??

[gnufied]

http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2006/8/7/ruby-on-rai ls-will-ship-with-os-x-10-5-leopard "The love for Ruby has definitely spread inside Apple and we've been thrilled to see the level of interest they've taken to get OS X to be a premiere development and deployment platform for Rails." So what happened to a rather fruitful discussion, we had with Steve jobs. http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=172223&c id=14341270 Yeah, I know you may still argue like James Golsings that Ruby is alright for generating web pages(mind you *generating*, doesn't it shows the contempt/disregard on the part of James Goslings for Web Developers?).But still shipping a framework is too much.Even none of the flavours of GNU/Linux has done it.But i guess, Apple will eat its own humble pie, when it sees a business sense. Ruby on Rails + Textmate and the push by Rails core team, has created new OS X users.So, lets cash on it.There is nothing called "love for Ruby", as put up by, this guy on the Rails blog.If there is a love, why don't they help in writting Ruby bindings for Cocoa?? I am 101% sure, if tomorrow, there is a "Rails" for GUI development. http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/Aug-02.html, Apple will again eat its own humble pie(or cow dung, depending upong your GeoIP), and will ship it with OS X. But i am not interested, I am from India and will cost me a arm and a leg to lay hand on this half baked open sorsed(actually not open at all, if you call Mac open, then Windows is open too!!, but the way Mac zealots project Apple as less evil is funny.I remember, Galadariel talking to Frodo, "if you give me the ring frodo, then you will have a queen in place of dark lord Sauron.And she will be fair, white and terrible to behold." Ahh..there is go again, may not be the exact words, but that is beside the point. I just have this point that, Apple doesn't seem evil as long as M$ is there, but there it gains the ruling ring(the monopoly), it will be one for sure.) product.I am happy with Ubuntu. Thank you very much for your open kernel.(I am bothered to read your license also)

Actually... (fan controller)

[quacking duck]

By all accounts the fan control is entirely firmware-based, on both Macbook and Macbook Pro. In other words, no licence in the world would do you any good right now in coming up with a utility or even kernel extension to change the fan switch-on threshold.

This is a marked difference from the hardware sudden motion sensors, which CAN be accessed via software APIs on Macs; this is why a couple of funky hacks using the SMS, like iAlertU, or switching virtual desktops by tapping the side of the screen, were done on Mac notebooks first (IBM notebooks with similar sudden motion sensors did not have APIs exposing them).

I understand why Apple won't release actual APIs for these--the last thing they'd want is anyone accidentally (or purposefully) changing the fans to turn on far hotter than when they do now. What I DON'T understand is why they didn't design the firmware to allow a system preference that uses the current setting as the maximum threshold, with a couple of options to start the fans at lower temperatures.

Re:OS X

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"No, Apple own't Open source OSX, but they will eventually put it on shelves."

Wait.. are you saying Apple won't Open Source OSX, or that they pwnd OSS?

Re:OS X

[FLAGGR]

Um. NO. Apple designed the Mac Pro. Intel built the cpu and some other chips probably. If Intel gets all of the recognition for "designing" the Mac Pro, what is Dell? Apple makes a lot of custom boards and junk (because they're always making crazy, nonstandard, and usually (but not with the Mac Pro) small enclosures) Dell, Hp and what not just throw pieces into a box (actually, I think Dell soemtimes makes their motherboards..) Apple makes the moniter, the mouse, the keyboard, the case, the wireless antennas and junk on the inside plus that iPod you probably own. That doesn't make them a hardware company? Come on. However, Apple also makes the operatiing system, the iLife apps, iWork apps, and the gajillion other awesome programs. I guess that makes them a software company. They are both, hardware and software. They offer full solutions for computing needs, all in one bueatiful package and fully integrated with itself. Sort of like how Nintendo makes the systems not because they want to make hardware, but because they don't want to use other peoples hardware. (I think Mr. Miyamoto said something to this effect, but I'm too lazy to get a quote)

Re:Alot of damage needs to be undone

[MBCook]

Microsoft is the exception, because they are 90% of the market. The reason you can't have a proprietary OS is because you can't get past MS. At this point, it is currently impossible.

The only exception I can think of this would be to have a proprietary OS and give it away for free. Even then, you'd have a very tough time.

What about college kids?

[Slithe]

I think 'hacking' is far more dependant on age rather than location. Linux seems to appeal to the younger crowd, both because of the appeal of FOSS, and the 1337 ability to tailor your system EXACTLY to your liking! I first entered the Linux community in high school, and back then Gentoo seemed like a good match for me. Sure, it took me several weeks to properly install it. (I did not know what I was doing, so at every attempt I started from scratch. I liked to start from stage one and bootstrap the compiler while I slept and then emerge the system while I went to school, so I could compile the kernel when I got home! Now that my studies have picked up a bit, I do not have the 'endless' amounts of time that I once had (but still enough to read the comments on several Slashdot stories per day), so I pick a more convenient distro. The only way I could currently afford a MacBook/Pro would be to use the Apple Student Loan, and another monthly bill would inconvenience me even more than setting-up Ubuntu would.

Re:OS X

[dotgain]

Bloody well said! And believe it or not, I'm one of the die-hards he's talking about, except that I don't: fail to recognize that improvements to the presentation of information need to be geared to facilitating the user's interaction with it. - I agree 100%.

I've always used a shell since 16MB was a chunk of RAM, and it's going to stay that way. Every time I've tried out a new Desktop Environment I've just ended up frustrated at the waste of time that it was. Geez, guys - at least borrow some old Mac running OS8.1 and take some tips from that for a start. I've resigned to using XFCE, I've managed to tweak it so that enough shit stays out of my way graphically, and don't use much past launch menus and the dock, usually to open a Terminal or a Browser.

I often wonder if the very fact that it is free (as in beer) will doom it forever. Nobody can complain, because nobody pays for it. The guy who wasted time writing Wanda the Gnome fish can't be fired. The guy who stayed up until 3 coding a fix that would keep once again instill peace of mind in millions of administrators might get a pizza or a box of beer. There's little incentive or disincentive in it. While I'm not entirely chuffed with OSX myself, I give it 10/10 for "The devs giving a crap about the users experience"

Re:OS X

[Mr. Jaggers]

Not buggy any more, still fugly oldness though. I do run WindowMaker with some personalizations, though, and get some of that OpenStep goodness.

Re:Alot of damage needs to be undone

[Swift2001]

The second the Mac OS gets like Windows, I'm gone. I think the whole point of this OS conundrum is to make sure that many OSes survive. It would be best if they play nicely together, so that you can move your e-mail for Mac to Linux and so on, and open up Word docs on all platforms, maybe in a free app, but the maintenance of a number of systems in important in a networked world.

Interesting; G5 is in software.

[Kadin2048]

I found your comment interesting because it's different from what I know from experience is the case on the desktop machines (G5 towers). While I have no experience with the newer Intel-based systems, I always assumed they were the same.

At least on the G5, the firmware acts only as a "fail safe." If the software doesn't come up after some reasonable amount of time and take control of the fans, and keep the core temperatures within a normal range, it will kick the fans on to keep the system from melting (or going into some sort of thermal-shutdown mode, also bad).

You could test this easily by rebooting the machine into single-user (recovery, safe, whatever you want to call it) or target disk mode, in which all the hardware/firmware systems ought to be running normally, but many parts of the system aren't loaded, and watching what happens: after a delay, the fans would be ramped up to their highest setting and left there. The intelligent control normally performed (which regulates the fans/pumps based on temperature) doesn't happen at all.

Seems like it would be a pretty easy test on any other machine to reboot it in Target Disk mode or single-user mode (maybe it was open firmware mode), and watching what happens to the fans, to see if they're managed by a firmware system, or by a combination of hardware and a kernel extension.

Re:Interesting; G5 is in software.

[cswiger2005]

Agreed. It's very common for systems to run the fans at full speed when they first power up, and then slow down once the system boots far enough for the "smart" fan control software to take control.

It's not uncommon to need to provide about half of the fan's rated power before it will spin up when stopped, so providing an initial full-power jolt to the fans helps make sure that they are really spinning; once they are, it's OK to slow them down even below the point where they wouldn't be able to start from a standstill.

Retractions, Please?

[Narcogen]

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?

Re:Retractions, Please?

[mccoma]

Why bother?

Because it is the right thing to do if you make remarks about someone or something that are untrue.

Re:Retractions, Please?

[Sam Ritchie]

Apple had the opportunity to correct people on those statements ahead of time and didn't.

Like this?

I personally think Tom Yager does deserve to be pooh-poohed now his sensationalist spin on a piece of non-news has been proven incorrect.

Re:Alot of damage needs to be undone

[Mr. Jaggers]

I personally try very hard to only run GPL'ed, natively-compiled applications, and to contribute back to as many as I have to skills to help. This, I think, is part of being a good neighbor.

However, in the interest of helping a new convert stay on the side of the light, if you ever miss the popular windows games, you should consider Cedega from TransGaming. Several guys here in my office run it on their Gentoo or Debian boxes (so it'll probably work on Ubuntu also), and play World of Warcraft and Battlefield 2, etc. It's good to have a beefy machine, but it's more important to have a nice graphics adaptor (my buddies here have NVidia cards).

Anyway, I hate to sound like an advertisement for them, since I think that projects like Cedega and NDIS are generally bad for FOSS in the long run. After seeing how happy some of my friends are to be able to play certain games on their GNU/Linux laptops, some over (mostly) functioning wireless LAN connections via NDIS wrapper, I have to admit that they are generally good for GNU/Linux in the short term.

Also, keep in mind that if (when) you have money to buy your shiny new Mac OS box, you can also put Ubuntu on there as well, and switch handily between them (simultaneously, I believe). That will give you an easy migration path from your old box without having to abandon any of your new L33t Ubuntu skills.

Re:OS X

[Overly Critical Guy]

If you're trying to argue that the hardware market is somehow more profitable than the software one I think you're sadly mistaken.

Apple is a business. If what you say were true, they would be a software company, not a hardware company. They already did the Mac-licensing thing in the 90s.

I would really be interested in what you're basing your claim on that hardware isn't more profitable than software, at least for Apple. Would you tell Apple to stop selling iPods and instead be a FairPlay/iTunes software licensing company? Get real. Even Microsoft saw that approach fall apart with PlaysForSure.

Re:OS X

[Watts Martin]

Massive profit gain, with the only downside being a slight loss in public love when people blame them for their DOA Dell boxen.

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.)

Not hardware/software--integrated

[snowwrestler]

If you're trying to argue that the hardware market is somehow more profitable than the software one I think you're sadly mistaken.

Apple does not sell hardware; they sell computers. Computers are products that are made up of both hardware and software, which work together. The question is not one of raw profits, but of vision and strategy in the computing market.

Yes, I know Microsoft makes a lot of money with operating systems. But first of all they don't cost $350-$1000 (where did you get this number in a discussion of OS??). Also they are literally the only company succeeding with an OS-only (no hardware) strategy. And I think you'll find that the margins on that piece of their business are falling fast, as are the boxed-product sales volumes. The OS is a commodity in consumer products, whether you're talking about a cell phone, microwave, or home computer. It just comes on the hardware and it's built into the price.

An integrated product is what makes the money in consumer markets. It's how Sony and Apple have made the majority of their money, and both companies have been around longer than Microsoft. A good computing experience requires a good OS, which is why Apple works so hard on it. They sell computers (not OS) to consumers (not system builders) and their most relevant competition is Sony, Dell, Gateway or HP (not Microsoft). It's a fundamentally different approach to the computer business that a lot of people just can't seem to wrap their heads around. Changing that mid-stream, in the midst of dramatic success and growth, would be phenomenally stupid.

Repeat after me: just because something worked for Microsoft last century, doesn't mean it will work for anyone else today.

No company in the computing business will ever duplicate the MS success, just like no company in the phone business will ever duplicate AT&T's success, just like no company in the steel business will duplicate U.S. Steel's success. Times change.

Apple's Teams

[nedaf7]

Browsing through the new MacOSForge.org, I noticed something on the page for the Calendar Server. In a list of compatible clients, it lists "Apple's Teams". I've never heard of this application, and I did a little poking around on Apple's website. I noticed a page describing OS X Leopard Server's built in Wiki Server, specifically the repeated mention of teams using the Wiki server to collaborate on projects.

This along with the iCal Server leads me to believe that OS X Leopard will include systemwide collaboration functionality that will integrate with any Apps that are programmed to use it. More evidence: How come during the demo of iChat's ability to share Keynote presentations, photos, videos, etc., we never saw the interface for the person sharing the documents? I would guess it's part of Leopard's collaboration system, named Teams.

Re:Apple's Teams

[David McBride]

See also screenshot on the Apple website:

http://images.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/imag es/indextop20060807.png

Notice the "Teams Directory" window in the background.

Re:Apple fell in love with Ruby?? [yes!]

[jkh]

Sigh. Wrong? Some of us like rails just because we like rails, OK? And, for the record, we HAVE helped with the writing of Ruby bindings for Cocoa - anyone who was actually interested in that topic rather than just pulling it out of the air as a randomly chosen example of "why Apple must not really love Ruby" would already know this because they'd have checked out the RubyCocoa project and noticed, surprise surprise, that Apple had donated a number of improvements back. Ruby is an excellent language and one we're happy to see better supported on our platform (and willing to put engineering time and effort towards that goal).

Re:Don't tell me about it, I was there.

[Quantum Fizz]

Well if you want to play that game, the Apple IIGS came out a year BEFORE your Amiga 500 and had resolution of 640x200 with 4096 colors.
.

And in reality your statement (as well as mine here) are quite misleading because both systems could only simultaneously display a handful of colors (out of a palette of 4096).

But anyway, if you're going to dis Apple at least do a proper comparison.

Uhm...

[LKM]

You're conveniently forgetting that most people would simply not buy Mac OS X for PCs. Yeah, the margins are higher for software than for hardware. Doesn't matter if you ain't selling any.

And even with the high margins, Apple makes more money on each Mac sold than on each Mac OS X box sold if the box is priced below 400 US$.

Look at Be OS: It was free, and people still didn't want it.

Re:Apple fell in love with Ruby?? [yes!]

[GaryPatterson]

http://rubycocoa.cvs.sourceforge.net/rubycocoa/src /ChangeLog?revision=1.255.2.38&view=markup

Read the email addresses, and note that Laurent Sansonetti is one of the five RubyCocoa developers (lrz).

I guess you'll be wanting to apologise to the previous poster.

Re:Alot of damage needs to be undone

[Paradise Pete]

I'd mod you interesting if I still had my points from yesterday. I wonder if this will change with Vista?

No, your mod points from yesterday are gone for good.

According to capitalistst...

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost of anything in a competitive free market tends to the marginal cost of production. E.g. bugger all.

This is not the case with copyrighted software because it is no longer a competitive free market. Copyleft makes it a competitive free market because once the code is done, it will go down to the marginal cost or the market acceptable cost (e.g. buying from RedHat costs because it is RedHat, but CentOS doesn't have the cachet or appearance of stability in the business world, so some user RH over CentOS, despite the higher cost).

The principles of FSF are far more compatible with what the market is *supposed* to be than the CSS world philosophy. CSS is more communistic in effect. FOSS is NEVER communistic, the state ownes NOTHING that is FOSS. FOSS is, if anything political, utopian.

Remember, there are two extremes of political system, neither of which are wanted: communism and capitalism. Marx posited the idea that you had to move away from a capitalist system to communist to remove the concentration of power and money from the elite to a state-owned system (the state has more power than any individual, so would be the ONLY entity that could force the elite to back down). When the communist system fails, as Marx predicted would happen because of systemic corruption, the best of both systems would be arrived at in a utopian society. This society would not allow anyone to concentrate power or money in any individual or group, because they knew what evils that would produce.

Please read rather than take the soundbytes as gospel.

Re:Both Windows and OS X are good for OS apps, but

[Durandal64]

Actually I thought it was a gcc compiler flag at first.

Not in Switzerland

[theolein]

Here, in admittedly tiny Switzerland, we have the highest percentage of Mac users anywhere, period. While I'm one of those and also work with Linux and Windows, the fact is that Macs are incredibly popular, and if people have money (Switzerland is fairly well off), they will buy them. Sweden, for example, which is also fairly well off, also has a high percentage of Mac users. The fact is that Macs are simply a bit simpler to use and somewhat more robust against user wear and tear than Windows.

Re:Apple fell in love with Ruby?? [yes!]

[jkh]

Ah slashdot, all the decorum and wit of a nursery school recess... Ruby works fine on 10.4.7, including the pack and unpack functions. Yes, there were bugs (that nobody "went out of their way" to cause - we have better things to do) and it took us longer than we'd have liked to fix them. That experience, in fact, is what led us to devote more resources to ruby going forward. Gah, posting on slashdot is like going to a sleezy strip club, isn't it? It's always against your better judgement, you feel slightly dirty and sad afterwards and you always swear never to do it again. I guess this takes care of any prurient impulses I might have had for the year. :)