I think somebody's on crack. Mac OS X is essentially a GUI and a bunch of tools and apps that run on top of Darwin, which is open-source (see http://publicsource.apple.com/). It should be possible to port Darwin to run on non-Apple PowerPC systems, and then run the rest of Mac OS X on top of that, thus paving the way for the return of Mac clones (except done right this time, not under Apple's control, with no licensing that Apple can suddenly pull if they want).
But no, the entirety of Mac OS X will not be open-source. You can port Darwin to x86, but since the GUI and other apps are PowerPC binaries only, you can't port the rest of it. First, they couldn't open everything because of licensing from third parties, but second, it doesn't make sense for them. They want to make money, and selling Mac OS X is a good way to make money.
However, I do expect them to open up more and more components (QuickTime is one I'd like to see). The beautiful thing about that is, since using open source software (and releasing the source code to your modifications and derivatives as required by the license) is so contrary to Microsoft's business model, by opening components such as QuickTime (which is free anyway) they let Linux/*NIX users have it, but Microsoft won't steal it.
Just like what happened with AIM and Microsoft Messenger: AOL made the TOC protocol and the open-source TiK client, so Linux users could play and be happy, but what Microsoft did is try to reverse-engineer and rip off AOL's proprietary binary stuff instead (which AOL then broke for them). Microsoft refuses to use anything open-source, which I think is hysterically funny.
Duh. There's no fucking services running on a typical mac.
That was exactly my point. To get the same level of security on, say, RedHat, for example, you'd have to disable a whole bunch of daemons that are always installed by default, and that's assuming you can even find them. I know where everything is on Slackware, of course, but I've had somewhat-newbie friends try to lock down RedHat or Mandrake boxes and they can't even find which daemons are bound to some of those open ports. Obviously if you don't even know what services you're running, you can't be sure that you're secure.
The only reason apple was able to do it is because they didn't have very many macs in use...
OK, that's just stupid.
...and their systems are so proprietery that whatever they say goes.
This is one of Apple's biggest advantages when it comes to industry-leading innovation, although it is a bit annoying when you're thinking of making a purchase. Fortunately they're dumping most of their proprietary (or just different) hardware in favor of more commonly accepted standards (HD-15 instead of DB-15 monitor connectors, USB instead of ADB, no more 8-pin mini-DIN serial ports...).
On the other hand, there is heavy competition in the PC world and there are too many PC's that exist to just suddenly drop support for them.
Once again, you're on crack.
Chances are that any company(AMD, Intel) that just dropped the x86 instruction set would lose a lot of business and nobody would support it. They will always have to maintain compatibility with previous generations and just add new instructions to make it more powerful.
This is the view that is currently held, as is evidenced by what products are out there, but with the rise of Linux (and, to a lesser extent, other open-source operating systems), processor-dependence is becoming less important, and chipmakers know this. And remember, AMD has also made a bold move, and been successful - they released a processor with no motherboard support whatsoever, and lo and behold, we have Athlon motherboards now. If AMD says they're making a new processor that uses a new instruction set, you can bet that Linux will support it before too long.
I think that it would be great to have a new RISC based chip for the PC (it really wouldn't be a PC then), but it just isn't practical.
Um, PC means Personal Computer. If you change nothing but the processor, you also have to change the software (new Linux distribution, recompile, woohoo, not that hard, just like all the other architectures Linux runs on [PowerPC, Alpha, Sparc...]).
YEs, but in the latter case, people will still get upset at the gun manufacturer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there have been lawsuits about that. Even if not, the idea has prompted gunmakers to add extra safety features.
Ummmm, hello? This is not an OS issue. Whether they use WinNT or FreeBSD or Solaris, the problem is, they forgot to pay their $35 renewal fee to Network Solutions, and NSI turned it off.
I have to side with AOL on the thing with Microsoft, at least. Here's why:
E-mail is a peer-to-peer protocol, while AOL Instant Messenger is very much client-server. With SMTP, you set up a box running Sendmail, and if you want to send e-mail to someone else, it contacts their server and sends the message. If they want to send you a mesage, their server contacts yours and sends you a message. It's not at a ll centralized - except for the involvement of root nameservers in making MX records available.
With AIM, on the other hand, all messages are relayed through one server network. All users must authenticate themselves on that network, and their information is broadcast by that network to other clients. If I want to send you a message, I send it to AOL, and AOL forwards it to you. If you reply, you send your reply back to AOL, and AOL forwards it to me.
My experience with AIM has been extremely positive. It can navigate through extremely restrictive firewalls, it makes it impossible for other users to find my IP address (except in certain cases, which it usually warns about), and if someone annoys me, I can make them go away. There is (at least limited) support for a huge variety of platforms (I've seen screen shots of an AIM clone running on an Apple IIgs, Freshmeat listed an ncurses version, I've heard there's an Emacs plug-in, and there's a Java applet version at http://toc.oscar.aol.com/). And, they continue to actively improve it, adding new features and fixing bugs.
Here's another problem: AOL has two different AIM protocols, called TOC and OSCAR. The Mac and Windows clients use OSCAR, which is binary and proprietary. TiK, Gaim, and all the other IM clones use TOC, which is open, text-based, and documented. Microsoft could have used the TOC protocol, but instead they took the time to reverse-engineer OSCAR.
Two options: either RedHat releases both RedHat Linux and Corel Linux side by side, or they kill Corel Linux completely. That would be a shame; I haven't had a chance to play with it yet but I hear the installer is great. No, RedHat won't just absorb Corel Linux into RedHat Linux; if they'd wanted to do that they would have done it with Debian already - hey, it's all GPL. What I'd like to see is RedHat apply Mandrake patches to fix bugs & improve stability (disclaimer: I've never actually used Mandrake, only heard about it).
Personally I just don't like RedHat because their distro sucks. I dunno, maybe Slackware has spoiled me, but RedHat seems to be astoundingly buggy. I've seen problems ranging from spontaneous core dumps to a Gnome control panel permanently breaking to the root password on a clean install not working. Plus, it absulutely requires a swap partition regardless of how much RAM you have (and some of us like using swap files occasionally, thank you), and the/etc/rc.d directory in RedHat never really made any sense to me (in contrast to Slackware's style), although I'm sure that's just my personal taste.
No way Microsoft would touch it! If Corel open-sourced WordPerfect, Microsoft would A) ignore it, trying to lead people into believing that it doesn't exist, or B) steal some ideas and incorporate them into their own proprietary software, or even C) illegally steal some code, incorporate it into their own proprietary software, and don't release anything GPL. Microsoft would never take GPL code, mess with it, and re-release it GPL. That concept doesn't fit Microsoft's business model. It goes against everything they believe in, and everything they want their customers to believe in. If Microsoft releases the source code to anything, they're demonstrating that open-source software can work.
Granted, but they still shouldn't have announced the G4s as shipping machines when they did. They should have demoed them and said "we'll have these ready to ship soon" or something, not "they're shipping today".
1. Apple is great because they did the right thing.
Umm, no, Apple screwed up big-time, which was unbelievable, and then they fixed it.
2. Slashdot and other news/rumor sites need to get their act together and confirm rumors before posting them.
Umm, no, Apple actually changed their mind quite a few times and there was no clear definite answer available until this final press release.
3. It's all Motorola's fault for not having enough G4s ready in time, or for not having the 500MHz chips ready at all.
Umm, no, Motorola knew that they weren't quite ready for full production, and warned Apple of that, but Apple chose not to listen to them, instead deciding to announce the G4s _way_ too early. Or at least announcing them as shipping. Apple wasn't even ready themselves - thus the 400MHz "Yikes!" model, a hacked-up G3 system with a G4 processor that they could ship immediately. If they'd waited until their hardware was ready for production, Motorola would have been able to produce a few more G4s, and Apple would have had a better product to release. The whole thing is stupid, and with all the good decisions Apple's been making lately, I couldn't believe they blew this one, but obviously they did. Way to go, Steve.
I'm running Slackware 3.5 with Linux 2.2.12. Slackware 3.5 came with Linux 2.0.34. Upgrading the kernel to 2.2.x required updates to a handful of stuff (pppd, ipchains...) and was mildly annoying. A new distribution with new versions of all of these would be nice. Also, I need glibc for things like XMMS, StarOffice and apparently Apple's QuickTime Streaming proxy server (the only protocol I haven't gotten to work over masquerading). I'm really looking forward to Slackware 7, and I hope the final stable version will be out before I get fed up with what I've got and start upgrading things manually.
AOL scares me. I think they're pretty much the only company right now that has the power to go to war with Microsoft and really hurt Microsoft a lot. The problem is, I don't know if they're going to attack Microsoft, or join forces with them. I hope for the former, it'd be a lot of fun to watch.
And Sun, I think, is doing a lot of good things (open source is great!) but I think they don't get a lot. Networking is not all that! Networking is great, but we still need individual computers too.
I don't know. It'll be interesting to see what they do over the next year. I'm just gonna sit back and watch.
Completely out of the question; you'd pretty much have to rewrite the whole thing. All 3-D aspects of the levels are an optical illusion. When you go up stairs, it looks like you're going up, but you're really going forward on a 2-D map. When you shoot at a bad guy, there is no up or down aiming - only left and right - because there is no real up and down.
To change that, not only would you have to redo the maps, you'd have to redo most of the engine.
I remember hearing a rumor that Apple was talking to nVidia or somebody, but I don't recall the details and don't expect to hear anything definite within the next 6 months.
Apple is in the process of taking everything that isn't industry-standard and either changing it to match the standard (e.g. SVGA monitor ports going from DB-15 to HD-15) or throwing it out entirely (e.g. 8-pin mini-DIN serial ports). At the same time, they're taking industry standards (USB, IEEE 1394, IEEE 802.11a) and pushing them forward. What incentive would hardware vendors have to create USB peripherals if Apple hadn't sold 800,000 iMacs in three months with no other way to connect to anything?
I work for a fairly large local ISP in Phoenix AZ, and we basically offer some degree of technical support for any piece of hardware of software technically capable of working with our service, regardless of whether or not we've seen it before. We mostly do Win95/98, but we'll help you with Mac OS or NT, and give you all the basic info you need for Linux or anything else. We never tell anyone "sorry, you have to have this or this in order to use our service," although we may say "I've never heard of that before, so if you can't figure it out I probably won't be able to help you."
I was thinking about the possibilities with my TI-82. I made a two-player Chess game (you can't play against the calculator, sorry) and a working version of Cannons and Castles (http://www.bigfoot.com/~phroggy/cannons/). And Hangman. I tried to make a multiplayer Tic-Tac-Toe game, but wasn't able to get the networking worknig right. However, I was rather discouraged by the fact that the TI-82 doesn't support string variables. Hangman without strings was an interesting trick, let me tell you. Oh yeah, and I got it to display a scanned photo of my face on the screen.:-)
That's not the point. They're both open source, and AOL controls both of them. What would happen if mozilla.org suddenly disappeared one day? Sure, the code would still be open source, if you can find it. Think Mozilla will stand a chance against competing browsers if that happens? You can run it on your system, but how many others will be doing the same?
Further evidence that AOL isn't killing TiK. They're not even bothering to remove it from their servers - just removing all links to it, so that anybody who doesn't already know about it won't notice it.
It will come back. AOL isn't stupid.
Re:If GPL shouldn't MS also open their client?
on
AOL Jilts Open Source
·
· Score: 1
hehehe - No, no no no. Microsoft take an existing, freely-available, well-documented, open-source project and integrate it into their own software? No way in hell. They're not smart enough to do things the easy way.
TiK is based on the TOC protocol, which is text-based. My understanding of what Microsoft did is reverse-engineered the OSCAR protocol, which is binary, proprietary, and undocumented. _That's_ what AOL is pissed about.
Microsoft didn't use anything related to TiK; they actually reverse-engineered AIM. It's not GPL; Microsoft didn't use any source code (probably). AOL just deided that taking TiK off their servers would be a good idea, just until this thing blows over.
Slashdot Mirror
I think somebody's on crack. Mac OS X is essentially a GUI and a bunch of tools and apps that run on top of Darwin, which is open-source (see http://publicsource.apple.com/). It should be possible to port Darwin to run on non-Apple PowerPC systems, and then run the rest of Mac OS X on top of that, thus paving the way for the return of Mac clones (except done right this time, not under Apple's control, with no licensing that Apple can suddenly pull if they want).
But no, the entirety of Mac OS X will not be open-source. You can port Darwin to x86, but since the GUI and other apps are PowerPC binaries only, you can't port the rest of it. First, they couldn't open everything because of licensing from third parties, but second, it doesn't make sense for them. They want to make money, and selling Mac OS X is a good way to make money.
However, I do expect them to open up more and more components (QuickTime is one I'd like to see). The beautiful thing about that is, since using open source software (and releasing the source code to your modifications and derivatives as required by the license) is so contrary to Microsoft's business model, by opening components such as QuickTime (which is free anyway) they let Linux/*NIX users have it, but Microsoft won't steal it.
Just like what happened with AIM and Microsoft Messenger: AOL made the TOC protocol and the open-source TiK client, so Linux users could play and be happy, but what Microsoft did is try to reverse-engineer and rip off AOL's proprietary binary stuff instead (which AOL then broke for them). Microsoft refuses to use anything open-source, which I think is hysterically funny.
Sorry for rambling aimlessly....
That was exactly my point. To get the same level of security on, say, RedHat, for example, you'd have to disable a whole bunch of daemons that are always installed by default, and that's assuming you can even find them. I know where everything is on Slackware, of course, but I've had somewhat-newbie friends try to lock down RedHat or Mandrake boxes and they can't even find which daemons are bound to some of those open ports. Obviously if you don't even know what services you're running, you can't be sure that you're secure.
--
Um, you're smoking what?
...and their systems are so proprietery that whatever they say goes.
The only reason apple was able to do it is because they didn't have very many macs in use...
OK, that's just stupid.
This is one of Apple's biggest advantages when it comes to industry-leading innovation, although it is a bit annoying when you're thinking of making a purchase. Fortunately they're dumping most of their proprietary (or just different) hardware in favor of more commonly accepted standards (HD-15 instead of DB-15 monitor connectors, USB instead of ADB, no more 8-pin mini-DIN serial ports...).
On the other hand, there is heavy competition in the PC world and there are too many PC's that exist to just suddenly drop support for them.
Once again, you're on crack.
Chances are that any company(AMD, Intel) that just dropped the x86 instruction set would lose a lot of business and nobody would support it. They will always have to maintain compatibility with previous generations and just add new instructions to make it more powerful.
This is the view that is currently held, as is evidenced by what products are out there, but with the rise of Linux (and, to a lesser extent, other open-source operating systems), processor-dependence is becoming less important, and chipmakers know this. And remember, AMD has also made a bold move, and been successful - they released a processor with no motherboard support whatsoever, and lo and behold, we have Athlon motherboards now. If AMD says they're making a new processor that uses a new instruction set, you can bet that Linux will support it before too long.
I think that it would be great to have a new RISC based chip for the PC (it really wouldn't be a PC then), but it just isn't practical.
Um, PC means Personal Computer. If you change nothing but the processor, you also have to change the software (new Linux distribution, recompile, woohoo, not that hard, just like all the other architectures Linux runs on [PowerPC, Alpha, Sparc...]).
Mustn't forget when WordPerfect went from 5.1 to 6.0, and Microsoft Word went from 2.0 to 6.0...
YEs, but in the latter case, people will still get upset at the gun manufacturer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there have been lawsuits about that. Even if not, the idea has prompted gunmakers to add extra safety features.
Ummmm, hello? This is not an OS issue. Whether they use WinNT or FreeBSD or Solaris, the problem is, they forgot to pay their $35 renewal fee to Network Solutions, and NSI turned it off.
I have to side with AOL on the thing with Microsoft, at least. Here's why:
E-mail is a peer-to-peer protocol, while AOL Instant Messenger is very much client-server. With SMTP, you set up a box running Sendmail, and if you want to send e-mail to someone else, it contacts their server and sends the message. If they want to send you a mesage, their server contacts yours and sends you a message. It's not at a ll centralized - except for the involvement of root nameservers in making MX records available.
With AIM, on the other hand, all messages are relayed through one server network. All users must authenticate themselves on that network, and their information is broadcast by that network to other clients. If I want to send you a message, I send it to AOL, and AOL forwards it to you. If you reply, you send your reply back to AOL, and AOL forwards it to me.
My experience with AIM has been extremely positive. It can navigate through extremely restrictive firewalls, it makes it impossible for other users to find my IP address (except in certain cases, which it usually warns about), and if someone annoys me, I can make them go away. There is (at least limited) support for a huge variety of platforms (I've seen screen shots of an AIM clone running on an Apple IIgs, Freshmeat listed an ncurses version, I've heard there's an Emacs plug-in, and there's a Java applet version at http://toc.oscar.aol.com/). And, they continue to actively improve it, adding new features and fixing bugs.
Here's another problem: AOL has two different AIM protocols, called TOC and OSCAR. The Mac and Windows clients use OSCAR, which is binary and proprietary. TiK, Gaim, and all the other IM clones use TOC, which is open, text-based, and documented. Microsoft could have used the TOC protocol, but instead they took the time to reverse-engineer OSCAR.
It sounds like AT&T is using TOC.
hehehehehe
Two options: either RedHat releases both RedHat Linux and Corel Linux
side by side, or they kill Corel Linux completely.
That would be a shame; I haven't had a chance to play with it yet
but I hear the installer is great. No, RedHat won't just absorb Corel Linux into RedHat Linux;
if they'd wanted to do that they would have done it with Debian already - hey, it's all GPL.
What I'd like to see is RedHat apply Mandrake patches to fix bugs & improve stability (disclaimer: I've never actually used Mandrake, only heard about it).
Personally I just don't like RedHat because their distro sucks. /etc/rc.d directory in RedHat never really made any sense to me (in contrast to Slackware's style), although I'm sure that's just my personal taste.
I dunno, maybe Slackware has spoiled me, but RedHat seems
to be astoundingly buggy. I've seen problems ranging from
spontaneous core dumps to a Gnome control panel permanently breaking to
the root password on a clean install not working.
Plus, it absulutely requires a swap partition regardless of how much RAM
you have (and some of us like using swap files occasionally, thank you),
and the
OK, I think I'm done ranting now. Sorry.
No way Microsoft would touch it! If Corel open-sourced WordPerfect, Microsoft would
A) ignore it, trying to lead people into believing that it doesn't exist, or
B) steal some ideas and incorporate them into their own proprietary software, or even
C) illegally steal some code, incorporate it into their own proprietary software, and don't release anything GPL.
Microsoft would never take GPL code, mess with it, and re-release it GPL.
That concept doesn't fit Microsoft's business model. It goes against everything they believe in,
and everything they want their customers to believe in. If Microsoft releases the source code to anything,
they're demonstrating that open-source software can work.
http://publicsource.apple.com/
That makes sense. Considering Slackware's stability and security, I can't imagine their Web site getting hacked like that.
:-)
I work about 30 feet away from attrition.org, on the other side of a door. It's the one with the bumper stickers on it.
Granted, but they still shouldn't have announced the G4s as shipping machines when they did. They should have demoed them and said "we'll have these ready to ship soon" or something, not "they're shipping today".
OK, a few things bother me:
1. Apple is great because they did the right thing.
Umm, no, Apple screwed up big-time, which was unbelievable, and then they fixed it.
2. Slashdot and other news/rumor sites need to get their act together and confirm rumors before posting them.
Umm, no, Apple actually changed their mind quite a few times and there was no clear definite answer available until this final press release.
3. It's all Motorola's fault for not having enough G4s ready in time, or for not having the 500MHz chips ready at all.
Umm, no, Motorola knew that they weren't quite ready for full production, and warned Apple of that, but Apple chose not to listen to them, instead deciding to announce the G4s _way_ too early. Or at least announcing them as shipping. Apple wasn't even ready themselves - thus the 400MHz "Yikes!" model, a hacked-up G3 system with a G4 processor that they could ship immediately. If they'd waited until their hardware was ready for production, Motorola would have been able to produce a few more G4s, and Apple would have had a better product to release. The whole thing is stupid, and with all the good decisions Apple's been making lately, I couldn't believe they blew this one, but obviously they did. Way to go, Steve.
I'm running Slackware 3.5 with Linux 2.2.12. Slackware 3.5 came with Linux 2.0.34. Upgrading the kernel to 2.2.x required updates to a handful of stuff (pppd, ipchains...) and was mildly annoying. A new distribution with new versions of all of these would be nice. Also, I need glibc for things like XMMS, StarOffice and apparently Apple's QuickTime Streaming proxy server (the only protocol I haven't gotten to work over masquerading). I'm really looking forward to Slackware 7, and I hope the final stable version will be out before I get fed up with what I've got and start upgrading things manually.
My first First Post?
AOL scares me. I think they're pretty much the only company right now that has the power to go to war with Microsoft and really hurt Microsoft a lot. The problem is, I don't know if they're going to attack Microsoft, or join forces with them. I hope for the former, it'd be a lot of fun to watch.
And Sun, I think, is doing a lot of good things (open source is great!) but I think they don't get a lot. Networking is not all that! Networking is great, but we still need individual computers too.
I don't know. It'll be interesting to see what they do over the next year. I'm just gonna sit back and watch.
Completely out of the question; you'd pretty much have to rewrite the whole thing. All 3-D aspects of the levels are an optical illusion. When you go up stairs, it looks like you're going up, but you're really going forward on a 2-D map. When you shoot at a bad guy, there is no up or down aiming - only left and right - because there is no real up and down.
To change that, not only would you have to redo the maps, you'd have to redo most of the engine.
I remember hearing a rumor that Apple was talking to nVidia or somebody, but I don't recall the details and don't expect to hear anything definite within the next 6 months.
Duh...
Apple is in the process of taking everything that isn't industry-standard and either changing it to match the standard (e.g. SVGA monitor ports going from DB-15 to HD-15) or throwing it out entirely (e.g. 8-pin mini-DIN serial ports). At the same time, they're taking industry standards (USB, IEEE 1394, IEEE 802.11a) and pushing them forward. What incentive would hardware vendors have to create USB peripherals if Apple hadn't sold 800,000 iMacs in three months with no other way to connect to anything?
I work for a fairly large local ISP in Phoenix AZ, and we basically offer some degree of technical support for any piece of hardware of software technically capable of working with our service, regardless of whether or not we've seen it before. We mostly do Win95/98, but we'll help you with Mac OS or NT, and give you all the basic info you need for Linux or anything else. We never tell anyone "sorry, you have to have this or this in order to use our service," although we may say "I've never heard of that before, so if you can't figure it out I probably won't be able to help you."
I was thinking about the possibilities with my TI-82. I made a two-player Chess game (you can't play against the calculator, sorry) and a working version of Cannons and Castles (http://www.bigfoot.com/~phroggy/cannons/). And Hangman. I tried to make a multiplayer Tic-Tac-Toe game, but wasn't able to get the networking worknig right. However, I was rather discouraged by the fact that the TI-82 doesn't support string variables. Hangman without strings was an interesting trick, let me tell you. Oh yeah, and I got it to display a scanned photo of my face on the screen. :-)
That's not the point. They're both open source, and AOL controls both of them. What would happen if mozilla.org suddenly disappeared one day? Sure, the code would still be open source, if you can find it. Think Mozilla will stand a chance against competing browsers if that happens? You can run it on your system, but how many others will be doing the same?
Further evidence that AOL isn't killing TiK. They're not even bothering to remove it from their servers - just removing all links to it, so that anybody who doesn't already know about it won't notice it.
It will come back. AOL isn't stupid.
hehehe - No, no no no. Microsoft take an existing, freely-available, well-documented, open-source project and integrate it into their own software? No way in hell. They're not smart enough to do things the easy way.
TiK is based on the TOC protocol, which is text-based. My understanding of what Microsoft did is reverse-engineered the OSCAR protocol, which is binary, proprietary, and undocumented. _That's_ what AOL is pissed about.
Microsoft didn't use anything related to TiK; they actually reverse-engineered AIM. It's not GPL; Microsoft didn't use any source code (probably). AOL just deided that taking TiK off their servers would be a good idea, just until this thing blows over.