Apple may be a 'fringe company', but as insignificance goes, chances are there are more people using their products on the desktop than Linux. They definitely hold more sway with commercial software vendors than desktop Linux. There's also no such thing as a 'tiny monopoly'.
In what way do Apple excersize monopoly control over any market -by manufacturing the OS and the hardware together, like computer companies always used to do? I guess you're probably too young to remember when computers used to work properly.
I don't think much of Steve Jobs, but he sure as hell didn't run Apple into the ground. He is just about solely responsible for making the Apple II into something that normal people wanted to own, which made Apple into a multi billion dollar company.
He had a significant hand in bringing the Mac to market, about the only really bad business decision he made before getting ousted was showing the GUI to Bill Gates.
Nope, the honour of nearly running Apple into the ground goes to John Sculley and Gil Amelio.
Steve Jobs lollipop iMacs and crap additions to prevent System 7 from dying are what prevented Apple from going under in the late 90s. And Steve Jobs is responsible for probably doubling the number of Unix machines on desktops in the world.
Still doesn't stop him from being a self absorbed wanker who thinks that he knows better than everyone else when it comes to what people want. The problem is that he's usually right.:\
Then again, the glowing white Apple on my dual-boot MacOS/Yellow Dog Linux-running PowerBook G3 Series (aka Wallstreet II, Wallstreet PDQ) is only part of the Shock and Awe factor that still exists with this machine. Whip that puppy out, start it up, and that beautiful 14.1" TFT is enough to make you weep it's so gorgeous.
I've gotta admit that I was a bit put off by the glowing corporate logo on the back of PowerBooks at first, but the fact that it glows from the light of the screen was enough to make me forgive and forget. Particularly when all the other laptops I was looking at were emblazoned with boring old non-radioactive logos.
I was put off buying another PC laptop by the lack of well supported power management (stupid ACPI!) and hardware (stupid Winmodems and cheap sound chipsets!) in the PC laptops I was looking at. At least under Linux anyway, and I'm far too easily enraged to run Windows. Plus the PowerBook was the only laptop on the market with a combo drive and wide screen at the time.
Consequently, I've been the proud owner of a PowerBook G4 for nearly two years now, and I have to say that I'm not sorry I bought a Mac at all. It plays so well with my other *nix machines (I'm told it even plays with Windows), and the hardware is fully supported in Linux. So at least I'll have something to fall back on if my love of all things NextStep and OpenStep ever fades.:D
All of that said, if you want to buy the best x86 chip right now and money's no object -- buy Intel. Not because it's faster (it isn't), but because it's probably going to be more stable. We're talking about a 1st generation CPU on 1st generation motherboards. Not a great prescription for stability there.
The Athlon 64 may be a new chip, but the packaging and die are very closely based on the Opteron chip, which has already proven itself in the server and workstation market -a considerably harsher environment than the home desktop market.
Home users typically don't place the same kind of processing demands on their hardware that servers and workstations requiring fast processing hardware do. Games would probably be the only thing that taxes hardware to the same level as commercial 3D rendering. Even the most dedicated gamers don't play non-stop around the clock for months on end.
If the Opteron can handle the demands of gene-sequencing and render farms, then it can almost certainly cope with the demands of most desktop users. In additon, Athlon 64 runs cooler than the 32 bit Athlon, further increasing the reliability of the chips.
I may be eating these words in a few months time, but I'd be willing to bet that AMD are very keen not to squander the lead they have over Intel in the consumer 64bit market. Any stumble at the moment could lend more credence to Apple's new 64bit machines, and relinquish the technological lead in the consumer market (over Intel at least).
We are both going to have to wait and see, I suppose, but I'd be extremely surprised to see any major hiccups with the processors or the motherboards (the available motherboards are probably retooled Opteron boards with less expensive bits and bobs but the same I/O chipset -there aren't too many HyperTransport chipsets floating around right now).
What the current crop of motherboards and CPUs are likely to suffer from are performance issues until the hardware manufacturers learn new tricks to push performance beyond the level currently on offer. I have no doubt that minor tweaks to the hypertransport and PCI-X buses are in store that will yield impressive performance gains. Again, we'll have to wait and see, but I doubt we'll have to wait long.:)
We see Windows worms because that's a big target; but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that our favourite operating systems are immune.
Last time I checked, a bit over half of the world's webservers were based on the Apache server. That makes it more popular, yet it's not as frequently, or as seriously compromised as IIS. Explain that using the above theory.
Amen to that, Joe Jared is an egomanical cowboy who manipulated the blacklists for personal reasons, goodbye to him and his invitation-only approach to e-mail.
In the absence of a Debian install disk, and desperate to get a web proxy going, I grabbed a nearby openbsd machine and fired it up for the first time, following the install guide I got the machine up and running as a bridging firewall/transparent proxy, and over the next couple of days proceeded to install bash and gnu fileutils, set up anonymous ftp, and wfq and rate limiting. My network has never worked better.
I'm not trying to say that OpenBSD is a good desktop OS, but it certainly compares well with linux as a network infrastructure box. It's fairly obvious from your demonstrated lack of knowledge that you've never actually made a serious attempt at using OpenBSD for anything.
I'm sick of seeing Linux babies who make five minute evaluations of operating systems based on the software installed by default, or complain that other OSes are 'incompatible' with Linux because they have bizzarre idiosyncracies that are not the same as Linux's bizzarre idiosyncracies.
The biggest tragedy here is that one-eyed closed minded bigots like yourself will never actually get to find the experience that best fits them because you won't try anything new. I'm just ranting and sermonizing now so I'll shut the fuck up, but you need to bear in mind that not every piece of software in the world is built with someone like you in mind, unless you explore and try new things, and learn to recognize where your favorite platform is deficient, you're robbing yourself of the best experience.
Sure, this guy is a troll. But these are legitimate criticisms, with at least a grain of truth to them anyway.
A grain of truth perhaps, but no more.
Firstly, quartz is a low level graphic driver, it creates no more problems for running X than NVidea's closed source X driver for Linux, and even sits in the same place between the user and the OS, nor does it create any more moral dilemmas.
As for the binary format, Mach-O is not a proprietary binary format that is exclusive to Apple, but to the old variant of Mach that NeXT chose to base NeXTSTEP on. It was not deliberately made to break BSD compatibility, as the BSD Unix variant that was used in conjunction with the Mach microkernel as the basis of NeXTSTEP certainly did not support ELF binaries.
It's ridiculous to claim that "Apple has moved most configuration info into a proprietary database called netinfo" For starters, Netinfo is not a configuration repository like the Windows registry, but a distributed database which allows centralised management of the resources contained in it. In addition the entire source code to netinfo is available from Apple.
Most configuration files - such as those for applications, are contained in XML configuration files, something which other operating systems would do well to learn from.
Nothing is perfect, but I'd prefer people criticizing OS X and Apple to be able to cite facts rather than FUD.
Why is the terminal not able to send PgUp and PgDn? why can dock items not have static labels? why are we not able to control the appearance of the OS beyond skins? why does the OS not support DPI scaling throughout despite being fully based on scalable graphics? why does it still crash if unceremoniously disconnected from SMB shares? Why not license the OpenStep environment for other platforms?
The only legitimate concern raised by the author of the original parent comment in my opinion is that so much of the OS is still closed source, and I'm loathe to complain about that fact because Apple still lead all other commercial Unix vendors in the openness of their base OS.
You act like your Mac will completely fail to function with OSes using Quartz Extreme. It just falls back to the same graphics renderer as in 10.1
I can just picture it now...
THE DEPOSITIONS HEARING, U. GOOBER vs APPLE COMPUTER INC.
Judge: "So what exactly can't your computer do?" You: "Well it uses more CPU time when you drag transparent stuff around for instance" Judge: "What do you mean by CPU time, and transparency?"
10 MINUTES LATER...
You: "It would make my computer run faster because it uses the GPU to do more of the work" Judge: "Whats a GPU?"
10 MINUTES LATER...
Judge: "So one uses a combination of these GPU and CPU things to do the work, while the other uses a combination of these CPU and GPU things to do exactly the same work, but is slower?" Judge: "What exactly was your complaint again?"
I believe that FSF are right to point out the remaining deficiencies in the licence, but they really could have put more effort into thanking Apple for coming to the party as much as they have.
I'm a dyed-in-the-wool OpenStep and Mac OS X fan, and I happen to think that RMS is loco in the coco, not only that, but I think this whole thing is mountain made out of a molehill.
I have to say, it's not the responsibility of the Free Software Foundation to endorse the licensing terms of anyone else, particularly not a license that guarantees one party more rights than any other.
The free software foundation, as a whole, as well as Richard Stallman have to be judged on their achievements, not on their ideology, no matter how rabidly fervent it might be.
Chances are that the open source 'landscape' would be a lot more barren without no-compromise fruit-loops like Richard Stallman to create and fuel 'movements'. Much as I dislike his apparent opposition to anything that he judges non-free, I doubt that there would be so much interest in free software without his work.
The Free Software Foundation seems to be comprised of zealots who are absolutely opposed to proprietary licensing of software.
They're not the 'Mostly-Free Software Foundation' or even the '99.999% Free Software Foundation'.
The reason they oppose this license is because it doesn't guarantee that all code licensed under it will only be used in software that is openly available for the scrutiny of it's users.
I don't happen to subscribe to the same point of view, but it's a perfectly valid stance to take and pretty much beyond question. The FSF are just sticking to their guns in the same way as they did with TrollTech's QPL license.
I want to see American interim government flags flying over Tehran, Islamabad, Jakarta, and Damascus as quickly as possible. Islamist regimes are guilty of crimes against humanity and must be stopped. Anything less is unacceptable.
Yes, let us all share in the 'humanitiarian' christian dominated beliefs of America & their SuperFriends.
Features of Christian governments include:
* Nuclear Weapons (only deployed by America) * Firebombing (only deployed by NATO) * Kiloton Plus "Conventional Weapons" * Incendiaries * Caustic and Nerve gas * Largest stockpiles of biological agents * Clandestine Sponsorship of Terrorism * Carpet Bombing * Carcinogenic Defoliants * Indefinite detention without trial * Illegal Regime Change * Drug Distribution (to blacks and immigrants) * Evangelical Missionaries * Free Trade (to supporters of illegal war)
If you want to find governments "guilty of crimes against humanity" you need look no further than your own government.
If you want to find a bigot, you need look no further than a mirror.
What Apple's trying to do is to 'appear' to be free, and make money off other's work (gratis). If Apple wants to hire some programmers, pay them money, they needen't even give the code under APSL, proprietary licensing would do. Why all this subterfuge about Open Sourcing a Freedom anyway?
The APSL doesn't provide more freedom than a closed source license?
The last time I checked I could read the source code to the kernel without signing a non-disclosure agreement. The last time I checked, I could recompile and install my own modified version of the kernel to get features that weren't provided by default. It may not be GPL, but that doesn't mean it's no use at all.
Personally, I would choose not to release code under this license, but I'd have no qualms about contributing to software already released under it.
Bear in mind that what the FSF say, they are saying as a competitor for mindshare, not an impartial observer. The GPL also strips you of your right to use your code as you see fit, by not allowing you to reuse code relased under GPL in a commercial product even if YOU wrote it.
I cannot understand where anyone gets the idea that giving away software for free has anything at all to do with communism, it is to do with freedom of the users of the software to use it as they see fit.
Apple are providing their users with more freedom than traditional software vendors, the freedom to modify the kernel in the Unix tradition, they are providing their users with tools to develop software for free with the operating system.
Communism is about equitable exchange
Capitalism is about equitable remuneration
Free software is about altruism, giving something away with no expectation of recieving something in exchange.
Perhaps the conservatives here should learn to read a dictionary.
"As a programmer, I am fucking appalled that you think bugs are "screw ups." I don't know if you realized this, but writing software is *HARD*. Harder than anything else in the physical world, mostly because there's no one right way to do things. I have, in a binder at work, 30 some odd distinct solutions for the relatively simple problem of how to make the database transparent both to customers and to programmers. Can you imagine if there were thirty different ways to lay bricks?"
What an unbelievable ass you are. Can you imagine what the world would be like if civil engineers or nuclear scientists took the same approach. The problem with software design is a lack of good engineering practices, most software is cobbled together in a haphazard fashion to get the job done and then fixed afterwards, this is not the way that a real engineer works, in fact, if anything it's more like art. Slap a bit of paint on here and there until it looks right.
It is certainly possible for software to be made in such a way that it does not crash or have any bugs whatsoever, just like anything else in the world, as demonstrated by the software that controls nuclear plants and combat aircraft.
Your ego is getting in the way of logical thought, because you want to claim to have the hardest job in the world. There are a lot more than thirty ways to lay bricks, but one has been selected because it is simple and it works... throw away your binder with 30 different methods of doing something and select one way like any normal person facing a problem would.
As a die hard OpenStep X user, I have to take issue with the idea that it runs hardly any software. I suppose that your comment is born of jealousy that OS X can run pretty much all of the software that Linux can as well as a fair proportion of commercial software that will remain beyond the reach of Linux users until someone gets enough mindshare to stabilize the libraries.
FUD aside, I do agree that governments should stay the hell away from any single source supplier like MS or Apple, no matter how good their wares are. It's simply not good enough to spend hundreds of millions, or even billions of tax payer's money on something that could disappear in a puff of smoke if the head bean-counter somewhere decides it's no longer economically viable to keep producing it.
Using open source doesn't neccessarily guarantee that a piece of software will continue to be made indefinitely, but it almost defintely does assure that somewhere out there is someone who knows enough about a given piece of software to patch security holes and misfeatures in the software, and it is quite likely that even if x86 hardware ceases to be available an open source OS will find new hardware to run on that can be introduced in the next upgrade cycle.
OS/X, Windows or Solaris = tied down *BSD, *Linux* = free to move
Governments should be free to move rather than at the behest of corporations. Of course, the reality is quite different. Pester your local politician about change, I do.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, maybe if it was available outside the U.S, and didn't require a credit card to purchase...
:)
Credit cards aren't as ubiquitous down here in the backward antipodes where we can use our ancient PIN coded ATM cards in stores.
Till that changes, I think I'll stick with giFT.
What are you endorsing here?
:\
Apple may be a 'fringe company', but as insignificance goes, chances are there are more people using their products on the desktop than Linux. They definitely hold more sway with commercial software vendors than desktop Linux. There's also no such thing as a 'tiny monopoly'.
In what way do Apple excersize monopoly control over any market -by manufacturing the OS and the hardware together, like computer companies always used to do? I guess you're probably too young to remember when computers used to work properly.
I don't think much of Steve Jobs, but he sure as hell didn't run Apple into the ground. He is just about solely responsible for making the Apple II into something that normal people wanted to own, which made Apple into a multi billion dollar company.
He had a significant hand in bringing the Mac to market, about the only really bad business decision he made before getting ousted was showing the GUI to Bill Gates.
Nope, the honour of nearly running Apple into the ground goes to John Sculley and Gil Amelio.
Steve Jobs lollipop iMacs and crap additions to prevent System 7 from dying are what prevented Apple from going under in the late 90s. And Steve Jobs is responsible for probably doubling the number of Unix machines on desktops in the world.
Still doesn't stop him from being a self absorbed wanker who thinks that he knows better than everyone else when it comes to what people want. The problem is that he's usually right.
Then again, the glowing white Apple on my dual-boot MacOS/Yellow Dog Linux-running PowerBook G3 Series (aka Wallstreet II, Wallstreet PDQ) is only part of the Shock and Awe factor that still exists with this machine. Whip that puppy out, start it up, and that beautiful 14.1" TFT is enough to make you weep it's so gorgeous.
:D
I've gotta admit that I was a bit put off by the glowing corporate logo on the back of PowerBooks at first, but the fact that it glows from the light of the screen was enough to make me forgive and forget. Particularly when all the other laptops I was looking at were emblazoned with boring old non-radioactive logos.
I was put off buying another PC laptop by the lack of well supported power management (stupid ACPI!) and hardware (stupid Winmodems and cheap sound chipsets!) in the PC laptops I was looking at. At least under Linux anyway, and I'm far too easily enraged to run Windows. Plus the PowerBook was the only laptop on the market with a combo drive and wide screen at the time.
Consequently, I've been the proud owner of a PowerBook G4 for nearly two years now, and I have to say that I'm not sorry I bought a Mac at all. It plays so well with my other *nix machines (I'm told it even plays with Windows), and the hardware is fully supported in Linux. So at least I'll have something to fall back on if my love of all things NextStep and OpenStep ever fades.
i really don't like having a huge corporate logo emblazoned on my computer, but that's what stickers are for i guess
FUD.
Show me a laptop that doesn't have a "huge" corporate logo emblazoned on it.
Neither can this one, it's just a brand. Not all "Toughbooks" are particularly tough.
Duh. the PowerPC pre-dates PC133 RAM by quite a wide margin.
All of that said, if you want to buy the best x86 chip right now and money's no object -- buy Intel. Not because it's faster (it isn't), but because it's probably going to be more stable. We're talking about a 1st generation CPU on 1st generation motherboards. Not a great prescription for stability there.
:)
The Athlon 64 may be a new chip, but the packaging and die are very closely based on the Opteron chip, which has already proven itself in the server and workstation market -a considerably harsher environment than the home desktop market.
Home users typically don't place the same kind of processing demands on their hardware that servers and workstations requiring fast processing hardware do. Games would probably be the only thing that taxes hardware to the same level as commercial 3D rendering. Even the most dedicated gamers don't play non-stop around the clock for months on end.
If the Opteron can handle the demands of gene-sequencing and render farms, then it can almost certainly cope with the demands of most desktop users. In additon, Athlon 64 runs cooler than the 32 bit Athlon, further increasing the reliability of the chips.
I may be eating these words in a few months time, but I'd be willing to bet that AMD are very keen not to squander the lead they have over Intel in the consumer 64bit market. Any stumble at the moment could lend more credence to Apple's new 64bit machines, and relinquish the technological lead in the consumer market (over Intel at least).
We are both going to have to wait and see, I suppose, but I'd be extremely surprised to see any major hiccups with the processors or the motherboards (the available motherboards are probably retooled Opteron boards with less expensive bits and bobs but the same I/O chipset -there aren't too many HyperTransport chipsets floating around right now).
What the current crop of motherboards and CPUs are likely to suffer from are performance issues until the hardware manufacturers learn new tricks to push performance beyond the level currently on offer. I have no doubt that minor tweaks to the hypertransport and PCI-X buses are in store that will yield impressive performance gains. Again, we'll have to wait and see, but I doubt we'll have to wait long.
This had me rolling around on the floor literally... side splitting!
Have you considered a career in stand-up comedy?
You could call your act "the computer guy"
Go to the website he mentioned and read what QEMU is.
Go to the website he mentioned and read what QEMU is.
We see Windows worms because that's a big target; but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that our favourite operating systems are immune.
Last time I checked, a bit over half of the world's webservers were based on the Apache server. That makes it more popular, yet it's not as frequently, or as seriously compromised as IIS. Explain that using the above theory.
Maybe if someone much more intelligent were to write up a few cracker's kits with a bundle of preset tools and whatnot... maybe then.
You don't suppose that's why they call them script kiddies do you?
If you learn anything by past occurances, all this means is that the next generation of blocklists will be even more BOFHish.
I spot a fatal error in your reasoning, I contend that it's not actually possible for anyone to be more BOFHish than Joe Jared.
Amen to that, Joe Jared is an egomanical cowboy who manipulated the blacklists for personal reasons, goodbye to him and his invitation-only approach to e-mail.
wtf are you smoking?
In the absence of a Debian install disk, and desperate to get a web proxy going, I grabbed a nearby openbsd machine and fired it up for the first time, following the install guide I got the machine up and running as a bridging firewall/transparent proxy, and over the next couple of days proceeded to install bash and gnu fileutils, set up anonymous ftp, and wfq and rate limiting. My network has never worked better.
I'm not trying to say that OpenBSD is a good desktop OS, but it certainly compares well with linux as a network infrastructure box. It's fairly obvious from your demonstrated lack of knowledge that you've never actually made a serious attempt at using OpenBSD for anything.
I'm sick of seeing Linux babies who make five minute evaluations of operating systems based on the software installed by default, or complain that other OSes are 'incompatible' with Linux because they have bizzarre idiosyncracies that are not the same as Linux's bizzarre idiosyncracies.
The biggest tragedy here is that one-eyed closed minded bigots like yourself will never actually get to find the experience that best fits them because you won't try anything new. I'm just ranting and sermonizing now so I'll shut the fuck up, but you need to bear in mind that not every piece of software in the world is built with someone like you in mind, unless you explore and try new things, and learn to recognize where your favorite platform is deficient, you're robbing yourself of the best experience.
Sure, this guy is a troll. But these are legitimate criticisms, with at least a grain of truth to them anyway.
A grain of truth perhaps, but no more.
Firstly, quartz is a low level graphic driver, it creates no more problems for running X than NVidea's closed source X driver for Linux, and even sits in the same place between the user and the OS, nor does it create any more moral dilemmas.
As for the binary format, Mach-O is not a proprietary binary format that is exclusive to Apple, but to the old variant of Mach that NeXT chose to base NeXTSTEP on. It was not deliberately made to break BSD compatibility, as the BSD Unix variant that was used in conjunction with the Mach microkernel as the basis of NeXTSTEP certainly did not support ELF binaries.
It's ridiculous to claim that "Apple has moved most configuration info into a proprietary database called netinfo" For starters, Netinfo is not a configuration repository like the Windows registry, but a distributed database which allows centralised management of the resources contained in it. In addition the entire source code to netinfo is available from Apple.
Most configuration files - such as those for applications, are contained in XML configuration files, something which other operating systems would do well to learn from.
Nothing is perfect, but I'd prefer people criticizing OS X and Apple to be able to cite facts rather than FUD.
Why is the terminal not able to send PgUp and PgDn? why can dock items not have static labels? why are we not able to control the appearance of the OS beyond skins? why does the OS not support DPI scaling throughout despite being fully based on scalable graphics? why does it still crash if unceremoniously disconnected from SMB shares? Why not license the OpenStep environment for other platforms?
The only legitimate concern raised by the author of the original parent comment in my opinion is that so much of the OS is still closed source, and I'm loathe to complain about that fact because Apple still lead all other commercial Unix vendors in the openness of their base OS.
You act like your Mac will completely fail to function with OSes using Quartz Extreme. It just falls back to the same graphics renderer as in 10.1
I can just picture it now...
THE DEPOSITIONS HEARING, U. GOOBER vs APPLE COMPUTER INC.
Judge: "So what exactly can't your computer do?"
You: "Well it uses more CPU time when you drag transparent stuff around for instance"
Judge: "What do you mean by CPU time, and transparency?"
10 MINUTES LATER...
You: "It would make my computer run faster because it uses the GPU to do more of the work"
Judge: "Whats a GPU?"
10 MINUTES LATER...
Judge: "So one uses a combination of these GPU and CPU things to do the work, while the other uses a combination of these CPU and GPU things to do exactly the same work, but is slower?"
Judge: "What exactly was your complaint again?"
I believe that FSF are right to point out the remaining deficiencies in the licence, but they really could have put more effort into thanking Apple for coming to the party as much as they have.
I'm a dyed-in-the-wool OpenStep and Mac OS X fan, and I happen to think that RMS is loco in the coco, not only that, but I think this whole thing is mountain made out of a molehill.
I have to say, it's not the responsibility of the Free Software Foundation to endorse the licensing terms of anyone else, particularly not a license that guarantees one party more rights than any other.
The free software foundation, as a whole, as well as Richard Stallman have to be judged on their achievements, not on their ideology, no matter how rabidly fervent it might be.
Chances are that the open source 'landscape' would be a lot more barren without no-compromise fruit-loops like Richard Stallman to create and fuel 'movements'. Much as I dislike his apparent opposition to anything that he judges non-free, I doubt that there would be so much interest in free software without his work.
The Free Software Foundation seems to be comprised of zealots who are absolutely opposed to proprietary licensing of software.
They're not the 'Mostly-Free Software Foundation' or even the '99.999% Free Software Foundation'.
The reason they oppose this license is because it doesn't guarantee that all code licensed under it will only be used in software that is openly available for the scrutiny of it's users.
I don't happen to subscribe to the same point of view, but it's a perfectly valid stance to take and pretty much beyond question. The FSF are just sticking to their guns in the same way as they did with TrollTech's QPL license.
I want to see American interim government flags flying over Tehran, Islamabad, Jakarta, and Damascus as quickly as possible. Islamist regimes are guilty of crimes against humanity and must be stopped. Anything less is unacceptable.
Yes, let us all share in the 'humanitiarian' christian dominated beliefs of America & their SuperFriends.
Features of Christian governments include:
* Nuclear Weapons (only deployed by America)
* Firebombing (only deployed by NATO)
* Kiloton Plus "Conventional Weapons"
* Incendiaries
* Caustic and Nerve gas
* Largest stockpiles of biological agents
* Clandestine Sponsorship of Terrorism
* Carpet Bombing
* Carcinogenic Defoliants
* Indefinite detention without trial
* Illegal Regime Change
* Drug Distribution (to blacks and immigrants)
* Evangelical Missionaries
* Free Trade (to supporters of illegal war)
If you want to find governments "guilty of crimes against humanity" you need look no further than your own government.
If you want to find a bigot, you need look no further than a mirror.
What Apple's trying to do is to 'appear' to be free, and make money off other's work (gratis). If Apple wants to hire some programmers, pay them money, they needen't even give the code under APSL, proprietary licensing would do. Why all this subterfuge about Open Sourcing a Freedom anyway?
The APSL doesn't provide more freedom than a closed source license?
The last time I checked I could read the source code to the kernel without signing a non-disclosure agreement. The last time I checked, I could recompile and install my own modified version of the kernel to get features that weren't provided by default. It may not be GPL, but that doesn't mean it's no use at all.
Personally, I would choose not to release code under this license, but I'd have no qualms about contributing to software already released under it.
Bear in mind that what the FSF say, they are saying as a competitor for mindshare, not an impartial observer. The GPL also strips you of your right to use your code as you see fit, by not allowing you to reuse code relased under GPL in a commercial product even if YOU wrote it.
I cannot understand where anyone gets the idea that giving away software for free has anything at all to do with communism, it is to do with freedom of the users of the software to use it as they see fit.
Apple are providing their users with more freedom than traditional software vendors, the freedom to modify the kernel in the Unix tradition, they are providing their users with tools to develop software for free with the operating system.
Communism is about equitable exchange
Capitalism is about equitable remuneration
Free software is about altruism, giving something away with no expectation of recieving something in exchange.
Perhaps the conservatives here should learn to read a dictionary.
"As a programmer, I am fucking appalled that you think bugs are "screw ups." I don't know if you realized this, but writing software is *HARD*. Harder than anything else in the physical world, mostly because there's no one right way to do things. I have, in a binder at work, 30 some odd distinct solutions for the relatively simple problem of how to make the database transparent both to customers and to programmers. Can you imagine if there were thirty different ways to lay bricks?"
What an unbelievable ass you are. Can you imagine what the world would be like if civil engineers or nuclear scientists took the same approach. The problem with software design is a lack of good engineering practices, most software is cobbled together in a haphazard fashion to get the job done and then fixed afterwards, this is not the way that a real engineer works, in fact, if anything it's more like art. Slap a bit of paint on here and there until it looks right.
It is certainly possible for software to be made in such a way that it does not crash or have any bugs whatsoever, just like anything else in the world, as demonstrated by the software that controls nuclear plants and combat aircraft.
Your ego is getting in the way of logical thought, because you want to claim to have the hardest job in the world. There are a lot more than thirty ways to lay bricks, but one has been selected because it is simple and it works... throw away your binder with 30 different methods of doing something and select one way like any normal person facing a problem would.
Ka-Ching!
Another few cents to "Grass Roots Inc." a division of Microsoft.
Find me a truly free operating system.
As far as I know, there is no operating system, free or otherwise that will let you entirely conceal the name of it's creators.
I wonder what operating system you're using?
As a die hard OpenStep X user, I have to take issue with the idea that it runs hardly any software. I suppose that your comment is born of jealousy that OS X can run pretty much all of the software that Linux can as well as a fair proportion of commercial software that will remain beyond the reach of Linux users until someone gets enough mindshare to stabilize the libraries.
FUD aside, I do agree that governments should stay the hell away from any single source supplier like MS or Apple, no matter how good their wares are. It's simply not good enough to spend hundreds of millions, or even billions of tax payer's money on something that could disappear in a puff of smoke if the head bean-counter somewhere decides it's no longer economically viable to keep producing it.
Using open source doesn't neccessarily guarantee that a piece of software will continue to be made indefinitely, but it almost defintely does assure that somewhere out there is someone who knows enough about a given piece of software to patch security holes and misfeatures in the software, and it is quite likely that even if x86 hardware ceases to be available an open source OS will find new hardware to run on that can be introduced in the next upgrade cycle.
OS/X, Windows or Solaris = tied down
*BSD, *Linux* = free to move
Governments should be free to move rather than at the behest of corporations. Of course, the reality is quite different. Pester your local politician about change, I do.