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Programming Businesses Apple IT Technology

The GNU-Darwin World 135

Posted by Hemos from the making-it-all-come-together dept.
proclus writes "The GNU-Darwin Distribution was founded to leverage the open source development dynamic and build the infrastructure for scientific computing on a new platform. Now GNU-Darwin is a major free software project, and the infrastructure, such as parallel computing and molecular graphics software is available to everyone via the web and on digital media discs. Check it out. Also, Apple has written up a story about it."
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The GNU-Darwin World More

The GNU-Darwin World

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  • APSL (Score:1, Troll)

    by gooru ( 592512 )
    I don't know about you, but the APSL [apple.com] scares me a bit. There are some real nasty clauses in it, and Apple has this habit of stepping on everyone's toes. Their "Open Source" license is really giving them the ability to take your work and sell it as their own. I'm a Mac fan, but I'm hesitant to develop for them. Apple has a habit of forcing the people who support them out of the market and making enemies of their close friends. Look at the recent developments with Final Cut Pro, Safari, Soundtrack, etc.

    • I gave up on the Mac (Score:1, Interesting)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 )
      Apple has this habit of steping on everyone's toes

      I used to love the Mac. Coded for it, knew the thing
      pretty inside out. Apple killed that when they killed the clones. They had a choice, and knew it, and considered it. They could have tried to become a mainstream manufacturer, with a lot of clout, and instead they chose to remain a high-priced niche manufacturer. (This isn't intended to stab at folks that still use Macs -- I'm just doubt I'll ever work in the Mac world again). They chose to serve fo

      • Re:I gave up on the Mac (Score:5, Informative)

        by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @12:29AM (#6577257) Journal
        So this makes me wonder what the point is of using Darwin. With OS X as a whole, there are some specific benefits that exist. Apple has UI standards in place, provides some services, like iTunes, that you may want. They've done a lot of eye candy. But is there any real point in using Darwin alone versus, say, Linux? Or, if you specifically want BSD, then compare it to plain ol' FreeBSD. I mean, what's the point?

        True, I wouldnt use Darwin either.

        Linux and FreeBSD are my opensource distros of choice. But for Daily work, OSX gives me the power of *nix OS with all the same software. Throw in iTunes, and the nice collection of applications for OSX, its a hard OS to ignore if your a unix junkie.

        And dont understimate eye-candy, KDE and Gnome look great, OSX looks perfect. Great time for opensource, pick your candy.

      • Re:I gave up on the Mac (Score:5, Informative)

        by Senjaz ( 188917 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @04:48AM (#6578114) Homepage
        If Apple hadn't stopped their cloning experiments which where at the time killing their own hardware sales then it's questionable whether Apple would still be here.

        And we then we wouldn't have had Mac OS X. No Mac OS X, no darwin.

        You have a valid point for most geeks, what's the point of using it over Linux or BSD.

        One thing I will point out though is that it is a real boon having that entire layer of the OS open if your job is writing things like kext's and device drivers.

      • Re:I gave up on the Mac (Score:4, Informative)

        by JonathanBoyd ( 644397 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @06:55AM (#6578406) Homepage
        Apple killed that when they killed the clones. They had a choice, and knew it, and considered it. They could have tried to become a mainstream manufacturer, with a lot of clout, and instead they chose to remain a high-priced niche manufacturer.

        Actually, the clones weren't expanding marketshare - they were just eating into Apples, and at a time when Apple wasn't in a particularly healthy situation. Apple's 'choice' was kill the clones and survive, or let them keep going and die in a couple of years time, leaving the Mac market dead as well.

      • the point (Score:3, Informative)

        by jbolden ( 176878 )
        The point is easy. With Mac you get a business desktop almost as good Windows + a Unix dev box almost as good as Linux fully integrated. When you compare this with the alternatives like:

        Windows & Cygwin, Linux & Wine, VMWare Mac offers the far better product.

        People use Fink/Darwinports/GnuDarwin because they want more Unix software than what Apple provides out of the box.
        • I think either I or you are misunderstanding the article. My understanding is that people are discussing a text-based (well, I suppose there's X support) Unix environment. This is does not contain the graphical stuff that's what Apple's selling.

      • Parent is pure flamebait. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by BitGeek ( 19506 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @02:43PM (#6582113) Homepage
        Macs have been a better deal pricewise than PCs since 1995.

        Its time to stop modding up "insightful" every troll who comes along and whines about Macs being "expensive". IT just isn't true, and its a sure sign the person has never used a Mac.

        And the point to Darwin, since you're ignorant of what it is, is that it has Apples new IO system, IOKit, and quite a variety of other stuff that is Apple written, and does not exist in BSD or Linux OSes (unless its migrated there.)

        There's more to OSX than "eye candy".... if you were a Mac developer as you claim, you'd know that.
        • Macs have been a better deal pricewise than PCs since 1995.

          I'm not sure what factors you're using in your calculation of "better deal". They certainly aren't the obvious cheaper per MFLOP or cheaper per byte of RAM or hard drive space. They aren't cheaper from a standpoint of number of folks you can serve on a webserver. You may have some metric that supports this, but I think that it's nonobvious enough that you need to expressly cite it for a claim like the one you made.

          Its time to stop modding up
        • Its time to stop modding up "insightful" every troll who comes along and whines about Macs being "expensive". IT just isn't true, and its a sure sign the person has never used a Mac.

          *sigh*

          Yes, there are trolls who say that Macs are too expensive. There are also a lot of honest and educated people who say it too. I could build a decent PC for around $500; the cheapest Mac is $800 with no DVD or CDRW and officially cannot be upgraded (aside from RAM and an AirPort card). I don't even have the kind of s

          • Your decent PC is nowhere neare the quality of even the eMac.

            If you compare the price / performance you will find Macs are cheaper.

            The ONLY people who think PCs are cheaper are either comparing fly-by-night no-brandname component PCs or think that MHz is a measure of the performance of the computer.

            Thing is, you could buy a used Power Mac and upgrade it as you wish for less than the cost of an equivilent new PC.

            There are almost no PC manufacturers that don't put out machines designed to die of power su
            • "There are almost no PC manufacturers that don't put out machines designed to die of power supply failure inside of 24 months, anymore."

              Now there's a troll if I ever saw one. All my clone PCs and Dells that are older than 24 months are working just fine. And since neither you nor I can predict when the younger machines will fail I say your really full of shit now.

      • Re:I gave up on the Mac (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Phroggy ( 441 ) *
        (This isn't intended to stab at folks that still use Macs -- I'm just doubt I'll ever work in the Mac world again). They chose to serve folks who are willing to put down a fair amount of money for a polished closed-box experience. Not what I wanted -- I found Linux, and that was pretty much it.

        Wait, so, you refuse to use Macs (which are perfectly capable of running Linux and other open-source operating systems) not because you don't like the hardware, but because you have a philosophical objection to be
        • Wait, so, you refuse to use Macs (which are perfectly capable of running Linux and other open-source operating systems) not because you don't like the hardware, but because you have a philosophical objection to being only able to buy them from Apple?

          Yup. Well, for pragmatic reasons -- there isn't much reason to buy a more expensive Mac when you're just going to run Linux on it, especially when x86 has wider binary support and better debugging WRT endianness in even open source software.

          What would be th

    • Not me... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by BrokenHalo ( 565198 )
      The APSL is one thing, but as I am a scientist I was intrigued by their claims for this as a distro for scientific applications. When I checked the page, all they actually don't seem to be offering anything more radical than the trusty

      "VIM, Ghostscript, Gnumeric, LaTeX, PyMOL [...] Rasmol, gdFortran, LAM/MPI, AbiWord, GNUplot, and Raster3D"

      ...not much there to entice me away from Linux, methinks.

    • Re:APSL (Score:2, Insightful)

      by lordholm ( 649770 )
      Final Cut Pro didn't have any competition on the Mac, e.g. it was an application for a nishe that didn't have an application, while I agree that Final Cut Express was an outright attack on Adobe... however you did say the Pro version and I beleve that that as an example is worth NULL and void.

      The same thing goes for Soundtrack, there were no such applications for the Mac. Argument and examples are again NULL and void.

      Safari however is discussable, I do beleve that MS had planned to terminate IE for the Ma

      • Re:APSL (Score:3, Informative)

        by WatertonMan ( 550706 )
        Premier competed with it on the lower end and Avid Xpress on the high end. Yeah it found a mid range niche that no one one the platform was aiming for. But I'm not sure I'd say it has no competition. You left out Keynote as well - clearly a PowerPoint killer. One might also point out Project Builder and Codewarrior - although admittedly Project Builder came from NeXT and thus predated Codewarrior.
      • Safari however is discussable, I do beleve that MS had planned to terminate IE for the Mac and there was need for a standard browser included with the OS. It was thus necissary for Apple to create Safari, they didn't have any choise.

        I don't believe Microsoft would have terminated IE, were it not for Safari. The problem is that IE for OSX sucks, and when Microsoft did finally release an acceptible version, it wouldn't have been good. Safari is good.
      • I dunno, it sounds like Soundtrack is pretty similar to Propellerhead's ReCycle [propellerheads.se], which has been available for Mac for a few years.

    • Poor Examples (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Llywelyn ( 531070 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @04:33AM (#6578086) Homepage
      You seem to drift topics. The APSL has nothing to do with FCP, Safari, or anything else in those lanes.

      >FCP

      Best of its class, hands down. This is called "making a competing product" and is normal business strategy--not forcing someone out of the market.

      >Safari

      You really need to stop drinking the Kool Aid.

      No one really competes with Safari, not because Safari, but because Safari is *good*. Apple distributed a sucky version of IE as its standard web-browser and that has a *lot* to do with the user experience for a typical user. They needed to replace it, and no other web-browser for the mac quite cut it.

      Once again. They produced a better product. Safari is now my primary web browser, not because I haven't used Mozilla or Camino, but because it is the best for what I do on the web (speed counts for a lot).

      >Soundtrack

      Who did Apple "force out" with this one?

      They also needed something so that labels could publish music in m4p format, suitable for the iTMS.

      You want an example? Take Watson. But none of your examples quite cut it.
      • Soundtrack (which technically is part of FCP4 and just also distributed stand alone) admittedly is a fairly unique products. It's main "competitors" do a lot more. Sort of like comparing Premier and Avid.
    • I think that those who develope code under the gpl are not that interested in who uses it. The way I see it is the branch dev on OS X do not conflict with the gpl. If Jobs wants to make money selling more expensive pro-science machines thats fine. He is not co-opting gnu apps by making them work on his platform. If you take the gnu apps completely ripp off the code change the name and copy write it and then make out that it is your software then that is ripping them off. If Jobs does that then he deserves

  • Why does SRC ports have to be DISTRO Specific? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @12:13AM (#6577177) Journal
    I'll be glad when someone creates a generic Ports that works across all platforms. The news that Gentoo, Fink and Darwin ports where working together was great news. Gentoo has Linux, Fink Has MacOSX, and GnuDarwin has x86 and PPC.

    FreeBSD/OpenBSD and all those Linux (Cooker type) distros have broken ports. Even the Binary only distros have broken packages. I think OpenBSD said 20%+ of BSD ports where broken, (anyone have the numbers?). This could fix all those problems across platforms.

    Very nice.

  • Not Free. (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by trouser ( 149900 )
    Now GNU-Darwin is a major free software project....

    GNU = GPL = Free.
    Darwin = APSL = open source.

    There's a big difference.

    • Re:Not Free. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31, 2003 @01:03AM (#6577417)
      Actually, the GPL imposes restrictions on further distribution. Therefore, it can't possibly be considered free compared to a license like BSD.

    • GNU is too restrictive to be fairly called "Free".

      The terms are reversed-- the Open Source license determines free software. While GNU is merely "open source".

  • Jargon (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrpuffypants ( 444598 ) * <mrpuffypants@gm a i l . c om> on Thursday July 31, 2003 @01:41AM (#6577576)
    ...digital media discs...

    so...like....it's on CDs?

  • Confusing... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jbx ( 90059 ) * on Thursday July 31, 2003 @01:52AM (#6577612) Homepage Journal
    GNU is open source.
    Darwin is open source.
    So... what exactly are we getting here? LinuxPPC is faster than Darwin, so if you wanted something closer to GNU than Darwin, wouldn't you use that?

    What's the user benefit? This is for people who bought a Mac and don't want Apple's GUI work? Or is this all the stuff that Apple would like to put in Darwin, but can't, due to the GPL license?

    Speaking of which, there's this:
    Please note: GNU Project considers Darwin non-free software and therefore does not recommend the use of this operating system. (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html)

    I mean, let me get this straight: GNU Darwin is the version of Darwin that the GNU project doesn't recommend?

    Can someone clear this up in plain English?

    • Re:Confusing... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bursch-X ( 458146 )
      Well GNU even considers FreeBSD non-free software because of the BSD license.

      Basically GNU considers a license (BSD style) that doesn't give you any restrictions whatsoever (except for mentioning copyright) on the redistribution of the software to be non-free. Go figure.

      Of course it's much more "free" to have GNU telling me I have to make everything I base on GPL software GPLed as well. This is a restriction. And don't tell me it results in more freedom, because I wouldn't be more free in choosing to use

      • Re:Confusing... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @03:53AM (#6577977)
        I think it's simplest to say that the GPL is about the freedom of the code (i.e., once the code is Free, it has to stay Free) and as such the freedom of the community at large (since this means that over time, they will almost by definition get a larger choice), while the BSD license is more about the personal freedom of users/companies (to do whatever they want with the code). Imho, it's not about which one is more Free than the other, they simply focus on different (contradicting) freedoms: the freedom of the individual vs. the freedom of the community.

        • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
          Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re:Confusing... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Halo1 ( 136547 )

            So by this definition, the Chinese citizens are ACTUALLY freer than US and other westernized countries, because its all about the welfare of the country as opposed to personal freedoms.

            No, as I said they're different kind of freedoms, one is not necessarily more free than the other. Which one you consider more free is simply based on which kind of freedom you value most. Besides, that may be the theory behind communism, but just like with capitalism (and any economical model or ideology), the practice i

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • as I said they're different kind of freedoms, one is not necessarily more free than the other. Which one you consider more free is simply based on which kind of freedom you value most.

              Actually, there is a philosophical tool to roughly measure "more free" and "less free" kinds of freedom, IIRC developed by Isaiah Berlin. It's the concept of "negative freedom" vs "positive freedom". Despite the name, negative freedom is better than positive, as it gives you more options. When I say - "you have the right t

              • So, back to the GPL/BSD - I think it offers mostly "positive freedom" ("you have right to this and that, anything else is prohibited") while the BSD offers mostly "negative freedom" ("this and that is prohibited; otherwise, do as you please").

                I think it's more complicated in this case. The reason is that the GPL inherently causes more and more applications (or at least modifications to existing GPL applications) to be freely (Freely) available, while the BSD license does not enforce that. So the GPL sort

        • Re:Confusing... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Aapje ( 237149 )
          I think it's simplest to say that the GPL is about the freedom of the code (i.e., once the code is Free, it has to stay Free) and as such the freedom of the community at large (since this means that over time, they will almost by definition get a larger choice)...

          By assuming that this is straightforward, you touch on the difference in view that explains the lack of understanding between BSD and GPL proponents. You see, I believe that the BSD license can protect the freedom of the community quite well. Fir
          • First of all, I want to say that I couldn't care less which license one uses to release his code and that I'm not a proponent of one license or another (nor am I an opponent of any of the open source licenses). That said...

            First of all, I don't believe in the myth that BSD software will be embraced, extended and replaced by a closed version that we are forced to buy.

            I also don't think they will be replaced. I do think that it happens that improvements are done to BSD licensed programs which are then kep

            • I do think that it happens that improvements are done to BSD licensed programs which are then kept as closed source, so that this work is done twice or more times because the changes weren't freed.

              When that happens it's usually because the 'improvements' are hacks or user/company-specific changes. Those wouldn't make it into the open source distribution, even when they have to be made public. A rational person should want to contribute generic improvements because:
              • Your code gets tested for free by other

      • Re:Confusing... (Score:3, Informative)

        by leviramsey ( 248057 )

        Well GNU even considers FreeBSD non-free software because of the BSD license.

        Incorrect. From The GNU License List [gnu.org]:

        [GPL-compatible Free Software Licenses]

        The modified BSD license.
        (Note: on the preceding link, the modified BSD license is listed in the "General" section.)
        This is the original BSD license, modified by removal of the advertising clause. It is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL.
        If you want a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Confusing... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @04:02AM (#6578000)
      I mean, let me get this straight: GNU Darwin is the version of Darwin that the GNU project doesn't recommend?
      GNU Darwin is simply Darwin with all BSD-lincensed programs (such as curl) replaced with GPL ones (wget) and a lot of extra programs (only GPL licensed ones obviously). It's still not a "pure" GPL system, as the kernel, most kernel extensions and probably some libraries will always be APSL (otherwise it wouldn't be Darwin anymore).
    • GNU-Darwin is a means to reach Apple users with software freedom. It is true that the GNU project does not recognize Darwin as free software. GNU-Darwin provides a rational path toward attainment of that freedom.

      If this needs any further clarification, just ask or email me privately as you like.

      Regards,
      proclus
      http://www.gnu-darwin.org/ [gnu-darwin.org]

    • Re:Confusing... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by stevef ( 5539 )

      Actually, it looks like that URL was just updated today...

      Updates APSL version 2.0 qualifies as a free software license. Apple's lawyers worked with the FSF to produce a license that would qualify. The problems described in this page are still potential issues for other possible licenses, but they do not apply to version 2.0 of the APSL.
    • So I ask the accumulated wisdom of Slashdot:

      I'm a MacOS X user who would prefer to use the GNU versions of certain basic tools (cp, ls, ps, tar, tail, wc, find, cat, perhaps shells, whatever). Not for any particular political/free/proprietary/open/GPL agenda, but because I'm more familiar with the GNU versions, and (to me) they seem have better man pages, better support for flags, and more consistent usage directives. What's the best way to get them? Build individually from source? Replace bundles of them

  • GNU-Darwin Background (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pudge ( 3605 ) * <slashdotNO@SPAMpudge.net> on Thursday July 31, 2003 @02:28AM (#6577730) Homepage Journal
    This is the distribution that swore off PPC development [slashdot.org] because of political reasons, basically saying that Apple is so bad that they can't continue to use any part of the platform they are based on, but yet they are still producing that which they said they wouldn't (new stuff for PPC). They say silly things like "the most free" distribution, as if such a phrase has any meaning. They claim to be the premiere free software distribution for Mac OS X, which is plainly false, unless you are deluded into believing that only copylefted software is free software.

    This is a project driven almost solely by politics, not technology, and they can't even be consistent there. Beware.

    • Re:GNU-Darwin Background - Pudge is right (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kuwan ( 443684 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @03:07AM (#6577839) Homepage
      I used to follow the GNU-Darwin project quite heavily. I had installed it along side OS X and was even on the mailing lists. I must say that they do (or at least did) have extremely talented developers that have done a lot of good work for the project.

      However, I found through the mailing list that the project is political to the extreme. Their most extreme bit of politics came when they decided to "discontinue" PPC development (as pudge mentioned) because they had issues with Apple. They were arrogant enough to think that this move would force Apple to backtrack on the things they had issues with.

      It was about that time that I decided to drop GNU-Darwin completely. What kind of project drops support for the hardware that > 90% of their user-base is using? Well, from the looks of it they, not Apple, have backtracked and are still supporting PPC.

      My advice would be to not take a second look at GNU-Darwin. Use Fink [sourceforge.net] or OpenDarwin [opendarwin.org] instead.

      • Re:GNU-Darwin Background - Pudge is right (Score:5, Interesting)

        by liyanage ( 43911 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @04:04AM (#6578003) Homepage
        I absolutely agree with this and the parent post.

        The politics and annoying GNU/GPL preaching on various mailing lists (and in the early days the insistence on installing/stomping [apple.com] onto Apple-supplied system parts in /usr/ instead of /usr/local) is what turned me off GNU-Darwin.

        • Re:GNU-Darwin Background - Pudge is right (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Pathwalker ( 103 ) * <hotgrits@yourpants.net> on Thursday July 31, 2003 @08:04AM (#6578680) Homepage Journal
          Plus they are still running unchecked binaries right after they download them.

          Take a look at their quickstart [gnu-darwin.org] script, which they suggest that you use by piping it to csh as root.

          The first few steps:
          1. Download a compiled wget binary using curl
          2. chmod 755 wget
          3. put wget in /usr/local/bin
          4. use the new wget to download some other code

          They never check to see if the download was corrupted, or if someone had replaced it with something else.
          Is it so hard to do something like:
          ...download wget...
          if [ `cksum wget | cut -f1 -d\ ` != 2989954681 ]
          then
          echo "Someone is playing silly buggers..."
          exit
          fi
          ...install wget...
          For each of the few programs and libraries that they need to download to get the package manager up and running?

          I've complained about this before, and I'm sorry to have to do so again, but running an unverified binary as root right after you download it is one of the STUPIDEST ideas I have seen.
  • All I can say is, as a Kiss fan from long ago, before they sucked, I find it difficult to take someone named "Dr. Love" very seriously.

    • I find it difficult to take someone named "Dr. Love" very seriously.

      Especially when Dr. Love, aka proclus, starts talking about Space Mormons [tripod.com], Mutant Radical Mormons [tripod.com], and his desire to form a Mormon-Wiccan cooperative [tripod.com].

      • Graff, I have had some respect for you until this moment. Your attempt to exploit religious bigotry has revealed your true intention.

        Moreover, your post is terribly off-topic, but since you bring it up...

        Anyone who is interested in Mutant Space Radical Mormon-Wiccan cooperatives, please feel free to visit Graff's links and drop me a line. Be sure and read the FAQ first.

        http://proclus.tripod.com/radical/faq.html [tripod.com]

        Regards,
        proclus
        http://www.gnu-darwin.org/ [gnu-darwin.org]

      • In all fairness, his arguments in "Space Mormons" were fairly reasonable, given the context. As an atheist, I find the idea of primitives viewing a close encounter with aliens as a supernatural event to be at least as plausible as the idea of an encounter with a (or the) real god. There are certainly a number of passages in the world's religious texts that can be interpreted that way. He even said that he wasn't trying to present his comments as The One Truth, merely putting them on the table as topics for

  • Which Darwin? (Score:3, Informative)

    by CameronWolf ( 676326 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @04:16AM (#6578045)
    There are three "Darwin" DARWIN proper is the one used by Apple and coresponds directly with OSX releases. OPENDARWIN was founded by Apple and ISC to allow more people to contribute to Darwin. Apple takes no responsibility for OPENDARWIN. Features found in OPENDARWIN may find there way into Apples DARWIN. GNU-DARWIN is totally GPL. It was founded in response to APSL.

    • Uh, no. GNU Darwin is NOT totally GPL.

      In fact, its no more GPL than Mac OS X-- that is the operating system is released by apple under an Open Source license.

      The tools and all that other stuff- that you get with Mac OS X and Linux and BSD et al, are GPL, just as they are on other OSes that ship with them.

      Mod the parent down-- its informative but its wrong.

      GNU didn't GPL the Apple kernel and Darwin sources! They can't.

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