Apple Terminates Safari Seed Program 414
coolmacdude writes "This morning Safari beta v67 was leaked to the Internet. Because this is the third time it has happened (v62 and v64 were leaked), Apple has apparantly had enough and decided to terminate the seed program that provided unreleased beta verisons to selected developers. In a email sent to all developers and posted on Mike Wendland's blog, Apple says:
'Due to Safari 67 postings to the internet, we have closed the Safari Seed project. We know that the majority of you are not responsible for the leaks to the internet, and we sincerely appreciate your feedback, time and effort with this project.'"
Damn Him! (Score:3, Funny)
Damn that Johnny Appleseed and his plan to propogate the Safari with Apple Trees... I knew it would never work!
Re:Damn Him! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Damn Him! (Score:5, Funny)
You should be ashamed of yourself.
One Bad Apple Spoils the Bunch? (Score:3, Funny)
When the apple is ripe, it will fall. --Irish proverb
Why not just open the beta to everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not just open the beta to everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not just open the beta to everyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Must be LGPL (Score:5, Insightful)
KHTML must be using LGPL (or at least something similar).
Re:Must be LGPL (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why not just open the beta to everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition to that, why don't we ask a KHTML developer about how much communication is going on between teams right now before you start complaining about the situation?
Re:Why not just open the beta to everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey and think about this. Apple sells software. They have to take some kind of reasonable action when they see their unreleased development code go flying across the internet. Even if in that particular case it doesn't matter (as could be argued with safari). Because next it'll happen with say, Keynote, and then in court the defense will say "well you never bothered to prosecute/stop anyone from doing this in the past, so why now?" and the judge goes "hmm" the prosecution goes "damn" and Apple loses the case.
It's like when your employer has a policy. If that policy is widely disregarded they damned well better not ever fire you for violating it, because if they do all you have to do to prove that there effectively IS no policy is show that they enforced it in a spotty way.
Re:Why not just open the beta to everyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, they sell hardware, mostly and bundle software. Yes, they make money licensing their software, but most of their profit comes from hardware sales.
This is, in part, one of the reasons Apple has taken well to opensource. They give a lot of their software away anyway (Free Beer), so why not take the extra step and give some source too?
Re:Why not just open the beta to everyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say they sell software and bundle hardware. I think there are a lot more people who buy Macs because they prefer Apple's operating system than because they prefer the PowerPC.
Re:Why not just open the beta to everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not just open the beta to everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
But of course. Why not? The developer is well-placed to give an opinion on whether code is stable enough for production use but he cannot know the circumstances of every single user. You might desperately need a particular bug fix, for example. Or more importantly, if you are working on the same project yourself or reusing some of the code, you'd want to keep up-to-date with the latest developments so you don't duplicate work.
For proprietary software there are reasons to keep development versions secret until an official release. You don't want competitors getting advance knowledge of what will be in the next version, you don't want users downloading new versions they have not paid for, and you'd rather arrange publicity through choreographed launches and press releases. Plus, you wouldn't want anyone to see that the promised new feature for next month is only half-implemented.
For free software development none of these reasons really apply (with the possible exception of commercial free software such as Linux distributions where you do have competitors, launches, marketing departments and all that). By all means make official 'releases', but more and more projects are seeing it makes sense to provide read-only access to the source code repository so that if people need code that isn't in the latest release, they can get it without waiting. There are few projects now following a pure 'cathedral' model.
Re:Why not just open the beta to everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is a solutions company. They do both, and they work together, neither working best without the other. It's always been touted as one of Apple's advantages, that the software works well because ALL of the base hardware is known. That isn't a side effect of apple being a hardware-company-that-releases-software-too, but it's the basis of the way they do business.
(apart from the clone years, which thankfully ended. I've had to support hundreds of mac and mac compatible machines, and those clones just aren't holding up anywhere as well as Apple's own machines)
Re:Why not just open the beta to everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your point about PCI slots is an interesting one to me. I have always said that most 95% of people who buy computers don't know what a PCI slot is, and 95% of the people who do know never use the ones they have anyway. Therefore, religiously including them in every computer you make and having it limit you in terms of cost and form is ridiculous.
Yes, my computer has PCI slots and yes I've used them. So have you. Not my point.
Not everyone distributes that way (Score:5, Insightful)
Surprisingly, not everyone follows the open source mantra. There are legitimate reasons for not wanting to provide constant releases. One is confusion among a less educated (some might also say intelligent) user base - people getting what is effectively a beta and don't know it end up bitching at Apple. This makes them look incompetent, and can cause problems for their image.
Apple has good reasons for wanting to keep their stuff under wraps until they ship. This doesn't make them wrong, unenlightened, or the enemy.
Re:Not everyone distributes that way (Score:5, Insightful)
For starters, control of your company's products.
Then there's the notion of adding unique features and other goodies so you can attract more customers.
Apple's business is to sell Apple computers. I'm guessing that every move they make has that objective in mind.
Works for me.
Re:Not everyone distributes that way (Score:5, Insightful)
As for Internet Explorer, once Apple ships a 1.0 release of Safari, you can bet that they will start to use it on new systems instead of IE. The "far less knowledgable" don't flock to IE because they want to use IE, they just use it because it's already there and don't see a need to get anything else.
Re:Not everyone distributes that way (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, you're just wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
But it doesn't matter, because he didn't say 'free'. Not as in beer, not as in speech, not as in political prisoners.
No, he said 'open source'. And, why lookie here... Apple's license is on the official list of 'open source licenses'.
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
So stop with the trashing already. He said it was open source, it is open source.
-fred
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Too bad (Score:3, Insightful)
You make it sound as if Apple is doing people a favor by giving out unfinished software. What they are really doing is off-loading testing to unpaid outsiders.
Now its too late.
Good. So maybe they'll hire testers, pay them, and have them come in. No leaks.
Re:Too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll bet if you did a "study" of version 1.0 of product with public betas and without, you'd find that the ones with public betas have fewer bugs.
As to whether they are doing anyone any favors, I suspect that corporate IT departments like public betas because it gives them the chance to test the product before some bozo in management demands it be installed immediately the day it's released or the world will come to an end.
Re:Too bad (Score:5, Funny)
Admit it. You were about to say "a few bad apples".
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
You think rampant Windows piracy hurts Microsoft? If anything, it only serves to further their monopoly lock-in, thus forcing everybody else to use Windows just to be compatible with the pirates.
In the long run, piracy keeps the market saturated with Windows. If everybody had to actually pay for it, you'd see a ton of people switch to something cheaper (Linux, or whatever else, really), which would hurt MS, big time.
Re:Too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't need more market share now though. Now, they can start doing things like they do with Windows XP's activation to make it more difficult for everyone to install a single copy. Sure, you can crack it fairly easily, but maybe the next version of Windows won't be.
Re:Too bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, many of these installs of XP were rendered unusable when SP1 was applied, forcing a switch to the "Corporate" (or as you say, VLK) edition.
Either way, I'm sure MS is cooking up some way to have VLK in businesses without compromising the "security" of the product. Perhaps you'll be able to set up your own license authentication server/proxy in shop.
Who knows, but if they are going to keep trying to enforce the
Re:I call. Bull. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they buy a new computer whenever the next "must have" windows comes out they do.
Most of the ones I've installed for friends and family tends to live quite a lot longer, most ordinary home users aren't on the bleeding edge. You can usually run the next two "releases" (e.g. win95-98-me) until it gets impossible even for the unsavy home user.
I'd say the lock in at home is a major factor in the continued lock in at work. Not unlike how Nokia played their cards right by marketing to teen-agers, when Ericsson stayed with the corporate demographic. The sons and daugheters of the captains of industry ran around with cooler mobiles than their dads, a situation that ultimately couldn't (and didn't) last long.
Re:Too bad (Score:5, Funny)
Who woulda thunk it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who woulda thunk it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who woulda thunk it (Score:5, Insightful)
On another note, it's sad to see something like this ruined by what is probably a small number of bad seeds.
Re:GPL protections (Score:3, Informative)
This is not true at all for the LGPL. Things that wrap around the LGPL code do NOT have to be under a compatable license (unlike the GPL)
Re:LGPL is viral (Score:5, Informative)
You're either trolling, or you're simply ignorant. The restrictions you describe apply to GPL code, not LGPL. This is precisely why the LGPL exists. From the text of the LGPL:
Re:LGPL is viral (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyhoo, replace "LGPL" with "GPL" in your post, and you're going in the right step.
I'm Confused... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm Confused... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm Confused... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'm Confused... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm Confused... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, someone must go through every bug report, and eliminate the ones that are for already known problems (with a public beta you potentially could end up with thousands of people thinking they are the first to find some problem that seems obscure). Then you have to eliminate the ones that aren't really problems (the copy and paste shortcuts are confusing by design since those who use them will use them often enough for the pain of memorizing strange key combinations is less than the pain of having to easy to remember short cuts that are harder to use on the keyboard). Next deal with the miscolanious problems (user didn't plug computer in, got a corupted download, has no net connection, and other problems that are either stupid user, or other stupid problem not related to the program).
Really what it needed is a few QA testers who can test everything, but that isn't possiable. Not even Apple with control of all supported platforms can do it. A public beta might seem like a hope that the gain is less than the costs. In reality a public beta is generally a way for marketing to get a almost working version out before it is ready for release, and the bug reports that might come in are worth much less than the hype.
Re:I'm Confused... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm Confused... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple releases a couple of "beta" releases, fires up interest and demand, and then nothing happens (from a public perspective) for a relatively long time. Given that it is beta software, there are a lot of things that need fixing -- the more people liked the initial rollout, the more demand there is for improved releases. But only frustration is available.
OTOH, look at the Mozilla camp. There are milestone builds on a frequency on months wherein an attempt is made to level-set at a certain level of stability, and nightly builds that are expected to be fraught with bugs, but steadily progress towards the next milestone build. This method serves the people who want stability and predictability above all else, the bleeding edge lunatics who want the newest thing out, bugs and all, and the developers, who benefit from having the largest group of testers that is practical.
How many people sent in bugs or suggestions for Safari? How many have seen even one of their personal hot buttons addressed? Virtually zilch, because Apple has been so stingy with new releases. OTOH, I personally have had several bugs looked at in Mozilla/Chimera(Camino), and feel a much stronger involvement with those products as a direct result of this.
I think Apple is missing the point about Open Source software -- it's not just that it's cheap, it also has closer ties to the user community, and as a result, probably better fits the needs of that community. You can take Open Source, develop in behind closed doors with an army of people, and still release it as an open source product -- but it's the dumb way to do it. It's how Microsoft would do Open Source.
Poor marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
What's there to hide? (Score:3, Insightful)
Breach of ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
Post Milestones with Talkback (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Post Milestones with Talkback (Score:5, Insightful)
However, there is no need to get bug reports for a product that they know is unstable or incomplete (the post-v60 builds). If they posted one of those publicly, not only would they get a backlash for releasing an extreemly unstable build of their product, such as the first beta, which had a nice "feature" that would automatically delete ~/ for you, but all of their bug reports would be for a build which is still incomplete. Instead, they could just post their more complete, milestone builds, and get feedback which is much more beneficial to the developers.
Forget Safari seeds (Score:3, Interesting)
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/camino/nightly/lates
you don't want to be that bleeding edge (Score:5, Informative)
I used to use the Chimera nightly builds almost exclusively, but these days I stick to the
Re:you don't want to be that bleeding edge (Score:3, Informative)
I'm posting this from the most recent nightly that compiled, and it isn't unstable in use...everything after 3-14-03 seems to be solid. YMMV.
Re:Forget Safari seeds (Score:5, Funny)
Why not release it on ADC? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps they should look at Mozilla's approach (Score:5, Interesting)
Otherwise, the standards compliance of the browser will possibly be delayed (all the esoteric little implementation issues, especially with CSS and DHTML). After all, many eyeballs results in better code, especially with something as complex as a web browser.
Can't (Score:5, Informative)
Quality expectations are different for Apple than from many other developers. I suspect this is at least part of the reason. Not to mention all the journalists that would descend upon such a thing to pick apart every release.
Users don't expect the nightlies to be perfect
Normal users don't, Mac users do. They take it personally if there's a bug in a piece of software -- like Apple is after them specifically.
- Scott
A few bad seeds... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A few bad seeds... (Score:5, Funny)
Leaked builds probably helped Safari (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh-oh (Score:5, Funny)
Had I known that these were seeds that Apple didn't want released, I would of course have downloaded them and used them. I would, after all, want to spoil a good thing
Move the nots around to make the above true.
It's out? (Score:4, Interesting)
Should I notify Apple that when you leave the tabs on all the time and "Open in tabs" a docked bookmark that the first tab always looks "active" (though the windowing for the tabs works fine)?
It's too bad Apple is taking this stance. They should understand, realize, and if they were smart: CAPITALIZE on that fact that there _is_ a reason why us lowly end users are clamoring for the latest builds of Safari.
It works. Like most Apple software it works very well -- even at the beta level. Yes, this is too bad...
Re:It's out? (Score:5, Funny)
Sure. Dave Hyatt has been known to possibly fix hypothetical bugs [mozillazine.org] that may or may not occur in Safari versions that may or may not exist.
easter eggs (Score:5, Interesting)
They should have done that trick where each developer gets a slightly different copy, possibly each having a different easter egg embedded inside. All they then have to do is download the version from the internet and trigger the easter egg to find out which copy was leaked and cut that developer off.
--
Dreamweaver Templates [dynamicexpression.com]
Re:easter eggs (Score:3, Funny)
You've just volunteered to be the configuration manager for THAT project
Re:easter eggs (Score:3, Funny)
Troc
Pathetically uncool (Score:4, Insightful)
What's up with these developers? It's like they're desparately trying to be one of the "cool kids," leaking the code to the Internet. "Yippee!"
So, in an attempt at trying to upgrade their status to being picked only second to last in gym class, all the legitimate developers who respect agreements they've made have to suffer.
Nice going!
Re:Pathetically uncool (Score:5, Insightful)
Where can we get it? (Score:5, Funny)
Where was it leaked?
Re:Where can we get it? (Score:5, Informative)
you can get v67 here [hackingthemainframe.com]
Why can't they track these things? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of companies distribute mildly confidential materials to a controlled circulation - business plans, movie screeners, all kinds of stuff.
It's common practice to encode these materials in subtle ways, like slightly change wording or graphics details in paper documents, and causing time stamps to appear at unique times in video screeners. Then when a screener ends up being sold on a card table in Times Square they can tell who leaked it. Wouldn't this be trivial to do in a software distribution like this? Especially if they feel strongly enough to get so huffy about it in their e-mail.
It just seems odd to me that they would throw away something as potentially valuable as a build testers program when there are fairly simple ways to nab specific culprits and just cut them off instead.
Their willingness just to drop it cold leads me to believe that they were looking for reasons to drop it anyway, and just decided to make a little hay to make a point.
-----
Forced into it (Score:5, Insightful)
As a developer is it very valuable to have a willing group of people willing to test and feedback on not-yet-ready-for-market products. Unfortunately if these releases then get a wider distribution to people who don't understand that the app us a work in progress (as has happened with safari), any problems (which would be solved before an official release) reflect badly on both the product and the developer.
Given that the betas are being leaked, and Apple's reputation for quality of its products, I don't think they had any option but to cancel to program. I also welcome their move for other reasons:
As a web developer, one of the major issues I face is not just making a site compatible with the major browser releases (which in itself is a problem), but also with all the betas that are still being used. Many beta releases (or should have been betas) have quite significant bugs which are *very* difficult to work around. For example, I still see hits from people using betas of Netscape 4.
Once a pre-release product makes it into the wild, many of the initial users will continue it use it since 'it works for me'. Of course, if this browser doesn't work with a site due to bugs or incompatibilities in the browser, its the sites fault - from the users perspective - and my clients if the user complains. These almost-right products seem to persist almost forever.
I disagree with the crowd on this (Score:5, Interesting)
2) A lot of people justify Apple here by posting the standard shit about it being terrible for the public to see an unfinished product. This is wrong and silly. Most people who come across this type of thing and are willing to install a beta are a) warez people who aren't gonna buy it anyway, or b) early adopters who are itching to try it out and are going to buy it no matter what.
3) And finally some people are going to whine about the humanity of programmers having to see their beautiful program that they love like a child being stolen by the masses. Tell them to stop whining. The programmers are wage slaves. If the company earns more money because of massive warezing (that should be 'When the company inevitably earn more...') the programmers should shut up about the hurt to their souls and get back to fulfilling their contracts.
Software companies act like this because they are run by idiots. You have no clue of the true magnitude of the crass stupidity they are capable of.
And Apple just likes to throw temper tantrums. They probably lost more customers by canceling this program and making a stink than they would have lost by having betas escape into the wild.
Re:I disagree with the crowd on this (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering Safari is a free download I don't think they are complaining much about lost customers.
Re:I disagree with the crowd on this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I disagree with the crowd on this (Score:3, Insightful)
The entire reason for developing Safari is to get more customers for Apple. Safari is 'free' but it also convinces people that they need a Mac.
As I said in the original post, they've cancelled this program because they're worried about people seeing betas and then losing them as customers. I also pointed out why that reasoning is flawed.
Re:I disagree with the crowd on this (Score:4, Insightful)
I swear to freakin' God, the geek crowd on the Internet has the most impenetrable tunnel-vision I've ever seen. How on earth could Apple lose customers by cancelling a beta testing program? Most customers know nothing of it, much less the "controversy" surrounding it being cancelled.
Get out a little more often.
Watermarks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, they may do this already, and just decide not to divulge that information... Just a thought anyway.
Reason for Private Seeds. (Score:5, Informative)
So perhaps they simply didn't want to give a bad impression out, and don't want to be berraged by a million emails all pointing bugs out that they are most definitely aware of.
Apple still doesn't "get it." (Score:3, Insightful)
-dameron
Why didnt they (Apple) take the same approach as.. (Score:4, Interesting)
All seeds are digitally signed in one or more ways, so that when the seed is found on the internet, the guilty party can be identified and removed from the program.
Another case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
v65 and v66 leaked out too (Score:5, Informative)
I saw v65 too.
Just give out the nightlies like Chimera / Camino (Score:4, Insightful)
Just give out the nightly builds like Chimera / Camino does. Those Safari users using the unreleased versions will enjoy the nightly builds and help fixing and finding the things that need still adjusting in Safari.
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Is Apple Stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Apple stupid for thinking this wouldn't happen, or did they plan on it?
Watermarking, unique copies, etc. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it is quite interesting that people recommend that Apple should have embedded watmermarks, unique identifcation, steganography and other stuff in the beta download to identify who leaked the copy.
Isn't this the same posters that normally oppose DRM? :-)
Why does this seem like a really negitive thing? (Score:3)
Nerr, duh? (Score:5, Interesting)
First off, the whole beta program fro Safari is/was managed by a small team. Second, that team has a goal to release either the next public beta or the full 1.0 release by June 30th, 2003. You can verify this by opening up the terminal and navigating to
Safari Beta expired on June 30, 2003."
This means that they are on a deadline and have a lot of work to do. A lot of people who have posted here are suggesting that they should do MORE work and add easter eggs/stenographics/blah-blah/security tracking to the seeded releases. Now you tell me, does that sound like a good way to reach a deadline? Especially one that is hard coded into the binary of the public beta? Now you could argue that putting in an arbitrary deadline is a "bad idea" or whatever, but I think it's a great way to keep a project both on track and managable. Pressure to perform and all that rot.
The other thing a lot of people are apparently misguided in thinking is that Apple was naive about releasing these developer seeds. For this you have to understand a little bit about Apple's corporate culture and social philosophy. While you may not agree with it, I and a lot of others, think it's a great experiment and helps move our culture along. To understand thier philosophy, just look at Apple's public stance on music piracy. They have put in place some very basic and easily defeatable mechanisms with the iPod that prevents users from sharing music freely with thier iPod. They have not completely crippled your ability to share music, however they do put s little sticker on the iPod's that says "Don't steal music." They have also publicly stated in many debates about music piracy that it is a social problem, not a technological one, and that technology will not solve the issue. So in that statement, they have made reasonably clear that they don't really want to spend a lot of time working on something that they see as inevitable.
They also want to trust those that they sign up for the seed programs. If you can't trust your testers to give you good reliable feedback, you are wasting your time and effort and you won't get your project completed or your bug fixed.
Now the thing with the Safari seeds is that they gave the seed users 3 chances, basically 3 strikes, your out. After the 3rd strike, they pulled the program because they saw it as more detrimental that useful. I'm sure they started getting an unmanagable amount of negative feedback or duplicate bug reports, or even worse, useless ones because all these people that downloaded the seeds that were not part of the seed program probably started sending in incomplete bug reports or even worse, stupid things like "the thingy with the buttons, doesn't work on my puter, fix it now assholes", or something to that effect. This means that those managing the bug database and trying to glean useful information or even just track any real bugs now have to sift through thousands of shit reports. Needle in haystack time.
Any of this sound reasonable.
And finally, the most telling thing would be the reports on rumor sites. Apple hates rumor sites. They are counter productive to thier business (believe it or now, they are). If someone reads on a rumor site that such and such feature is missing/broken/doesn't work or whatever on a rumor site, and bases thier judgement on that rumor sites word (I know, stupid people, but it does happen, I have plenty of ad hom proof), they end up loosing a potential customer, or thier market image gets tarnished.
I don't know about most of you, but these are the reasons that I see Apple's decision to pull the plug as both necessary and smart on Apple's part. Argue all you want about "the way it should be" or whatever, but these are the realities of this business. If you
Re:License (Score:5, Informative)
License Irrelevant (Score:5, Informative)
Re:License (Score:5, Informative)
Safari's back-end (parser, script engine, etc) is based on KHTML, and that code is available here [apple.com]. Safari's front-end (lickability, bookmarking, etc) remains proprietary, and that is allowed by LGPL.
Lickability (Score:4, Funny)
You enjoy licking brushed metal? Oh, man...
Re:License (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Informative)
- j
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
This made me laugh.
Dude, you preface your statement with a literal 'I'm about to talk out of my ass', and then of course you do so.
Apple is a failed monopoly
Every company but Microsoft is a failed monopoly. What is your point? Or, are monopolies good on Saturdays? I forget.
Your mightily aged Mac trolls are telling, too. Listen, you don't like it, that's fine. But you don't even know what the hell you're talking about by your own admission. So, seriously, why are you posting? You're nothing but noise in here. Karma-to-burn norwithstanding.
Blah blah blah, you love your PCs. Wonderful. Run along now.
Re:Um, why not just fix the problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Open Source" ? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Isn't Safari GPL? (Score:3, Informative)
Personally I'd say that they SHOULD release it as GPL.