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GNU is Not Unix Businesses OS X Operating Systems Apple

Apple and the Open Source Community 473

Posted by timothy from the coopt-erat-ion dept.
Dozix007 writes "Sitepoint reports an interesting article on the increasing interconnection between Apple's recently released Tiger, and the open source community. Tiger includes improved releases of Apple's directory services (LDAP), secure authentication (Kerberos), mail server (Postfix), web server (Apache) and many more features, nearly all based on existing open source software. Most significant may be the release of Rendezvous for Java, Linux/Unix and Windows. This is a zero-configuration tool for networking that includes network protocols, identification and configuration of devices and services such as printers and local/remote servers, and was based on open source technology."
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Apple and the Open Source Community More

Apple and the Open Source Community

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  • Why is Apple not included more as one of the major traditional computer and technology companies supporting open source? Apple has contributed a great deal to the open source community and hasn't really received its alotted amount of mind share as a result.

    Apple has given a lot more to the open source movement that IBM or Sun.

    • Re:The argument isn't just between IBM & Sun a (Score:5, Funny)

      by fostware ( 551290 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @07:39PM (#9609260) Homepage
      Microsoft has also loved open source. As long as it's under the BSD license...

    • Re:The argument isn't just between IBM & Sun a (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @07:43PM (#9609294) Homepage Journal
      Oh, Apple does get its mindshare. OS X is drooled over by many (including too many Windows junkies who complain about Apple hardware being expensive). A lot of OSS is being ported, or has already been ported, to Darwin and OS X. Many BSD hackers and developers who have coded for GNU or BSD are using OS X, as well as many LISP advocates.

      Apple has been making the right moves, and people are switching. With OS X being the most widely used UNIX on the desktop, you can expect a lot of (hobbyist) development work to be done on, for, or taking into account OS X. I think it has a great future.

    • Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Sunday July 04, 2004 @07:50PM (#9609347) Homepage
      Apple has created a consumer UNIX satisfactory to both end and power users that is capable of running POSIX and most Linux-targeted software without modification, just compile and it runs. This is a major coup, and it surprises me people don't see this. If someone had come on slashdot 10 years ago and said that in 10 years there would be a consumer-targeted UNIX that could easily run whatever Linux/GNU software you threw at it in millions of homes, what would the reaction have been?

      • Re:Indeed (Score:5, Funny)

        by martinX ( 672498 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @07:56PM (#9609389)
        Totally!

        Just the other day my mum was saying "I would really like a consumer UNIX satisfactory to both end and power users that is capable of running POSIX and most Linux-targeted software without modification, just compile and it runs".

        And I said "d000000d, where have you been. Get a Mac! This is a major coup, and it surprises me people don't see this!"

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

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

      • Re:Indeed (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cheekyboy ( 598084 )
        Ironically, I thought to my self and to my friends 10 years ago that apple should just use unix as a core and port most of the traditional GUI layer/apis ontop of the unix layer. (yes 10 years ago when amiga was about to die). This was when Taligent was flying about the OS world, and when the new MacOS was in development that was dumped. But given that 90% of the OS was in pascal and some assembly with some programmers gone for good and with left over bad source codes, I could see why it was hard to do, but

        • Re:Indeed (Score:4, Informative)

          by zieroh ( 307208 ) on Monday July 05, 2004 @02:40AM (#9611203)
          But given that 90% of the OS was in pascal and some assembly with some programmers gone for good and with left over bad source codes

          I was at Apple 10 years ago and I can say with certainty that System 7 (the OS at the time) was a mix of C and assembler, for the most part. Pascal had long since been eliminated from everything except MacApp.
        • Google it [google.com], you'll find quite a bit of info out there. I actually have (or had) a CD image of it somewhere, but not anything that will run it (it has pretty specific hardware requirements which makes all of the Macs I have available unusable - Basilisk won't work either).
    • Apple has had to overcome the bad reputation that they got back when tried to prevent anyone else from using the intellectual property they stole from Xerox (aka look&feel). Googling on "stallmann boycott apple" turned up the following:
      Boycott Apple - Some time before 1989, Apple Computer, Inc. started a lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, claiming they had breached Apple's copyright on the look and feel of the Macintosh user interface. In December 1989, Xerox failed to sue Apple Computer, cl

  • Recently revealed (Score:4, Informative)

    by jimbolaya ( 526861 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @07:37PM (#9609243) Homepage
    Of course, Tiger was recently revealed (or introduced), not released. It won't be released until 2005.

  • Similar (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dncsky1530 ( 711564 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @07:38PM (#9609253) Homepage
    Apple's decisions could be done for the same reasons that Netscape released it's srouce code. Netscape realised that MS would dominate the browser market then pervert the HTML and HTTP standards, in turn forcing them out of the server business. Apple probably knows that in order to servive it will need to release technologies for the Windows platform as well. At home I have Network with Macs and PCs running side by side, connecting to the PCs from the Macs is extremely easy, It gets harder when I need the PC to connect to one of my Macs. It appears apple is trying to appeal to those that run multiple OSs under the same roof, A wise decision.

    • Re:Similar (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ucklak ( 755284 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @07:55PM (#9609378)
      I have to agree.

      I run Linux, Panther, and Windows. It's far easier to connect Linux and OSX to a Windows environment than the other way around.
      You don't even have to reboot Linux and OSX to join a Windows workgroup.

      VPN for Mac also includes RSA encryption that isn't available for Windows except through 3rd party software.
      Needless to say, I use OSX VPN for my terminal server connections instead of Windows.
    • Netscape opensourced the browser the avoid MS perverting the HTML standards? Netscape perverted the HTML standards all by themselves. The blink tag, frames, JavaScript; most of the crap made its way into Netscape 2.0, and we still suffer from it.

  • Apple's OSS efforst (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Pr0Hak ( 2504 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @07:41PM (#9609274)
    Apple has gained a great deal by levereging OSS in Mac OS X. They not only got a rock solid (especially in comparison to OS 9) base to build their proprietary GUI on top of, but they also have gotten a lot of traction in the serious computer geek user category (just look at all the Apple press on /.)

    Their use of a solid, tested (open) base for OS X has allowed them to spend most of their developer time refining the user experience. They seem to be moving a lot faster with OS developement than Microsoft (or any other vendor), currently.

    Apple seems to grok the spirt of the open source community, and has generally been a good citizen about giving back to the community technologies from OS X (from bug fixes to packages used in OS X, to Apple paid developer time on OSS projects, to release of Apple software under a open license (Darwin, Rendezvous, etc.)

  • The real news (Score:5, Interesting)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @07:47PM (#9609317) Homepage
    This isn't really surprising because it just makes sense -- if an open source program is useful and does everything you want there's no reason not to include it. The real interesting thing about this is that Microsoft is not including these programs. I mean, it's not surprising that they don't given their antagonistic view towards F/OSS (and from the other side as well), but I really think this is one area where Apple's really got a leg up on Microsoft. Apple's willing to include useful open source unix tools, and so they've immediately got a huge pool of pre-written code to draw from.

  • Good Deal (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bongo the Monkiii ( 793956 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @07:53PM (#9609367) Journal

    With web applications becoming more prevalent, this will give Apple a huge leg up on the competition which means other competitors like Microsoft or Macromedia will have to play catch-up. I think we're beginning to see that a lot more, recently. Microsoft and other proprietary vendors are falling back to vendors that are willing to embrace open source to move forward instead of just standing still and plugging more and more useless features into already overbloated software.

  • It was not Open Source until they gave it (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 04, 2004 @07:56PM (#9609391)
    RendezVous wasn't "based on open source". The ZeroConf standard (to which Apple contributed as well) is open, of course, as any standard necessarily is.

    The implementation, however, is Apple's. Apple wrote it, incorporated it in Mac OS X, and made the parts of it that make sense when lifted from the Mac OS X context public. They wrote stuff and opened it consequently; original work, not "based on" open source.

    • Re:It was not Open Source until they gave it (Score:5, Informative)

      by MasonMcD ( 104041 ) <masonmcd.mac@com> on Sunday July 04, 2004 @10:15PM (#9610098) Homepage
      Right. Note that ZeroConf is the brainchild of Stuart Cheshire [stuartcheshire.org], and he works for Apple, so Rendezvous isn't some hobbled, second-hand implementation of ZeroConf, but from the horse's mouth.

      Here's the history [theideabasket.com] of ZeroConf:

      The initial seeds of Zeroconf started in a Macintosh network programmers' mailing list called net-thinkers, back in 1997 when I was still a PhD student at Stanford. We were discussing the poor state of ease-of-use for IP networking, particularly the lack of any equivalent to the old AppleTalk Chooser for browsing for services. I proposed that part of the solution might be simply to layer the existing AppleTalk Name Binding Protocol (NBP) over UDP Multicast.

  • Self Reliance (Score:5, Interesting)

    by immel ( 699491 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @07:59PM (#9609410)
    According to Emerson, the nonconformists in the world are the ones that change the world (i.e. Galileo, Jesus, etc).
    Nonconformist players like Apple and the Open Source Community have contributed a lot to the computer industry.
    _
    Apple gave us:
    -The first mass-marketed GUI operating system
    -The PDA
    -The iMac (which changed the way computers are made today i.e. NOT BEIGE)
    -The first personal supercomputer (it was inevitable, but they got it out first)
    _
    Open source gave us:
    -The GPL
    -Operating systems for the rest of us
    -Countless open standards
    -Tux!
    _
    Apple and Open Source belong together, and will probably continue to be major players in the computer industry as leaders, not followers.

  • Apple (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rick and Roll ( 672077 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @08:09PM (#9609477)
    I really don't want to like Apple...

    But it is getting harder to argue against them every day.

  • Apple and Open Source software have cross-pollinated and produced benefits for both paying Apple users and OSS users. Examples that have already been enumerated are Safari/KHTML and PPC BSD. This can only be a good thing for all involved. Perhaps at some point, Apple will open up even more, and release the source to its X11 server and Konfabulator clone.

  • Re:When when when! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tciny ( 783938 )
    "The argument I hear most in support of x86 over PPC is the price - the cheapest PC is a few hundred bucks cheaper than the cheapest Mac." If you compare prices then compare value as well. And in this case this not only aplies to the hardware but to the OS as well, because in order to get the same amout of functionality you get with your latest OSX release you'd have to buy quite a bit of extra Software to your WindowsXP Home edition. And even if you were to just compare the hardware itself, you'd see tha
    • And in this case this not only aplies to the hardware but to the OS as well, because in order to get the same amout of functionality you get with your latest OSX release you'd have to buy quite a bit of extra Software to your WindowsXP Home edition.

      Um, or I could just buy an x86 PC without an OS (those [url=http://www.ibuypower.com]do exist[/url], ya know) and put Linux on it. This is Slashdot, after all. Some of us actually do use Linux, not just talk about it.
      And yes, you can run Linux on PPC too, but

  • Re: Re:When when when! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tciny ( 783938 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @08:20PM (#9609542)
    "The argument I hear most in support of x86 over PPC is the price - the cheapest PC is a few hundred bucks cheaper than the cheapest Mac."

    If you compare prices then compare value as well.
    And in this case this not only aplies to the hardware but to the OS as well, because in order to get the same amout of functionality you get with your latest OSX release you'd have to buy quite a bit of extra Software to your WindowsXP Home edition.

    And even if you were to just compare the hardware itself, you'd see that the g5 powermac is hardly any more expansive than a comparable PC (to the extend you can compare the two).

    Macs aren't really so expansive, it's just that they don't offer the same half-assed systems a lot of other companies *cough* Dell *cough* do. This was btw. written on a Dell Inspiron8200 with broken USB Ports and a rich history of fucking itself up.

  • Yes, I am a Mac fan (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gwoodrow ( 753388 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @09:13PM (#9609797)
    My point of view may be skewed because I finally bought a Mac a year ago and have been impressed ever since, but I think Apple has the potential to lead the mainstream charge for open source advocacy than Linux does.

    To be honest, most people I know that use computers aren't really aware what Linux is. Then, when a penguin-head tries to tell them about it, they don't really understand it or even care. I've faced that problem multiple times when trying to explain linux to folks.

    The thing is that the average user only cares about internet, email, instant messenging, pirated mp3s, and porn. While it's all fine and dandy that linux is more efficient, it still takes a lot more set-up to get it all working. To the average person, one major system crash a week is more tolerable than dealing with a whole new system from scratch.

    On top of that, there's the nervous insecurity that comes with knowing they're mostly on their own. Nobody likes tech support, but it's still nice to know that they're there. Apple has handled open source wonderfully. Users feel secure with a Mac in their hands - at least moreso than Linux. On top of that, if they actually know what open source is, they feel like they're elite for using it.

    The developers get more open access, the users get a sense of pride and security that comes from open source well handled, and Apple makes money.

    I think they have the formula that will drive open source to the home user. Linux will be the better for it, too - while Windows will eventually fall further behind as "too restrictive."

    But these are just my predictions being typed on a very efficient and dependable PowerBook. Writer bias, anyone?

  • Open Source developer machines (Score:3, Interesting)

    by grotgrot ( 451123 ) on Sunday July 04, 2004 @11:15PM (#9610339)
    This open source developer has a project that works on Windows, Linux and Mac, but sadly doesn't possess a Mac himself - someone else does the Mac builds for me.

    I'd love to get a Mac so that I could improve the project on Mac myself, but sadly they are too expensive to acquire. The cheapest Mac I can find new is $800. There are second hand ones around $650, but you usually need to add $130 to upgrade the OS to 10.3 putting you back at the $800 price tag anyway. (Sadly I can't do development remotely as I need to play with USB based devices).

    By comparison, you can get x86 based machines for $200-$300, which makes the barrier of entry to Linux/Windows very low. There are also products like VMWare and VirtualPC which help significantly.

    It would be nice if Apple had some way for developers like me to get loaned or cheap equipment. They could even set minimum download thresholds from SourceForge or other similar minimum requirements. (My project spent most of last week within the top 100 projects on SF).
    • There are also products like VMWare and VirtualPC which help significantly.

      I don't know if you're aware of PearPC [sourceforge.net], but it might help. Sadly my system's too slow to make any use of it, so I can't offer much in the way of a review. Also sadly, I'm in the same situation as yourself - well, minus project popularity. I'd be happy if there were just a way to easily crosscompile for osx/ppc from an x86 linux setup.

    • Re:Open Source developer machines (Score:4, Insightful)

      by foniksonik ( 573572 ) on Monday July 05, 2004 @05:09AM (#9611697) Homepage Journal
      Apple Loans start at like $30 a month... although you'd be paying for like 5 years... but then if you are a capable developer you should be able to make some money so develop some software and use the proceeds to pay for the Mac... it's called investing in your business and it's a tax write off, so in the end you shouldn't be paying anything for the Mac... a free Mac imagine that.

      The barrier to entry got a little bit lower all of a sudden.

      If you just want to develop free software... free as in beer, stick with Linux. Us Mac people would rather pay you for free as in speech software... which would let you develop more software for us.

      It's hard to feel sorry for you in any case. You've got skills apparently so use them.

      Again free as in beer is nice but put the extra effort into the details and give us a good binary dist as well, with a custom icon a thoughtful GUI and some documentation, for $20 - $30... if you get one person a month to buy it.. there's your Mac. Was that so hard?


    • It would be nice if Apple had some way for developers like me to get loaned or cheap equipment.

      Is the Sourceforge Compile Farm what you're looking for? Listed as available:
      • Apple Mac OS X 10.1 Server on Apple Mac G4 (PPC) with Fink
      • Apple Mac OS X 10.2 Server on Apple Mac G4 (PPC) with Fink
      HTH. I haven't used it, so don't know the hoops required to use it. And, it doesn't directly address your need--you can compile and run the app, naturally, but you wouldn't be able to see the GUI interaction, if your app has one.

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