4 ms·

None, because the source code to Internet Explorer isn't based on an LGPL library and so can be kept proprietary. Now, how many Microsoft OSes refuse to run in

by anatoly 16y ago

None, because the source code to Internet Explorer isn't based on an LGPL library and so can be kept proprietary. Now, how many Microsoft OSes refuse to run in a virtualization environment on non-approved hardware? How many treat such execution as a license violation?

tptacek 16y ago
So your argument appears to be that Apple, having chosen to build the most popular (by vendor support) browser library on the market on a GPL codebase, is less open than Microsoft.
- anatoly 16y ago
  No, my argument is that your argument is misleading because it ignores the fact that Apple doesn't have a choice in keeping Webkit open. It's possible that they would want to and possible they would not want to, if they had a choice. When they originally chose KHTML to base Webkit on, in 2002, years before the first iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone OS, etc., their attitute towards being open may have been different than it is now. No one is saying Apple were less open than Microsoft in 2002; people are saying it's less open than Microsoft now, and you counteract with ignorant, invalid arguments while ignoring the evidence you're presented with. You're behaving like a troll.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Apple has been a (or, THE) driving force behind Webkit for some time now. They weren't forced to start with LGPL code. They did because they were comfortable working under the GPL. I object to the subtext here, of "Apple only does open source when they're dragged into it". No, in fact, Apple has been a vocal and active open source contributor for many years now, to a far far greater extent than Microsoft. I started with WebKit because I think it's especially relevant to this conversation. WebKit is an important gift to all of Apple's mobile competitors. But move on from WebKit and there's still: * LLVM/Clang * OpenCL * Grand Central Dispatch * Darwin * Quicktime Streaming etc etc etc. Name one bona fide open source project that Microsoft runs that any of its competitors in any market have been able to use. I'm sure there's at least one. Maybe if we go project-vs.-project, Microsoft will even come out ahead. I really doubt it, though. So for now, just one.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - Kadin 16y ago
      That's all true, but in the last few years Apple does seem to have undergone a rather alarming shift away from open systems. I don't think anyone is disputing that they've done a lot of nice open stuff in the last few years, since jumping on the bandwagon in a big way with Darwin ... but that sure doesn't seem to be their M.O. anymore. It's beginning to look like that whole attitude was borne out of desperation and a need to get MacOS in line with the times, and now that they're not against the wall it's back to the same old sealed-box model that was driving people nuts twenty years ago (and which was arguably a big part of why they ended up in trouble). Time will tell, I guess.
      - tptacek 16y ago
        They just shipped GCD. FreeBSD has already ported it. Meanwhile, in their most hotly contested market --- the one, by the way, where Apple makes more money than any other --- over just the last two years, Apple code has been adopted by virtually all of their viable competitors. I don't think you can support the argument that they're shifting away from open source with any credible evidence, but I'd appreciate any stab you take doing so.
        Kadin 16y ago
        My concern is that all of their new products seem to be sealed boxes. Yes, they still make Macs, and still sell MacOS, and MacOS is still fairly open. But it seems like the Mac is quickly becoming a legacy product, and Apple is no longer a computer company but instead a personal consumer-electronics company. And this chart (http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-in-case-you-had-any-doubts-about-where-apples-revenue-comes-from-2010-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-in-case-you-...) suggests that the Mac is no longer Apple's biggest product in terms of revenue. The locked-down iPhone is, with the iPod coming in for a close third. Add in the iPad and it's going to move even more in favor of their closed products. I've always had a soft spot for Apple since they came out with OS X and cheated what most everyone assumed was corporate death, and I'm writing this on a MacBook right now. But I find their other products less than compelling, and since it seems that the direction they're going in is more towards sealed boxes and away from the open-system approach of the (post-2000) Mac, I'm not sure how much of their gear I'll be purchasing. I do own an iPod just because I haven't found a player that's as good, in terms of being well-integrated with software, and the iPod at least doesn't restrict you to only loading music that you buy from iTunes. (I do wonder if, were Apple to bring out the iPod today, if that would be the case.) But I don't have an iPhone and I don't see myself purchasing an iPad. And their last few updates to OS X haven't felt like they're keeping up the pace of speed and feature improvements that they had been; it seems like it's the red-headed stepchild now. There's a serious question in my mind as to whether the MacBook I'm typing this on will be the last one I ever use. It's just disappointing because they brought out a lot of neat stuff.
  - danudey 16y ago
    "No, my argument is that your argument is misleading because it ignores the fact that Apple doesn't have a choice in keeping Webkit open." Well, not to be pedantic or anything, but WebKit didn't have to be open at all. WebCore and JavaScriptCore (based off KHTML and KJS respectively) needed to stay open-source, but the WebKit framework that unites the two is a from-scratch Apple project that was open-sourced in 2005. It could be argued that all the work happens in WebCore and JSCore, but the WebKit framework on top of them makes dealing with the two far, far easier than it would be to use them alone.
- Kadin 16y ago
  The codebase is arguably more open but the platform as a whole is not. I think the closed platform thing is a lot more troubling and has the potential to be worse for the market as a whole than if they had decided to build a proprietary browser but allowed other browsers on it. (This is not to defend Microsoft's portable strategy, though; they've got the worst of both worlds. They have a shitty proprietary browser and then don't let you install anything else on it, AFAIK.)
  - tptacek 16y ago
    I agree. Apple isn't as open as I'd like either, although I'm not worried about it (I think I, as a user and a developer, benefit from it). But that's not really the argument here, is it? The argument is, "does Apple make Gates look like RMS". I don't think that's a credible claim.

by anatoly 16y ago

tptacek 16y ago

So your argument appears to be that Apple, having chosen to build the most popular (by vendor support) browser library on the market on a GPL codebase, is less open than Microsoft.

anatoly 16y ago
No, my argument is that your argument is misleading because it ignores the fact that Apple doesn't have a choice in keeping Webkit open. It's possible that they would want to and possible they would not want to, if they had a choice. When they originally chose KHTML to base Webkit on, in 2002, years before the first iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone OS, etc., their attitute towards being open may have been different than it is now. No one is saying Apple were less open than Microsoft in 2002; people are saying it's less open than Microsoft now, and you counteract with ignorant, invalid arguments while ignoring the evidence you're presented with. You're behaving like a troll.
- tptacek 16y ago
  Apple has been a (or, THE) driving force behind Webkit for some time now. They weren't forced to start with LGPL code. They did because they were comfortable working under the GPL. I object to the subtext here, of "Apple only does open source when they're dragged into it". No, in fact, Apple has been a vocal and active open source contributor for many years now, to a far far greater extent than Microsoft. I started with WebKit because I think it's especially relevant to this conversation. WebKit is an important gift to all of Apple's mobile competitors. But move on from WebKit and there's still: * LLVM/Clang * OpenCL * Grand Central Dispatch * Darwin * Quicktime Streaming etc etc etc. Name one bona fide open source project that Microsoft runs that any of its competitors in any market have been able to use. I'm sure there's at least one. Maybe if we go project-vs.-project, Microsoft will even come out ahead. I really doubt it, though. So for now, just one.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kadin 16y ago
    That's all true, but in the last few years Apple does seem to have undergone a rather alarming shift away from open systems. I don't think anyone is disputing that they've done a lot of nice open stuff in the last few years, since jumping on the bandwagon in a big way with Darwin ... but that sure doesn't seem to be their M.O. anymore. It's beginning to look like that whole attitude was borne out of desperation and a need to get MacOS in line with the times, and now that they're not against the wall it's back to the same old sealed-box model that was driving people nuts twenty years ago (and which was arguably a big part of why they ended up in trouble). Time will tell, I guess.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      They just shipped GCD. FreeBSD has already ported it. Meanwhile, in their most hotly contested market --- the one, by the way, where Apple makes more money than any other --- over just the last two years, Apple code has been adopted by virtually all of their viable competitors. I don't think you can support the argument that they're shifting away from open source with any credible evidence, but I'd appreciate any stab you take doing so.
      - Kadin 16y ago
        My concern is that all of their new products seem to be sealed boxes. Yes, they still make Macs, and still sell MacOS, and MacOS is still fairly open. But it seems like the Mac is quickly becoming a legacy product, and Apple is no longer a computer company but instead a personal consumer-electronics company. And this chart (http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-in-case-you-had-any-doubts-about-where-apples-revenue-comes-from-2010-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-in-case-you-...) suggests that the Mac is no longer Apple's biggest product in terms of revenue. The locked-down iPhone is, with the iPod coming in for a close third. Add in the iPad and it's going to move even more in favor of their closed products. I've always had a soft spot for Apple since they came out with OS X and cheated what most everyone assumed was corporate death, and I'm writing this on a MacBook right now. But I find their other products less than compelling, and since it seems that the direction they're going in is more towards sealed boxes and away from the open-system approach of the (post-2000) Mac, I'm not sure how much of their gear I'll be purchasing. I do own an iPod just because I haven't found a player that's as good, in terms of being well-integrated with software, and the iPod at least doesn't restrict you to only loading music that you buy from iTunes. (I do wonder if, were Apple to bring out the iPod today, if that would be the case.) But I don't have an iPhone and I don't see myself purchasing an iPad. And their last few updates to OS X haven't felt like they're keeping up the pace of speed and feature improvements that they had been; it seems like it's the red-headed stepchild now. There's a serious question in my mind as to whether the MacBook I'm typing this on will be the last one I ever use. It's just disappointing because they brought out a lot of neat stuff.
- danudey 16y ago
  "No, my argument is that your argument is misleading because it ignores the fact that Apple doesn't have a choice in keeping Webkit open." Well, not to be pedantic or anything, but WebKit didn't have to be open at all. WebCore and JavaScriptCore (based off KHTML and KJS respectively) needed to stay open-source, but the WebKit framework that unites the two is a from-scratch Apple project that was open-sourced in 2005. It could be argued that all the work happens in WebCore and JSCore, but the WebKit framework on top of them makes dealing with the two far, far easier than it would be to use them alone.
Kadin 16y ago
The codebase is arguably more open but the platform as a whole is not. I think the closed platform thing is a lot more troubling and has the potential to be worse for the market as a whole than if they had decided to build a proprietary browser but allowed other browsers on it. (This is not to defend Microsoft's portable strategy, though; they've got the worst of both worlds. They have a shitty proprietary browser and then don't let you install anything else on it, AFAIK.)
- tptacek 16y ago
  I agree. Apple isn't as open as I'd like either, although I'm not worried about it (I think I, as a user and a developer, benefit from it). But that's not really the argument here, is it? The argument is, "does Apple make Gates look like RMS". I don't think that's a credible claim.