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While I agree with the spirit of the message to Steve, the attack on Apple not sharing back open source software modifications is out of place. Darwin is open s
by andr 16y ago
While I agree with the spirit of the message to Steve, the attack on Apple not sharing back open source software modifications is out of place. Darwin is open source. WebKit is open source and actively developed by Apple, giving competitors the ability to quickly catch up with one of the iPhone's biggest advantages. Apple is also the chief contributor to LLVM.
- tsuraan 16y agoWebkit is open-source because the people who wrote it (KDE devs) put it under the LGPL. Apple was playing catch-up, and used the best code base they could to get started. They aren't philanthropists, they are just (grudgingly) abiding by the license of the software they are building on.
- demallien 16y agoMacruby is open source. Apple was under no obligation to open source it, yet they have...
- panic 16y agoIt certainly used to be grudging -- originally Apple just threw a huge clump of code back to the KHTML guys, technically satisfying the LGPL, but not doing anyone much good. That's a far cry from the community they've built around the project now. I wouldn't call Apple philanthropists, but they're not simply following the license either.
- albertzeyer 16y agoThey also could have rewritten that. The original KHTML code is a pretty small part (about 140k loc initially) compared to the WebKit project (about 3M loc). Also, they only really needed to have WebCore and JavaScriptCore open but they decided to make all of WebKit open later on (all the rest under a BSD licence).
- scott_s 16y agoThat's true of all companies that contribute to open source.
- eru 16y agoHow do you come to that conclusion?
- scott_s 16y agoI thought it was obvious. Perhaps I should rephrase it: All for-profit companies contribute to open-source because it benefits them.
- eru 16y agoYes, at least the companies should aim for that. I asked because some companies see the embrace the benefit and do not grudge.
- eru 16y agoYes, at least the companies should aim for that. I asked because some companies embrace the benefit and do not grudge.
- GHFigs 16y agoWhat grudge? How are you measuring grudge-ness? How do I know with confidence whether a company is grudging or not? And furthermore, why would I care?
- eru 16y agoWhat do I know. One of the ancestor comments introduced the concept: "They aren't philanthropists, they are just (grudgingly) abiding by the license of the software they are building on." As an attempt to answer: They can just satisfy the letter of the GPL by a code dump--which I would count as grudgingly, or they can embrace open development.
- pistoriusp 16y agoGrand Central Dispatch also comes to mind.