5 ms·
A lot of companies routinely open-source lots of little things that could easily have stayed internal, but are genuinely useful to everyone else. (Admittedly, I
by lobster_johnson 10y ago
A lot of companies routinely open-source lots of little things that could easily have stayed internal, but are genuinely useful to everyone else. (Admittedly, I think about 30% of them are Go logging libraries, but the point still stands.) I.e., open source by default as opposed to being the exception.
That, of course, can be a strategy. A company can look cooler and attract talent by developing everything in the open.
- scarface74 10y agoIt's called "commoditizing your complements" Google open sourced Android to get advertising revenue. IBM supports open source and made money from server sells and still makes money from services. Apple open sourced WebKit (more than they had to) to gain industry support and later to kill off Flash. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
- savoytruffle 10y agoWebkit was open-source long before anticipating killing Flash. I think, like Darwin, it was originally open-source because it had to be, due to its origin in an existing open-source project that required derivatives also be open-source.
- scarface74 10y agoDarwin was originally based on BSD code - there is no requirement to keep BSD code open.
- sigjuice 10y agoWhy does Apple continue to publish Darwin code then? I have always been curious.
- scarface74 10y agoWhy not? It doesn't harm Apple's competitiveness. Apple doesn't publish source to the hire level OS X frameworks.
- saurik 10y agoIf it makes you feel any better, they redact everything related to ARM (and "good luck" compiling it...).
- sigjuice 10y agoIt does not make me feel any better or worse either way. I am merely curious about Apple's motivations for publishing xnu and other Darwin code.
- captainmuon 10y agoI think to help third party driver developers?
- captainmuon 10y agoI think to help third party driver developers?
- lobster_johnson 10y agoMost of WebKit today is actually permissive (BSD license), with some that is still LGPL.
- michaelmrose 10y agoApple didn't own webkit they couldn't keep it closed
- scarface74 10y agoThe original web rendering engine code was originally licensed under BSD. Apple could have forked it and closed it. JavascriptCore was also based on BSD code, but was then rewritten by the WebKit team and made GPL.
- pvg 10y agoFairly sure KHTML was LGPL, Apple could not have closed it even if they wanted to. Same goes for what became JSCore which also remains LGPL.
- michaelmrose 10y agoPretty sure you are in fact wrong.
- scarface74 10y agoFairly sure KHTML was LGPL, Apple could not have closed it even if they wanted to. Same goes for what became JSCore which also remains LGPL. You're right. WebKit itself is BSD but Webcore and the original original JSCore are LGPL. A really weird combination.