5 ms·

Apple's free pass on open source

21 points by procyon 18y ago

tlrobinson 18y ago
Um, WebKit? Granted they forked and renamed KHTML, and take maybe a little too much credit because of it, but they really propelled KHTML/WebKit to the top in the last couple of years. IMHO, WebKit is the premiere browser engine at this point, and I doubt it would be without Apple's involvement.
- crescendo 18y ago
  The WebKit team is fantastic. Their code is clean, well-organized, fast, and their output prolific—every morning when I do update, there are at least 50 individual commits. They also beat all of the big-name players to Acid 3 compliance.
- ken 18y ago
  Also: CUPS, Darwin, launchd, Bonjour, BLAST, Headerdoc, ... Also they call it "open source", and say they love it. You can go to an "Open Source" webpage at apple.com and see how to download source from CVS, and how to install and run other open-source programs (like PostgreSQL and MySQL) on Mac OS X. It's hard to imagine how a company selling proprietary software could be any more open-source friendly.
  - wheels 18y ago
    I know it appears this way, but Apple really is a huge pain in the ass here. For a long time you couldn't download tar files of those things on their Open Source site -- you could only browse file-by-file through the web interface. This excepted the things that they were trying to push as standards. Most of the stuff you still can't get from CVS. It took forever when I was trying to track down the source for their libtool a couple years back; when I finally did I patched it to use half of the memory of their version (at the time it was using 1.5 GB just to link some stuff where I worked) and sent the patches in to mailing lists and filed them in a bug report. Never heard anything from Apple on either. The biggest case where that's not true -- where Apple has been pretty integrated into the community development processes from the beginning isn't any of the projects you mention -- it's GCC. Usually they just do what they need to to meet the license requirements.
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  Um, iPhone? By most measures, it's the least open smart phone platform.
  - tlrobinson 18y ago
    Totally irrelevant. The article is about whether Apple contributes back to the open source community, not whether or not their platform is "open". But since you brought it up, Apple has contributed to several open source projects as a direct result of the iPhone projects. WebKit, for one. LLVM is another: "continued development and support of LLVM is funded by Apple Inc., ..."
    - s3graham 18y ago
      Yup, LLVM is awesome, and a quite R&D heavy project that doesn't directly really translate into a user product.
    - SwellJoe 18y ago
      Totally irrelevant. The article is about whether Apple contributes back to the open source community, not whether or not their platform is "open". If you believe the two are unrelated, then we have widely differing beliefs about why Open Source is important. Open Source and Free Software is about freedom to do what you want with the software you use...Apple is not fond of that idea, and never has been. Sending money, and/or some snippets of code, to Open Source developers is wonderful...but it doesn't make a company a friend to Open Source or a friend to freedom. Apple is not an Open Source friendly company. They're not even an open standards friendly company, except where it suits them. And, I guess I need to point out that WebKit is not some generous gift to the world. Apple was required, by law, to release the source they produced. That they did so is not something to be praised. It's just doing business legally. So, sure, Apple contributes to some Open Source projects...and that's a good thing. But Apple is hostile to openness on many fronts, and that is a bad thing.
      - tlrobinson 18y ago
        So is Apple required by law to maintain webkit.org with extensive documentation, a frequently updated blog, nightly builds, an active IRC channel with hundreds of users, a public bug tracker, etc? Are they required by law to fund LLVM development? My point is that Apple does much more than contribute "snippets of code". Perhaps not every aspect of their business lives up to your ideal, but I think most of their involvement in open source projects does.
- wheels 18y ago
  They did that kicking and screaming after many, many promises of finally opening up and never doing it, huge undocumented code drops, massive style inconsistencies and so on. It took years for Webkit to get around to the level of openness that it's at today, and being cynical, that wasn't because Apple wanted to give back to the OSS community; it was because they wanted Nokia on board. I contributed some very minor portions back in the KHTML days, and am friends with all of the original KHTML developers, so I watched this unfold. To be fair, this wasn't the fault of the Webkit developers, but as mentioned in the article, Apple's ultra-secretiveness and development timelines.
Tichy 18y ago
Not THAT discussion again. If open source developers give away their code for free, it is free. They shouldn't come around a couple of months later and say "we do want something back after all".
- notauser 18y ago
  I don't complain when companies chose not to contribute back to open source projects they use. I _do_ tend to try and spend my money with companies that contribute back.
  - Tichy 18y ago
    Absolutely, I feel the same way. It's just that I think if people claim that their software is free, they should stand by their word.
tptacek 18y ago
Isn't this just a huge load of crap? I thought every time one of these got posted, 5 people from open source projects Apple basically funds chimed in and said, "just because Apple didn't rename it Apple KHTML doesn't mean they aren't key contributors". You know what else isn't open source? PageRank. Shut up, CNet.
- william42 18y ago
  PageRank is an algorithm. (Although it does piss me off that it's patented)
  - tptacek 18y ago
    Ok I'm guessing that there's more than a little bit of code that actually runs that algorithm.
    - william42 18y ago
      Honestly, probably just a little bit. It's not that complex of an algorithm. The really complex stuff is MapReduce.
      - tptacek 18y ago
        Can we just agree that there is quite a bit of Google code that is unlikely to ever be open-sourced? =)
        wallflower 18y ago
        Reddit's open source code excludes the crown jewels of anti-cheating/spam protection. It's their IP.
        echair 18y ago
        Seems more likely that it's just that they don't want spammers and cheaters to know what their defenses are.
wbond 18y ago
I think what is in question here is the "spirit" of open source. Legally you can do anything with BSD code and some companies just use it without giving anything back. That isn't breaking the law, but it isn't really being a "good" member of the open source community. It seems to me that the issue could be related to the fact that Apple uses a lot of open source code (granted they do give back), but quite a bit of their software comes with technology that restricts usage by consumers. The GPL (v3 even more so than v2) tries to address these types of issues. The downside being that everything needs to be shared so it reduces private company incentive to pour money into features/technology that competitors can just snag. In the end it is one of the downsides of working on BSD/MIT licensed open source code. In one sense it is an act of altruism, but it can sting to see someone snag the code and make lots of money with hardly an acknowledgment in your direction or to take and use it to restrict people.
- incomethax 18y ago
  It also brings to mind a certain lawsuit involving Psystar and a certain product clone... I bear no grudge against Apple, Microsoft, or Google for not 'contributing enough' to Open Source. I love it when companies make their products open source, but after all, they are companies and their primary objective as publicly traded corporations is to create value for shareholders. My opinion on the matter is simply, give Microsoft and Google a break.
boredguy8 18y ago
"The bigger question, however, is why Apple gets a pass, while I and others slam Microsoft..." "I love my Mac. Period." That sortof answers your question, doesn't it? For good or ill, some people just want to get in on the Apple love fest. But don't cut off your nose to spite your face: I think Sun's actually done, on the whole, a decent job at working with and for the open source community. For both Apple and (sometimes) Google, I merely say: Beware Greeks bearing gifts.
Zev 18y ago
http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.5.3/ http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.5.3/ might be worth taking a look through.
st3fan 18y ago
"""You can hardly say the name "Apple" without signing an NDA.""" This is so true. The iPhone is out. Everybody can (and could) become an iPhone developer and download the SDK. Yet, developers are still not allowed to talk to each other about programming on the iPhone. Not in public forums. But also not even in person with you colleague or friend who also downloaded the SDK. In my opinion they are taking it too far. Way too far. I just don't see the point of this NDA.
- neovive 18y ago
  You can't even view the iPhone development Getting Started tutorials without paying $99 to become part of the developer program.
  - ralphc 18y ago
    Not true, at least not recently. With just an Apple ID (the same one I use for iTunes, etc.) I was able to download the iPhone SDK, look at tutorials, build apps and run them on the simulator. I haven't tried to put anything on an actual device, I don't have one yet, but the promised-in-the-future ad-hoc distribution should make that doable for me and my family.

21 points by procyon 18y ago

Um, WebKit? Granted they forked and renamed KHTML, and take maybe a little too much credit because of it, but they really propelled KHTML/WebKit to the top in the last couple of years. IMHO, WebKit is the premiere browser engine at this point, and I doubt it would be without Apple's involvement.

crescendo 18y ago
The WebKit team is fantastic. Their code is clean, well-organized, fast, and their output prolific—every morning when I do update, there are at least 50 individual commits. They also beat all of the big-name players to Acid 3 compliance.
ken 18y ago
Also: CUPS, Darwin, launchd, Bonjour, BLAST, Headerdoc, ... Also they call it "open source", and say they love it. You can go to an "Open Source" webpage at apple.com and see how to download source from CVS, and how to install and run other open-source programs (like PostgreSQL and MySQL) on Mac OS X. It's hard to imagine how a company selling proprietary software could be any more open-source friendly.
- wheels 18y ago
  I know it appears this way, but Apple really is a huge pain in the ass here. For a long time you couldn't download tar files of those things on their Open Source site -- you could only browse file-by-file through the web interface. This excepted the things that they were trying to push as standards. Most of the stuff you still can't get from CVS. It took forever when I was trying to track down the source for their libtool a couple years back; when I finally did I patched it to use half of the memory of their version (at the time it was using 1.5 GB just to link some stuff where I worked) and sent the patches in to mailing lists and filed them in a bug report. Never heard anything from Apple on either. The biggest case where that's not true -- where Apple has been pretty integrated into the community development processes from the beginning isn't any of the projects you mention -- it's GCC. Usually they just do what they need to to meet the license requirements.
SwellJoe 18y ago
Um, iPhone? By most measures, it's the least open smart phone platform.
- tlrobinson 18y ago
  Totally irrelevant. The article is about whether Apple contributes back to the open source community, not whether or not their platform is "open". But since you brought it up, Apple has contributed to several open source projects as a direct result of the iPhone projects. WebKit, for one. LLVM is another: "continued development and support of LLVM is funded by Apple Inc., ..."
  - s3graham 18y ago
    Yup, LLVM is awesome, and a quite R&D heavy project that doesn't directly really translate into a user product.
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    Totally irrelevant. The article is about whether Apple contributes back to the open source community, not whether or not their platform is "open". If you believe the two are unrelated, then we have widely differing beliefs about why Open Source is important. Open Source and Free Software is about freedom to do what you want with the software you use...Apple is not fond of that idea, and never has been. Sending money, and/or some snippets of code, to Open Source developers is wonderful...but it doesn't make a company a friend to Open Source or a friend to freedom. Apple is not an Open Source friendly company. They're not even an open standards friendly company, except where it suits them. And, I guess I need to point out that WebKit is not some generous gift to the world. Apple was required, by law, to release the source they produced. That they did so is not something to be praised. It's just doing business legally. So, sure, Apple contributes to some Open Source projects...and that's a good thing. But Apple is hostile to openness on many fronts, and that is a bad thing.
    - tlrobinson 18y ago
      So is Apple required by law to maintain webkit.org with extensive documentation, a frequently updated blog, nightly builds, an active IRC channel with hundreds of users, a public bug tracker, etc? Are they required by law to fund LLVM development? My point is that Apple does much more than contribute "snippets of code". Perhaps not every aspect of their business lives up to your ideal, but I think most of their involvement in open source projects does.
wheels 18y ago
They did that kicking and screaming after many, many promises of finally opening up and never doing it, huge undocumented code drops, massive style inconsistencies and so on. It took years for Webkit to get around to the level of openness that it's at today, and being cynical, that wasn't because Apple wanted to give back to the OSS community; it was because they wanted Nokia on board. I contributed some very minor portions back in the KHTML days, and am friends with all of the original KHTML developers, so I watched this unfold. To be fair, this wasn't the fault of the Webkit developers, but as mentioned in the article, Apple's ultra-secretiveness and development timelines.

Tichy 18y ago

Not THAT discussion again. If open source developers give away their code for free, it is free. They shouldn't come around a couple of months later and say "we do want something back after all".

notauser 18y ago
I don't complain when companies chose not to contribute back to open source projects they use. I _do_ tend to try and spend my money with companies that contribute back.
- Tichy 18y ago
  Absolutely, I feel the same way. It's just that I think if people claim that their software is free, they should stand by their word.

tptacek 18y ago

Isn't this just a huge load of crap? I thought every time one of these got posted, 5 people from open source projects Apple basically funds chimed in and said, "just because Apple didn't rename it Apple KHTML doesn't mean they aren't key contributors". You know what else isn't open source? PageRank. Shut up, CNet.

william42 18y ago
PageRank is an algorithm. (Although it does piss me off that it's patented)
- tptacek 18y ago
  Ok I'm guessing that there's more than a little bit of code that actually runs that algorithm.
  - william42 18y ago
    Honestly, probably just a little bit. It's not that complex of an algorithm. The really complex stuff is MapReduce.
    - tptacek 18y ago
      Can we just agree that there is quite a bit of Google code that is unlikely to ever be open-sourced? =)
      - wallflower 18y ago
        Reddit's open source code excludes the crown jewels of anti-cheating/spam protection. It's their IP.
        echair 18y ago
        Seems more likely that it's just that they don't want spammers and cheaters to know what their defenses are.

wbond 18y ago

I think what is in question here is the "spirit" of open source. Legally you can do anything with BSD code and some companies just use it without giving anything back. That isn't breaking the law, but it isn't really being a "good" member of the open source community. It seems to me that the issue could be related to the fact that Apple uses a lot of open source code (granted they do give back), but quite a bit of their software comes with technology that restricts usage by consumers. The GPL (v3 even more so than v2) tries to address these types of issues. The downside being that everything needs to be shared so it reduces private company incentive to pour money into features/technology that competitors can just snag. In the end it is one of the downsides of working on BSD/MIT licensed open source code. In one sense it is an act of altruism, but it can sting to see someone snag the code and make lots of money with hardly an acknowledgment in your direction or to take and use it to restrict people.

incomethax 18y ago
It also brings to mind a certain lawsuit involving Psystar and a certain product clone... I bear no grudge against Apple, Microsoft, or Google for not 'contributing enough' to Open Source. I love it when companies make their products open source, but after all, they are companies and their primary objective as publicly traded corporations is to create value for shareholders. My opinion on the matter is simply, give Microsoft and Google a break.

boredguy8 18y ago

"The bigger question, however, is why Apple gets a pass, while I and others slam Microsoft..." "I love my Mac. Period." That sortof answers your question, doesn't it? For good or ill, some people just want to get in on the Apple love fest. But don't cut off your nose to spite your face: I think Sun's actually done, on the whole, a decent job at working with and for the open source community. For both Apple and (sometimes) Google, I merely say: Beware Greeks bearing gifts.

Zev 18y ago

http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.5.3/ http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.5.3/ might be worth taking a look through.

st3fan 18y ago

"""You can hardly say the name "Apple" without signing an NDA.""" This is so true. The iPhone is out. Everybody can (and could) become an iPhone developer and download the SDK. Yet, developers are still not allowed to talk to each other about programming on the iPhone. Not in public forums. But also not even in person with you colleague or friend who also downloaded the SDK. In my opinion they are taking it too far. Way too far. I just don't see the point of this NDA.

neovive 18y ago
You can't even view the iPhone development Getting Started tutorials without paying $99 to become part of the developer program.
- ralphc 18y ago
  Not true, at least not recently. With just an Apple ID (the same one I use for iTunes, etc.) I was able to download the iPhone SDK, look at tutorials, build apps and run them on the simulator. I haven't tried to put anything on an actual device, I don't have one yet, but the promised-in-the-future ad-hoc distribution should make that doable for me and my family.