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Apple contributes quite a lot to open source (WebKit, llvm, clang in particular but there are other high volume projects), though not so much in the Linux kerne

Apple contributes quite a lot to open source (WebKit, llvm, clang in particular but there are other high volume projects), though not so much in the Linux kernel. There are some patches by Apple in Linux though and they've made quite a lot of strides in expediting postbacks internally over the last few years. I left Apple partly over their poor oss policies, but even I won't sign off on the idea that they don't do any at all.

smoldesu 4y ago
- WebKit is a co-opted KDE project that was open source before Apple forked it (also LGPL, it would be illegal for Apple to distribute WebKit if it wasn't GPL too) - LLVM was also open source before Apple bought the core developers - If Clang wasn't open source then literally nobody would ever use it There are definitely a few spotty places where Apple tosses up a CUPS patch for Linux or fixes a cross-platform WebKit bug. Relative to the rest of FAANG, though, Apple is unprecedented in their posturing against open source.
- stormbrew 4y ago
  I didn't say (or at least didn't mean to imply) that any of those were originated at apple, but that they are high volume ongoing contributions to open source from apple and they could do less on them. I also don't know why you think apple would particularly care if "no one else used clang." Their goal with developing it was clearly also not exactly altruistic but their contribution of it into open source didn't really benefit them much in the short term in any way that isn't true of other major open source work at other FAANG. Never mind swift, which has basically failed to benefit apple much at all from being open sourced. But if clang were closed lots of people would still use it - everyone developing for macs and iOS. That's probably all that matters to the brass. In the end I agree that apple is much worse than other FAANG. That is, like I said, part of why I left a pretty nice job there after many years of frustration at the pace of change. But it's hard to pin down a position on all this that applies to all of apple. Some parts are very friendly (compilers), some parts are obligate mildly friendly (core Darwin/xnu and WebKit), some parts are bristling for change, but while change has been slow contributions have been ramping up as processes change (all of services, the growth area of the company). In the 2 years before I left it went from months to approve a minor patch to OSS to more like a week, with certain internal projects having regular unreviewed postback rights to designated high volume OSS projects and official champions of upstream efforts. Where there seemed to be zero progress at all was personal projects, where apple has a catch-22 process that never progresses while insisting that you can't do it outside that process (regardless of the legality of that assertion).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- LtWorf 4y ago
  CUPS was maintained by one single guy for several years.

smoldesu 4y ago

- WebKit is a co-opted KDE project that was open source before Apple forked it (also LGPL, it would be illegal for Apple to distribute WebKit if it wasn't GPL too) - LLVM was also open source before Apple bought the core developers - If Clang wasn't open source then literally nobody would ever use it There are definitely a few spotty places where Apple tosses up a CUPS patch for Linux or fixes a cross-platform WebKit bug. Relative to the rest of FAANG, though, Apple is unprecedented in their posturing against open source.

stormbrew 4y ago
I didn't say (or at least didn't mean to imply) that any of those were originated at apple, but that they are high volume ongoing contributions to open source from apple and they could do less on them. I also don't know why you think apple would particularly care if "no one else used clang." Their goal with developing it was clearly also not exactly altruistic but their contribution of it into open source didn't really benefit them much in the short term in any way that isn't true of other major open source work at other FAANG. Never mind swift, which has basically failed to benefit apple much at all from being open sourced. But if clang were closed lots of people would still use it - everyone developing for macs and iOS. That's probably all that matters to the brass. In the end I agree that apple is much worse than other FAANG. That is, like I said, part of why I left a pretty nice job there after many years of frustration at the pace of change. But it's hard to pin down a position on all this that applies to all of apple. Some parts are very friendly (compilers), some parts are obligate mildly friendly (core Darwin/xnu and WebKit), some parts are bristling for change, but while change has been slow contributions have been ramping up as processes change (all of services, the growth area of the company). In the 2 years before I left it went from months to approve a minor patch to OSS to more like a week, with certain internal projects having regular unreviewed postback rights to designated high volume OSS projects and official champions of upstream efforts. Where there seemed to be zero progress at all was personal projects, where apple has a catch-22 process that never progresses while insisting that you can't do it outside that process (regardless of the legality of that assertion).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
LtWorf 4y ago
CUPS was maintained by one single guy for several years.