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Reposted here since it seems the page linked is no longer visible (at least for me). ------------ Apple’s great GPL purge Posted on 5 February 2012 by meta A

by i386 15y ago

Reposted here since it seems the page linked is no longer visible (at least for me). ------------ Apple’s great GPL purge Posted on 5 February 2012 by meta Apple obligingly allows you to browse and download the open source software they use in OS X. Since they have listings for each version of OS X, I decided to take a look at how much software they were using that was only available under the GNU public license. The results are illuminating: 10.5: 47 GPL-licensed packages. 10.6: 44 GPL-licensed packages. 10.7: 29 GPL-licensed packages. This clearly supports the idea that Apple is aggressively trying to remove all GPL-licensed software from OS X. While the removal of Samba and GCC got some attention, the numbers show that there’s a more general purging going on. The 29 remaining GPL-licensed packages aren’t too healthy either. Lion apparently ships with bash 3.2. That’s from 2006. The current version is 4.2.10. Why no upgrade? Because Apple’s shipping the last version of bash that was under the GPL version 2. The message is pretty obvious: Apple won’t ship anything that’s licensed under GPL v3 on OS X. Now, why is that? There are two big changes in GPL v3. The first is that it explicitly prohibits patent lawsuits against people for actually using the GPL-licensed software you ship. The second is that it carefully prevents TiVoization, locking down hardware so that people can’t actually run the software they want. So, which of those things are they planning for OS X, eh? I’m also intrigued to see how far they are prepared to go with this. They already annoyed and inconvenienced a lot of people with the Samba and GCC removal. Having wooed so many developers to the Mac in the last decade, are they really prepared to throw away all that goodwill by shipping obsolete tools and making it a pain in the ass to upgrade them?

knieveltech 15y ago
Make no mistake, Apple could give a rat's ass about the developer community, and why should they? We represent a vanishingly small fraction of the total consumer space and we are orders of magnitude more demanding.
- jseliger 15y ago
  Developers are also disproportionately useful for a platform, since they're the ones who build the stuff people want to use; for more on that, see http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html , as well as the bazillion other writers pointing out similar things.
  - vog 15y ago
    Although there is some truth in it, I think that Apple is following a different strategy. They don't really attract developers by a developer-friendly environment, but by the number of worthy users of their platform. Regarding the embedded devices (i.e. iOS, App Store, etc.) you could even call this a developer-hostile environment. Yet there are lots of developers taking this hassle just to get access to Apple's user base.
- X-Istence 15y ago
  That isn't necessarily true. Xcode is a very awesome IDE, it has had its growing pains but with the new clang based backend it can go far and fast. Not being reliant on older and more stagnant and more tightly coupled GCC to get there. It is in Apple's best interest to have a compiler that is also used to do the checking of code in real time within the IDE be the same. It makes more sense because otherwise you get differing results in the IDE versus compile time. It is within Apple's best interest to help developers develop and make it easy to find issues, clang's output for errors are absolutely fantastic. If you type something wrong it provides suggestions for what you may have meant (and most of the time they are accurate). I think Xcode is one location where Apple is showing that it does care about developers by building a better product with better integrated tools (git for example ...). Are there things we miss from the old Xcode, sure, but overall it is clear that Apple understand they need to provide developers with tools that help them get their job done. --- Clang though is helping the ENTIRE development community. It is an BSD licensed compiler with some absolutely awesome features. 1. Their human readable error messages. I've spent a lot less time Googling random compiler failures or trying to parse GCC's or MSVC's output so that I can understand it and fix the error (especially in heavily templated C++ code) just by having the compiler give me human readable errors. This goes a long way for a developer that misplaced a semicolon or is attempting to use a const variable into some Boost code that expects a non-const variable thereby causing thousands of lines of template errors to be thrown. 2. The LLVM allows for very interesting "languages" to be easily prototyped and tested, and JIT compilation and a few other things can be created. 3. clang can read incomplete code files and make code completion suggestions. Not just tied to Xcode, but as a library. clang_complete for Vim is absolutely fantastic and by far my favourite Vim script. --- Why exactly should Apple be required to ship GPL versions of the software when they could ship BSD licensed utilities without having to worry about being GPL compliant. Just because a few people prefer the GPL version they can't remove it from their system? They believe the GPL licensed tools to be inferior (and with the GPLv3 causes more legal headaches than it is worth) and thus they are replacing them with a set of tools that fit their requirements. Why does that mean that they "could give a rat's ass about the developer community"? Why exactly would they continue to develop clang/llvm as an open source project?
  - wmf 15y ago
- rimantas 15y ago
  How many billions have Apple already paid out to iOS and Mac App Store developers? How many attendees did they have at WWDC? Getting rid of GPL in now way means getting rid of developers.
- feralchimp 15y ago
  > Apple could give a rat's ass about the developer community, and why should they? We represent a vanishingly small fraction of the total consumer space and we are orders of magnitude more demanding. This is a popular refrain, but I don't think it holds up well at all under scrutiny: 1. By your logic, who should care about developers? Only open source projects or ISVs? And yet everyone does, a lot. 2. iOS platform developers buy Macs (and often multiple iOS devices) to develop iOS apps. 3. Xcode, warts and all, is basically free. Same with all of the OS X and iOS developer documentation. Have you priced Visual Studio or an MSDN subscription lately? 4. No one who feels this way has had Quinn the Eskimo answer a Core OS or Networking question for them in the Apple Dev Forums. If you don't care about developers, you don't pay folks like him to dispense wisdom to a bunch of yahoos who each paid $99/year.
  - knieveltech 15y ago
    1. Pretty much just open source projects or ISVs, and I think you'll find "everyone" gets a lot smaller the further you get from the Valley. 2. No disrespect intended but BFD? Are you proposing that developer hardware purchases represent anything besides a rounding error in Apple's hardware sales? 3. I see Xcode's pay-to-upgrade model and $99/yr developer subscriptions as a variation on the MSDN/Visual Studios theme. 4. Wait, what? Cult of Personality issues aside, we're talking about a company that's pulling in billions in profits quarterly nickle-and-diming their developer community. How is this beneficial to developers again?
    - feralchimp 15y ago
      1. I think you underestimate the amount of dev talent being consumed outside of "software companies", for a wide variety of platforms (including desktops). 2. Fair point, but are you proposing Apple doesn't care whether devs buy Android and WinMo devices instead? None of these platforms are fighting for developer attention in a vacuum, but they are fighting for developer attention. 3. Xcode charging $5 to upgrade is quite a "variation" on that theme indeed. $99/year dev subscriptions, again, are outside MSDN theme-level fees by an order of magnitude. 4. My point is that if you're paying $0.30 per day to rent a Ferrari, Ferrari is not "nickel-and-diming" you. Is "totally free" the only fee level at which you're interested in consuming tools and developer support? Do you make such decisions for an organization with money riding on the results?
- DarkShikari 15y ago
  Developers make the software that goes on their platform. Microsoft didn't gain their huge market share in the 90s through magical spells; they won by being extremely developer-friendly. Without a "developer community", Apple wouldn't exist as a company.
rmc 15y ago
are they really prepared to throw away all that goodwill by shipping obsolete tools and making it a pain in the ass to upgrade them? Apple has made fantastic amounts of money and become the daring of the media & tech world since they went down the route of the closed iPhone/iOS buisiness.
Angostura 15y ago
> So, which of those things are they planning for OS X, eh? Fairly, clear I would have thought. There is substantial overlap between the OS X and iOS codebases. Having anti- TiVoization clauses in code central to OS X poses problems whenever they want to use a funky feature in iOS, or indeed on the AppleTV. It makes things much simpler if this type of code can be avoided.
napierzaza 15y ago
Keep in mind that there are plenty of OSS people that don't like the GPL3, and they aren't interested in either of those two things.

by i386 15y ago

knieveltech 15y ago

Make no mistake, Apple could give a rat's ass about the developer community, and why should they? We represent a vanishingly small fraction of the total consumer space and we are orders of magnitude more demanding.

jseliger 15y ago
Developers are also disproportionately useful for a platform, since they're the ones who build the stuff people want to use; for more on that, see http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html , as well as the bazillion other writers pointing out similar things.
- vog 15y ago
  Although there is some truth in it, I think that Apple is following a different strategy. They don't really attract developers by a developer-friendly environment, but by the number of worthy users of their platform. Regarding the embedded devices (i.e. iOS, App Store, etc.) you could even call this a developer-hostile environment. Yet there are lots of developers taking this hassle just to get access to Apple's user base.
X-Istence 15y ago
That isn't necessarily true. Xcode is a very awesome IDE, it has had its growing pains but with the new clang based backend it can go far and fast. Not being reliant on older and more stagnant and more tightly coupled GCC to get there. It is in Apple's best interest to have a compiler that is also used to do the checking of code in real time within the IDE be the same. It makes more sense because otherwise you get differing results in the IDE versus compile time. It is within Apple's best interest to help developers develop and make it easy to find issues, clang's output for errors are absolutely fantastic. If you type something wrong it provides suggestions for what you may have meant (and most of the time they are accurate). I think Xcode is one location where Apple is showing that it does care about developers by building a better product with better integrated tools (git for example ...). Are there things we miss from the old Xcode, sure, but overall it is clear that Apple understand they need to provide developers with tools that help them get their job done. --- Clang though is helping the ENTIRE development community. It is an BSD licensed compiler with some absolutely awesome features. 1. Their human readable error messages. I've spent a lot less time Googling random compiler failures or trying to parse GCC's or MSVC's output so that I can understand it and fix the error (especially in heavily templated C++ code) just by having the compiler give me human readable errors. This goes a long way for a developer that misplaced a semicolon or is attempting to use a const variable into some Boost code that expects a non-const variable thereby causing thousands of lines of template errors to be thrown. 2. The LLVM allows for very interesting "languages" to be easily prototyped and tested, and JIT compilation and a few other things can be created. 3. clang can read incomplete code files and make code completion suggestions. Not just tied to Xcode, but as a library. clang_complete for Vim is absolutely fantastic and by far my favourite Vim script. --- Why exactly should Apple be required to ship GPL versions of the software when they could ship BSD licensed utilities without having to worry about being GPL compliant. Just because a few people prefer the GPL version they can't remove it from their system? They believe the GPL licensed tools to be inferior (and with the GPLv3 causes more legal headaches than it is worth) and thus they are replacing them with a set of tools that fit their requirements. Why does that mean that they "could give a rat's ass about the developer community"? Why exactly would they continue to develop clang/llvm as an open source project?
- wmf 15y ago
rimantas 15y ago
How many billions have Apple already paid out to iOS and Mac App Store developers? How many attendees did they have at WWDC? Getting rid of GPL in now way means getting rid of developers.
feralchimp 15y ago
> Apple could give a rat's ass about the developer community, and why should they? We represent a vanishingly small fraction of the total consumer space and we are orders of magnitude more demanding. This is a popular refrain, but I don't think it holds up well at all under scrutiny: 1. By your logic, who should care about developers? Only open source projects or ISVs? And yet everyone does, a lot. 2. iOS platform developers buy Macs (and often multiple iOS devices) to develop iOS apps. 3. Xcode, warts and all, is basically free. Same with all of the OS X and iOS developer documentation. Have you priced Visual Studio or an MSDN subscription lately? 4. No one who feels this way has had Quinn the Eskimo answer a Core OS or Networking question for them in the Apple Dev Forums. If you don't care about developers, you don't pay folks like him to dispense wisdom to a bunch of yahoos who each paid $99/year.
- knieveltech 15y ago
  1. Pretty much just open source projects or ISVs, and I think you'll find "everyone" gets a lot smaller the further you get from the Valley. 2. No disrespect intended but BFD? Are you proposing that developer hardware purchases represent anything besides a rounding error in Apple's hardware sales? 3. I see Xcode's pay-to-upgrade model and $99/yr developer subscriptions as a variation on the MSDN/Visual Studios theme. 4. Wait, what? Cult of Personality issues aside, we're talking about a company that's pulling in billions in profits quarterly nickle-and-diming their developer community. How is this beneficial to developers again?
  - feralchimp 15y ago
    1. I think you underestimate the amount of dev talent being consumed outside of "software companies", for a wide variety of platforms (including desktops). 2. Fair point, but are you proposing Apple doesn't care whether devs buy Android and WinMo devices instead? None of these platforms are fighting for developer attention in a vacuum, but they are fighting for developer attention. 3. Xcode charging $5 to upgrade is quite a "variation" on that theme indeed. $99/year dev subscriptions, again, are outside MSDN theme-level fees by an order of magnitude. 4. My point is that if you're paying $0.30 per day to rent a Ferrari, Ferrari is not "nickel-and-diming" you. Is "totally free" the only fee level at which you're interested in consuming tools and developer support? Do you make such decisions for an organization with money riding on the results?
DarkShikari 15y ago
Developers make the software that goes on their platform. Microsoft didn't gain their huge market share in the 90s through magical spells; they won by being extremely developer-friendly. Without a "developer community", Apple wouldn't exist as a company.

rmc 15y ago

are they really prepared to throw away all that goodwill by shipping obsolete tools and making it a pain in the ass to upgrade them? Apple has made fantastic amounts of money and become the daring of the media & tech world since they went down the route of the closed iPhone/iOS buisiness.

Angostura 15y ago

> So, which of those things are they planning for OS X, eh? Fairly, clear I would have thought. There is substantial overlap between the OS X and iOS codebases. Having anti- TiVoization clauses in code central to OS X poses problems whenever they want to use a funky feature in iOS, or indeed on the AppleTV. It makes things much simpler if this type of code can be avoided.

napierzaza 15y ago

Keep in mind that there are plenty of OSS people that don't like the GPL3, and they aren't interested in either of those two things.