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Apple already have more developers contributing to useful upstream code than Canonical (Webkit, cups, LLVM).
by hmo09 14y ago
Apple already have more developers contributing to useful upstream code than Canonical (Webkit, cups, LLVM).
- HerraBRE 14y agoPlacating the tech crowd by giving away fragments of low level code is really just marketing and a way to retain talent that would otherwise refuse to work for them. It's not as if their users can actually use any of that stuff to change how their macs work (without switching to a different OS or browser).
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Retric 14y agoWebKit for one has fairly wide adoption outside of pure Mac OS X. As for the rest of it, just because something is open source don't expect many people to use it.
- gillianseed 14y agoYes but then it's also being developed by far more companies than Apple. For 2012 Google submitted roughly twice as much code to Webkit as Apple (which came second), apart from them we have smaller yet notable contributors like RIM and Nokia (7% and 5% respectively).
- Retric 14y agoLet's not forget that reduced maintenance costs are often touted as a reason to opensource code in the first place. And when you consider it was developed by Apple and so presumably fit there needs well when released it as working code, it's not surprising that adapting it to new use cases involves more work than maintaining it.
- hdevalence 14y agoIt was developed by the KDE project as KHTML. The reason that it's open-source is that it was Apple's fork of an existing free software project.
- vor_ 14y agoYou'd be complaining if they contributing nothing. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
- phaemon 14y agoHe said they weren't doing enough. You're pointing out he'd also complain if they did even less. Seriously?
- HerraBRE 14y agoActually, I was just pointing out that they are not open in any meaningful sense of the word - their products are very, very closed and controlling and that's how they like it. Comparing them to Canonical is in my opinion very silly for that reason, it's apples to oranges.
- macco 14y agoApple is the biggest tech company in the world. Canonical is a company, that focuses on Linux User experience.
- tedks 14y agoDidn't Apple buy CUPS specifically so that they could keep parts of it proprietary? They're definitely only funneling money into LLVM so they can drop their dependencies on GCC, which will probably have a net harmful effect on the free software culture.
- tzs 14y ago> They're definitely only funneling money into LLVM so they can drop their dependencies on GCC Definitely and only? How did you determine this?
- tedks 14y agoIt's sort of obvious? I can't see any other reason Apple would have for it, other than making compilers researchers have slightly easier lives. It'd certainly make sense after they were forced to open source the frontend for Objective-C.
- tzs 14y agoApple had two technical needs that GCC could not reasonably satisfy. One was to compile Core Image filters. When you make a chain of filters, they treat it as a single complicated filter which they JIT compile and optimize for your GPU or CPU (I believe they decide at run time which to target based on what will be best for the particular complex filter you have defined). Another technical need they had was for a compiler system that could be easily and tightly integrated with other tools, such as IDEs and debuggers. Either of the above would have required extensive modifications to GCC, and they would not have been able to get those modifications into the upstream. The result would be Apple would have to maintain a fork of GCC. They'd be spending a lot of effort porting things from upstream into their fork.
- tedks 14y agoSo would you say that Apple is definitely only funding LLVM so they can drop their dependency on GCC?