8 ms·

Placating 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

Placating 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
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Retric 14y ago
WebKit 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 ago
  Yes 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 ago
    Let'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 ago
      It 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 ago
You'd be complaining if they contributing nothing. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
- phaemon 14y ago
  He said they weren't doing enough. You're pointing out he'd also complain if they did even less. Seriously?
  - HerraBRE 14y ago
    Actually, 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.

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Retric 14y ago

WebKit 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 ago
Yes 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 ago
  Let'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 ago
    It 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 ago

You'd be complaining if they contributing nothing. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

phaemon 14y ago
He said they weren't doing enough. You're pointing out he'd also complain if they did even less. Seriously?
- HerraBRE 14y ago
  Actually, 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.