5 ms·

Subtle difference: Apple and IBM have made use of free software such as FreeBSD, CUPS, Webkit, etc. Microsoft here is taking core technology and releasing it as

Subtle difference: Apple and IBM have made use of free software such as FreeBSD, CUPS, Webkit, etc. Microsoft here is taking core technology and releasing it as free.

bicknergseng 13y ago
Important. Also, Oracle has bought/absorbed free software and slowly suffocated it (lookin at you, MySQL).
- MertsA 13y ago
  Don't forget OpenOffice.
- rimantas 13y ago
  InnoDB was Oracles long before Oracle bought Sun (and MySQL with it). If they wanted to hurt MySQL they had that opportunity before acquisition.
- TheRealDunkirk 13y ago
  And Ksplice.
tjl 13y ago
Apple has made Darwin open source. That, WebKit, and LLVM are pretty core technologies. A good portion of their technology is open. So, it's not just using free software and not giving back.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Isn't WebKit a fork of GPLv2 code?
  - tjl 13y ago
    LGPL. But, it's still a core Apple technology. WebKit is far more popular than KHTML.
  - sbuk 13y ago
    As with everything in technology, it's far more nuanced that that. See podcasts and articles featuring Don Melton for reasons why...
- 72deluxe 13y ago
  Darwin is open source but is there anyone here who has actually used it or got a bootable usable machine from it? I mean, can you even run X on it successfully? I never could (didn't try very hard mind you). The release of Darwin isn't a massive thing I don't think.
  - orkoden 13y ago
    There have been several independent distributions of Darwin. The current one is Pure Darwin. http://www.puredarwin.org http://www.puredarwin.org
    - dTal 13y ago
      There have been several independent ones because they all fail. I don't fully understand the dynamics here, but the inability of the community to create a usefully working OS out of all that open code for over a decade speaks volumes.
      - 72deluxe 13y ago
        I wonder if it is because it never gained enough intertia when Macs are good enough with the Mach kernel etc.? I wonder why the varieties of Darwin didn't catch on?
        dTal 13y ago
        I think a free software operating system binary-compatible with OSX drivers and source-compatible with OSX applications (through GNUStep) would be an exceedingly compelling product. Which is why people keep trying to make it happen. I don't think it helps that you need XCode to compile a lot of the source that Apple releases, which means you need a Mac.
coldtea 13y ago
Correction: Webkit wasn't some software Apple made use of. Apple created Webkit as we know it. What they DID use was KHTML, a far more barebones web rendering engine used in KDE, that Apple adopted, and turned into Webkit. Webkit as Apple had it (before Google stepped in) was an order of magnitude more evolved than KHTML.
- mehrdada 13y ago
  KHTML was licensed under LGPL. Releasing the code was not a choice, but an obligation.
  - rimantas 13y ago
    How about LLVM?
    - mehrdada 13y ago
      The raison d'etre for Apple's LLVM-based compiler was avoiding GPL3 restrictions of having to publish source code, it seems. They are frequently laggards in publishing parts of LLVM they care about and think of as competitive advantage (e.g. ARM64[1]), and they seem to not contribute much to parts of LLVM that they don't use themselves[2] (not that I find anything wrong with it, but portraying them as innate altruists is just not gonna fly.) I would not be surprised if they get worse and worse over time in giving back to LLVM. In short, Apple publishes free software, generally because they either (1) have to, due to GPL, or (2) feel the gain from the project is bigger than the cost of having to maintain a separate branch, so it makes perfect business sense. (I am not criticizing that Apple has published free software and that is a good thing in general, regardless of the intent, but to say that they don't have their business interests in mind at all times and they fundamentally care about free software more than Microsoft is simply not true.) --- [1]: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY0NzE http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY0NzE [2]: In our own experience developing techniques to uncover more than a hundred bugs in production GCC and LLVM (http://mehrdadafshari.com/emi/paper.pdf http://mehrdadafshari.com/emi/paper.pdf), we found GCC folks much more responsive to bug reports than Clang/LLVM folks, of which I draw the conclusion that the project is relatively under-resourced, at least in parts that are less relevant to Apple Darwin x86/64/arm backend.

Subtle difference: Apple and IBM have made use of free software such as FreeBSD, CUPS, Webkit, etc. Microsoft here is taking core technology and releasing it as free.

bicknergseng 13y ago

Important. Also, Oracle has bought/absorbed free software and slowly suffocated it (lookin at you, MySQL).

MertsA 13y ago
Don't forget OpenOffice.
rimantas 13y ago
InnoDB was Oracles long before Oracle bought Sun (and MySQL with it). If they wanted to hurt MySQL they had that opportunity before acquisition.
TheRealDunkirk 13y ago
And Ksplice.

tjl 13y ago

Apple has made Darwin open source. That, WebKit, and LLVM are pretty core technologies. A good portion of their technology is open. So, it's not just using free software and not giving back.

pessimizer 13y ago
Isn't WebKit a fork of GPLv2 code?
- tjl 13y ago
  LGPL. But, it's still a core Apple technology. WebKit is far more popular than KHTML.
- sbuk 13y ago
  As with everything in technology, it's far more nuanced that that. See podcasts and articles featuring Don Melton for reasons why...
72deluxe 13y ago
Darwin is open source but is there anyone here who has actually used it or got a bootable usable machine from it? I mean, can you even run X on it successfully? I never could (didn't try very hard mind you). The release of Darwin isn't a massive thing I don't think.
- orkoden 13y ago
  There have been several independent distributions of Darwin. The current one is Pure Darwin. http://www.puredarwin.org http://www.puredarwin.org
  - dTal 13y ago
    There have been several independent ones because they all fail. I don't fully understand the dynamics here, but the inability of the community to create a usefully working OS out of all that open code for over a decade speaks volumes.
    - 72deluxe 13y ago
      I wonder if it is because it never gained enough intertia when Macs are good enough with the Mach kernel etc.? I wonder why the varieties of Darwin didn't catch on?
      - dTal 13y ago
        I think a free software operating system binary-compatible with OSX drivers and source-compatible with OSX applications (through GNUStep) would be an exceedingly compelling product. Which is why people keep trying to make it happen. I don't think it helps that you need XCode to compile a lot of the source that Apple releases, which means you need a Mac.

coldtea 13y ago

Correction: Webkit wasn't some software Apple made use of. Apple created Webkit as we know it. What they DID use was KHTML, a far more barebones web rendering engine used in KDE, that Apple adopted, and turned into Webkit. Webkit as Apple had it (before Google stepped in) was an order of magnitude more evolved than KHTML.

mehrdada 13y ago
KHTML was licensed under LGPL. Releasing the code was not a choice, but an obligation.
- rimantas 13y ago
  How about LLVM?
  - mehrdada 13y ago
    The raison d'etre for Apple's LLVM-based compiler was avoiding GPL3 restrictions of having to publish source code, it seems. They are frequently laggards in publishing parts of LLVM they care about and think of as competitive advantage (e.g. ARM64[1]), and they seem to not contribute much to parts of LLVM that they don't use themselves[2] (not that I find anything wrong with it, but portraying them as innate altruists is just not gonna fly.) I would not be surprised if they get worse and worse over time in giving back to LLVM. In short, Apple publishes free software, generally because they either (1) have to, due to GPL, or (2) feel the gain from the project is bigger than the cost of having to maintain a separate branch, so it makes perfect business sense. (I am not criticizing that Apple has published free software and that is a good thing in general, regardless of the intent, but to say that they don't have their business interests in mind at all times and they fundamentally care about free software more than Microsoft is simply not true.) --- [1]: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY0NzE http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY0NzE [2]: In our own experience developing techniques to uncover more than a hundred bugs in production GCC and LLVM (http://mehrdadafshari.com/emi/paper.pdf http://mehrdadafshari.com/emi/paper.pdf), we found GCC folks much more responsive to bug reports than Clang/LLVM folks, of which I draw the conclusion that the project is relatively under-resourced, at least in parts that are less relevant to Apple Darwin x86/64/arm backend.