8 ms·

Apple: We have decided to no longer release Libm source (2013)

65 points by dvhh 12y ago

duncan_bayne 12y ago
Cached: http://goo.gl/1g2On4 http://goo.gl/1g2On4
0x0 12y ago
The opensource.apple.com website provides less stuff for every OS release. iOS releases stopped at iOS 6.1.3 (nothing for 7.0.x, 7.1.x, 8.0.x, 8.1.x). OSX releases are usually delayed for quite a while (10.10 is not yet there, for example). The trend here has been to close up more and more stuff for quite a long while already :(
- techrat 12y ago
  Are we honestly surprised? Apple has a history of being quite hostile to consumers despite their image as a trendy company. Nothing they do is done unless there's an actual threat to their bottom line, whether it's finally offering larger screens for the iPhones, finally making iTunes (partially) DRM free or closing up code/eliminating venues for cross compatibility. Apple is about anti competitive as they get.
  - geden 12y ago
    DRM in iTunes was solely at record companies request. Not an Apple choice. This has been repeatedly covered before. http://news.cnet.com/Apples-Jobs-calls-for-DRM-free-music/2100-1027_3-6156763.html http://news.cnet.com/Apples-Jobs-calls-for-DRM-free-music/21... I would argue that Apples strength is it's ability to make daring technology choices which drives the whole market forward. (Adoption of USB, dropping floppies, CDROMs, introducing iPhone, iPad) and in the long run that is very pro-consumer.
    - techrat 12y ago
      Labels who requested that their songs be DRM free in the iTunes store during this era were denied that option. Jobs called for DRM free music because he saw that he was going to run into serious anticompetitive charges if he didn't allow for people to use iTunes purchases outside of iTunes and iPods.
      - zimpenfish 12y ago
        Do you have any fact-based evidence for the second claim?
  - Terretta 12y ago
    > history of being quite hostile to consumers That's going to need some really impressive fact-based justification. I think a good case could be made Apple's the only PC maker focused on making mass market consumers happy (vs enterprise or technology buyers). They've also seemed more focused on the product experience than on market share. - - - Some TL;DR specific thoughts on each of your examples: - "finally offering larger screens for the iPhones" -- the giant screen move feels anti-Samsung, not pro-consumer. There is an ideal one handed screen size, and the 6/6+ are not it. The 5 series was already pushing it. The problem for Apple is in the big box or mobile store, bigger looks better. In every day use, once the phone is part of you, one handed becomes natural when right sized. (If you've only used bigger, you don't know any better.) In the store handling with two hands, you don't realize it won't go well. Buying experience and using experiences are at odds here, though I grant the bigger screens are nice when you are not mobile. - "finally making iTunes (partially) DRM free" -- it's well documented that movie, TV, and record industry execs were the problem here, not tech providers, and Apple's fight to liberate music was quite public. - cross compatibility -- this is a bugaboo (something that causes fear or distress out of proportion to its importance). with rapidly evolving technologies, it's extraordinarily difficult to have an end to end ecosystem 'just work' for normals not interested in diagnosing why it fails. Apple controls that end to end to make sure it works. Even then, things happen, like the Airport Extremes and iOS 8 WiFi, but because they control both, they can release updates to both to fix it. They don't have to support the lowest common denominator, they can push for performance and stability both. The bargain a user makes with Apple is "buy into the ecosystem, get peace of mind and eliminate the need for a tech guru."
    - pjmlp 12y ago
      Well, I remember another Apple, back in the 80-90's. Not the open source friendly one, that developers that only know Apple since Mac OS X days seem to think about.
      - davidw 12y ago
        Exactly - Apple has always been about control. Back when Microsoft was building up their software monopoly, Apple was aiming for control of both hardware and software. Maybe they require it for their users' benefit or something, or say they do, but Apple is very much about control in a way that I, as a hackerish kind of guy, am not ok with for the core of my computer usage. My parents have Macs on the other hand, and are very happy with them - it seems to be a good system for the kind of people who don't hack on stuff and like the tight integration.
jbrooksuk 12y ago
Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Aopenradar.io%2F12436495&oq=cache%3Aopenradar.io%2F12436495&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1169j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Aopenr...
stereo 12y ago
It looks like a maths library, what was so special about it, and why does Apple needs to make its own?
- Argorak 12y ago
  Maintenance control is a good reason to create your own.
- rwmj 12y ago
  If you have loads of engineers, special hardware of your own (ARM), and secret insights into other hardware from your suppliers (Intel), then I can see it could make a lot of sense. That doesn't mean it's a nice thing to do. Was this derived originally from FreeBSD code? This could be why the GPL is a good thing.
  - palunon 12y ago
    That's exactly what the GPL is for.
    - Shish2k 12y ago
      Though BSD advocates would make the argument that if it was GPL, Apple would never have used it in the first place. (Personally I'm not sure if it's even possible to definitively say which situation is better; you can't do something scientific like releasing a library under both licenses and seeing which people use, because they would interfere - you really need two parallel universes to see the true effect of that one change)
  - pascal_cuoq 12y ago
    While I cannot claim to have read the entirety of any OS X libm version that were (and remain) available, I have read enough of that to make a general prediction: OS X's libm contains only assembly functions re-written from scratch, originally in PowerPC assembly and then in IA-32 and x86-64, to be faster, more accurate and more standards-compliant than the FreeBSD versions. I hope that this announcement will at least result in some interest in the versions that have been released as open-source and are still available, because this is beautiful code. But I am an optimist.
tempodox 12y ago
502 Bad Gateway nginx/1.4.1 (Ubuntu) (edit: non sequitur)
- iancarroll 12y ago
  Open Radar isn't run by Apple.
  - tempodox 12y ago
    Oops, didn't know that. Thanks for the info.
macwarlock 12y ago
Apple keeps touting itself as the only company able to offer such end to end integration between hardware/software/services. If this is true, it would be nice to see them make a real effort to open more of it's code base to help improve the software ecosystem overall. Hell, they could open source all of OSX and I doubt it would have any effect on their overall revenue/market position, while gaining them serious brownie points in tech circles. I know it's not a huge incentive, but a geek can dream.
Nanzikambe 12y ago
$ cd source/Libm $ git status ... snip ... new file: Source/Intel/nsa_random_number_generator.c new file: Source/Intel/nsa_random_number_generator.h **CARRIER LOST** Disclaimer: yes yes I know, it's discouraged, but the point remains that it has become virtually impossible to trust a closed sourced OS, and steps backward like this do little to improve things.
martingordon 12y ago
Given that this is surfacing now – two years after the radar was filed and 19 months after Apple responded – I'm going to go out on a limb and say this isn't a big deal at all.
CoffeeDregs 12y ago
I'm very much for open source and all, and I'd love to see Apple as the bad guy here (since I think they're a Bad Guy), but I'm not sure what is the big deal. AFAICT, every CPU vendor has a libm implementation. Apple wants to be tight-lipped about its hardware. [Maybe] Since hardware reviewers seem to get their information on the hardware from compilers, Apple is removing as much information as practical to avoid competitive information leaking. It's a bummer to see a reduction in the amount of open source, but their license is fairly clear and I can't say that I blame Apple for trying to keep competitors away. Further, it looks as though most implementations is closed-source-y since the source code is highly tied to CPU idiosyncracies... Links: Apple's libm license: http://opensource.apple.com/source/Libm/Libm-315/APPLE_LICENSE http://opensource.apple.com/source/Libm/Libm-315/APPLE_LICEN... Intel: https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-math-kernel-library-licensing-faq https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-math-kernel-... AMD: http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/cpu-development/libm/ http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/cpu-development/libm... Android: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/bionic/+/master/libm/ https://android.googlesource.com/platform/bionic/+/master/li... (from FreeBSD?)
- zanny 12y ago
  > I can't say that I blame Apple for trying to keep competitors away. I certainly can. They restrict their users freedom to own the machines they buy by disrespecting their customers by giving them software without available source. You can always blame them. It is not something that is ok, it is ethically wrong to sell someone something without giving them the proverbial floorplan. If it is a "competitive disadvantage" for others to know how your software or hardware works, then you must not have a very compelling product if it cannot stand on its own in the open.
fafner 12y ago
And the danger of things like that is increasing with clang/llvm. That's why I think RMS is right to be sceptical of it. Right now a lot of development around it might be open source. But for how long? Especially if GCC is moved out of the way.
raldi 12y ago
Can a moderator append [2013] to the headline?
jdiggidy 12y ago
Anyone who's spent time developing on Mac or who has moved from a Linux dev environment to a Mac environment should understand the flawed nature of the open source argument here. Mac OS includes many open source tools from Apache to jabber and many others. The fact that Mac OS is a BSD derivative should indicate that the OS lends itself to open source. As an aside, control over the ecosystem doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing.

65 points by dvhh 12y ago

Cached: http://goo.gl/1g2On4 http://goo.gl/1g2On4

0x0 12y ago

The opensource.apple.com website provides less stuff for every OS release. iOS releases stopped at iOS 6.1.3 (nothing for 7.0.x, 7.1.x, 8.0.x, 8.1.x). OSX releases are usually delayed for quite a while (10.10 is not yet there, for example). The trend here has been to close up more and more stuff for quite a long while already :(

techrat 12y ago
Are we honestly surprised? Apple has a history of being quite hostile to consumers despite their image as a trendy company. Nothing they do is done unless there's an actual threat to their bottom line, whether it's finally offering larger screens for the iPhones, finally making iTunes (partially) DRM free or closing up code/eliminating venues for cross compatibility. Apple is about anti competitive as they get.
- geden 12y ago
  DRM in iTunes was solely at record companies request. Not an Apple choice. This has been repeatedly covered before. http://news.cnet.com/Apples-Jobs-calls-for-DRM-free-music/2100-1027_3-6156763.html http://news.cnet.com/Apples-Jobs-calls-for-DRM-free-music/21... I would argue that Apples strength is it's ability to make daring technology choices which drives the whole market forward. (Adoption of USB, dropping floppies, CDROMs, introducing iPhone, iPad) and in the long run that is very pro-consumer.
  - techrat 12y ago
    Labels who requested that their songs be DRM free in the iTunes store during this era were denied that option. Jobs called for DRM free music because he saw that he was going to run into serious anticompetitive charges if he didn't allow for people to use iTunes purchases outside of iTunes and iPods.
    - zimpenfish 12y ago
      Do you have any fact-based evidence for the second claim?
- Terretta 12y ago
  > history of being quite hostile to consumers That's going to need some really impressive fact-based justification. I think a good case could be made Apple's the only PC maker focused on making mass market consumers happy (vs enterprise or technology buyers). They've also seemed more focused on the product experience than on market share. - - - Some TL;DR specific thoughts on each of your examples: - "finally offering larger screens for the iPhones" -- the giant screen move feels anti-Samsung, not pro-consumer. There is an ideal one handed screen size, and the 6/6+ are not it. The 5 series was already pushing it. The problem for Apple is in the big box or mobile store, bigger looks better. In every day use, once the phone is part of you, one handed becomes natural when right sized. (If you've only used bigger, you don't know any better.) In the store handling with two hands, you don't realize it won't go well. Buying experience and using experiences are at odds here, though I grant the bigger screens are nice when you are not mobile. - "finally making iTunes (partially) DRM free" -- it's well documented that movie, TV, and record industry execs were the problem here, not tech providers, and Apple's fight to liberate music was quite public. - cross compatibility -- this is a bugaboo (something that causes fear or distress out of proportion to its importance). with rapidly evolving technologies, it's extraordinarily difficult to have an end to end ecosystem 'just work' for normals not interested in diagnosing why it fails. Apple controls that end to end to make sure it works. Even then, things happen, like the Airport Extremes and iOS 8 WiFi, but because they control both, they can release updates to both to fix it. They don't have to support the lowest common denominator, they can push for performance and stability both. The bargain a user makes with Apple is "buy into the ecosystem, get peace of mind and eliminate the need for a tech guru."
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    Well, I remember another Apple, back in the 80-90's. Not the open source friendly one, that developers that only know Apple since Mac OS X days seem to think about.
    - davidw 12y ago
      Exactly - Apple has always been about control. Back when Microsoft was building up their software monopoly, Apple was aiming for control of both hardware and software. Maybe they require it for their users' benefit or something, or say they do, but Apple is very much about control in a way that I, as a hackerish kind of guy, am not ok with for the core of my computer usage. My parents have Macs on the other hand, and are very happy with them - it seems to be a good system for the kind of people who don't hack on stuff and like the tight integration.

jbrooksuk 12y ago

Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Aopenradar.io%2F12436495&oq=cache%3Aopenradar.io%2F12436495&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1169j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Aopenr...

stereo 12y ago

It looks like a maths library, what was so special about it, and why does Apple needs to make its own?

Argorak 12y ago
Maintenance control is a good reason to create your own.
rwmj 12y ago
If you have loads of engineers, special hardware of your own (ARM), and secret insights into other hardware from your suppliers (Intel), then I can see it could make a lot of sense. That doesn't mean it's a nice thing to do. Was this derived originally from FreeBSD code? This could be why the GPL is a good thing.
- palunon 12y ago
  That's exactly what the GPL is for.
  - Shish2k 12y ago
    Though BSD advocates would make the argument that if it was GPL, Apple would never have used it in the first place. (Personally I'm not sure if it's even possible to definitively say which situation is better; you can't do something scientific like releasing a library under both licenses and seeing which people use, because they would interfere - you really need two parallel universes to see the true effect of that one change)
- pascal_cuoq 12y ago
  While I cannot claim to have read the entirety of any OS X libm version that were (and remain) available, I have read enough of that to make a general prediction: OS X's libm contains only assembly functions re-written from scratch, originally in PowerPC assembly and then in IA-32 and x86-64, to be faster, more accurate and more standards-compliant than the FreeBSD versions. I hope that this announcement will at least result in some interest in the versions that have been released as open-source and are still available, because this is beautiful code. But I am an optimist.

tempodox 12y ago

502 Bad Gateway nginx/1.4.1 (Ubuntu) (edit: non sequitur)

iancarroll 12y ago
Open Radar isn't run by Apple.
- tempodox 12y ago
  Oops, didn't know that. Thanks for the info.

macwarlock 12y ago

Apple keeps touting itself as the only company able to offer such end to end integration between hardware/software/services. If this is true, it would be nice to see them make a real effort to open more of it's code base to help improve the software ecosystem overall. Hell, they could open source all of OSX and I doubt it would have any effect on their overall revenue/market position, while gaining them serious brownie points in tech circles. I know it's not a huge incentive, but a geek can dream.

Nanzikambe 12y ago

$ cd source/Libm $ git status ... snip ... new file: Source/Intel/nsa_random_number_generator.c new file: Source/Intel/nsa_random_number_generator.h **CARRIER LOST** Disclaimer: yes yes I know, it's discouraged, but the point remains that it has become virtually impossible to trust a closed sourced OS, and steps backward like this do little to improve things.

martingordon 12y ago

Given that this is surfacing now – two years after the radar was filed and 19 months after Apple responded – I'm going to go out on a limb and say this isn't a big deal at all.

CoffeeDregs 12y ago

I'm very much for open source and all, and I'd love to see Apple as the bad guy here (since I think they're a Bad Guy), but I'm not sure what is the big deal. AFAICT, every CPU vendor has a libm implementation. Apple wants to be tight-lipped about its hardware. [Maybe] Since hardware reviewers seem to get their information on the hardware from compilers, Apple is removing as much information as practical to avoid competitive information leaking. It's a bummer to see a reduction in the amount of open source, but their license is fairly clear and I can't say that I blame Apple for trying to keep competitors away. Further, it looks as though most implementations is closed-source-y since the source code is highly tied to CPU idiosyncracies... Links: Apple's libm license: http://opensource.apple.com/source/Libm/Libm-315/APPLE_LICENSE http://opensource.apple.com/source/Libm/Libm-315/APPLE_LICEN... Intel: https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-math-kernel-library-licensing-faq https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-math-kernel-... AMD: http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/cpu-development/libm/ http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/cpu-development/libm... Android: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/bionic/+/master/libm/ https://android.googlesource.com/platform/bionic/+/master/li... (from FreeBSD?)

zanny 12y ago
> I can't say that I blame Apple for trying to keep competitors away. I certainly can. They restrict their users freedom to own the machines they buy by disrespecting their customers by giving them software without available source. You can always blame them. It is not something that is ok, it is ethically wrong to sell someone something without giving them the proverbial floorplan. If it is a "competitive disadvantage" for others to know how your software or hardware works, then you must not have a very compelling product if it cannot stand on its own in the open.

fafner 12y ago

And the danger of things like that is increasing with clang/llvm. That's why I think RMS is right to be sceptical of it. Right now a lot of development around it might be open source. But for how long? Especially if GCC is moved out of the way.

raldi 12y ago

Can a moderator append [2013] to the headline?

jdiggidy 12y ago

Anyone who's spent time developing on Mac or who has moved from a Linux dev environment to a Mac environment should understand the flawed nature of the open source argument here. Mac OS includes many open source tools from Apache to jabber and many others. The fact that Mac OS is a BSD derivative should indicate that the OS lends itself to open source. As an aside, control over the ecosystem doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing.