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

by stereo 12y ago

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.
nextw33k 12y ago
Getting maths correct is actually a hard problem to solve. Reading the problems that engineers have had over the years with floating point numbers will give you an insight into the situation. http://floating-point-gui.de/xkcd/ http://floating-point-gui.de/xkcd/ A good quality math library that is optimised to take advantage of new processor extensions whilst still being correct is worth a lot. I would imagine that there is a lack of engineering time to make this open source, rather than some nefarious purpose.

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

by 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.

nextw33k 12y ago

Getting maths correct is actually a hard problem to solve. Reading the problems that engineers have had over the years with floating point numbers will give you an insight into the situation. http://floating-point-gui.de/xkcd/ http://floating-point-gui.de/xkcd/ A good quality math library that is optimised to take advantage of new processor extensions whilst still being correct is worth a lot. I would imagine that there is a lack of engineering time to make this open source, rather than some nefarious purpose.