3 ms·

My problem with Apple is that it appears that their open source contributions are negligible as compared to their competitors. Although they admittedly piggy b

My problem with Apple is that it appears that their open source contributions are negligible as compared to their competitors. Although they admittedly piggy back on the great work of FreeBSD, as well as who knows how many other open source projects. Even Microsoft (from what I can tell) seems to have learned from its past mistakes and is trying harder and faster to fix them than Apple.

schappim 12y ago
Apple did just open source Research Kit https://www.apple.com/researchkit/ https://www.apple.com/researchkit/ and maintain a heap of OS code here: https://www.apple.com/opensource/ https://www.apple.com/opensource/
CodeGenie 12y ago
It surprises me when people claim Apple is not a good Open Source candidate. As an example, think of Android. Google used Apple's Open Source LLVM to port Linux to an ARM architecture, then used Apple's Open Source CUPS as the print system (as do most Linux distros) and used Apple's Open Source WebKit to run the browser. Google also used WebKit in Chrome until they forked it. Can you name any Open Source programmes created by any other large tech company that have gained such widespread adoption?
- datashovel 12y ago
  Sure, I can't sit here and say LLVM or CUPS are not great. My point is that when you're the richest company, you should be at the forefront of the open source community. Instead my impression is that Apple, as compared to any other major tech company in the US with comparable market cap, is very much in the background. I would point us to github, but oh yeah Apple doesn't seem to have an official profile on that website while google, microsoft, facebook, et al.... "unofficial mirror" https://github.com/opensource-apple https://github.com/opensource-apple "genuine" https://github.com/Microsoft/ https://github.com/Microsoft/ https://github.com/google https://github.com/google https://github.com/facebook https://github.com/facebook Also I guess it would be hard to argue that Apple originated LLVM given its history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLVM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLVM And it looks like CUPS is not 100% open source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS Here's an interesting article with some talking points. http://readwrite.com/2014/05/05/apple-github-ios-android-developers http://readwrite.com/2014/05/05/apple-github-ios-android-dev...
  - CodeGenie 12y ago
    Can you name any Open Source programmes created by any other large tech company that have gained such widespread adoption?

schappim 12y ago

Apple did just open source Research Kit https://www.apple.com/researchkit/ https://www.apple.com/researchkit/ and maintain a heap of OS code here: https://www.apple.com/opensource/ https://www.apple.com/opensource/

CodeGenie 12y ago

It surprises me when people claim Apple is not a good Open Source candidate. As an example, think of Android. Google used Apple's Open Source LLVM to port Linux to an ARM architecture, then used Apple's Open Source CUPS as the print system (as do most Linux distros) and used Apple's Open Source WebKit to run the browser. Google also used WebKit in Chrome until they forked it. Can you name any Open Source programmes created by any other large tech company that have gained such widespread adoption?

datashovel 12y ago
Sure, I can't sit here and say LLVM or CUPS are not great. My point is that when you're the richest company, you should be at the forefront of the open source community. Instead my impression is that Apple, as compared to any other major tech company in the US with comparable market cap, is very much in the background. I would point us to github, but oh yeah Apple doesn't seem to have an official profile on that website while google, microsoft, facebook, et al.... "unofficial mirror" https://github.com/opensource-apple https://github.com/opensource-apple "genuine" https://github.com/Microsoft/ https://github.com/Microsoft/ https://github.com/google https://github.com/google https://github.com/facebook https://github.com/facebook Also I guess it would be hard to argue that Apple originated LLVM given its history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLVM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLVM And it looks like CUPS is not 100% open source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS Here's an interesting article with some talking points. http://readwrite.com/2014/05/05/apple-github-ios-android-developers http://readwrite.com/2014/05/05/apple-github-ios-android-dev...
- CodeGenie 12y ago
  Can you name any Open Source programmes created by any other large tech company that have gained such widespread adoption?