Apple Losing Touch With the OS Community?

InfoWorldMike writes to tell us that InfoWorld's Tom Yager recently had the chance to sit down and chat with Apple about their closing the OS X Kernel. From the article: "The Mac platform is an overflowing basket of raw materials for innovators and creators of all stripes. It's what Steve Jobs would fantasize about if he still worked out of his garage, and you can bet that he'd be livid to find that the vendor locked some portion of his chosen platform behind a gate without a word of notice or explanation."

Consistent with the past

[moankey]

This is not different than how Apple has always approached things. They have always been about form and function. Developing the next killer app or killer hardware. And making everything as proprietary or closed as possible.
Doesnt matter how stubborn it may seem at the time and goes against potential profits or their customer base, its just classic Apple thinking.

While people may remark that Jobs should be thrilled at their level of success and want things opened up or looking towards Mac's as a game machine, or whatever else it may be. This was more Woz's thinking not so much Job's. Job's has always been the suit side of it all, that happens to be in jeans and loafers.

Proprietary != OSS

[fak3r]

Yeah, since Apple used parts of BSD people think it's as free and open, but anyone who knows what's up knows this is not the case. Sure, Darwin is available, but how is that comparable with OS X? It's not. The base, sure, but anything above 'ls' and you're not in an enviroment that even tries to be similar; it feels like lip service only. The 'closing' of the kernel (many things have been written to prove/disprove this actually happened) is just going to end up being Apple protecting its marketing edge; if the src was available all of a sudden 'free' versions of OS X would appear everywhere, and since they run on Intel now they could/would be running on any x86 box. No, they wouldn't run as smooth, which would again damage Apple's cred as having a 'rock solid' OS. Let's not forget the 'hook' (aka hardware) would be cut out of the loop too, so I think this discussion goes more along to the 'apple should release OS X for general x86 boxen' that failed to solve anything last year.

Re:Jobs upset?

[gEvil (beta)]

Exactly. One of the driving forces behind the original hermetically sealed Macintosh getting upset about the Mac OS kernel being closed off? It seems that this guy doesn't know his history. Or more accurately, he's fully aware of the history behind it, but writing that up wouldn't draw the page-hits like a sensationalistic write-up like this does.

Re:Jobs upset?

[bombadillo]

I doubt Steve Jobs would have been the one to get upset about thing being closed off, since very little of the actual innovation, creative, and design work ever was his. I can see Steve Wozniak getting ticked off about it, but I imagine he'd hack away anyway.

The only problem is that OSX is based off of NEXT OS. Steve Jobs started NEXT when he was forced to leave Apple. A more apt comparison would be when Steve Jobs hired John Sculley as the new CEO of Apple. Sculley and Jobs had a a power struggle. The board stood behind Sculley, and Jobs was stripped of most of his duties and banished to an office at the back of a distant building on the Apple campus unofficially known as "Siberia". After a few months of being ignored, he left.

So Steve Jobs would get ticked off and come up with something better.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[zeroduck]

They closed the kernel. They say this has to do with piracy issues of OSX86 (as to not have someone make one that will run on generic hardware). Big deal. Aparently, the code for the PPC kernel is still open. Still the rest of Darwin is as open as it always was--and if you think the extent of Darwin is 'ls', then. . . well, you're wrong. The pretty GUI has never been open, and I surmise, never will. Stop complaining, they have no obligation to open it up to the world.

Protect Yourself At All Times

[MacDaffy]

Apple has finally mounted a head-to-head challenge with Microsoft (see the new commercials). Microsoft is struggling to get features into Vista that Mac OS X has had from the beginning. Does anyone really think that Microsoft would resist taking advantage of an open source Intel-based kernel if it could help them solve the mountain of problems under which Windows is buried?

Microsoft has taken advantage of Apple's innovation before and thrived in doing so. I think it's prudent for Apple to keep its guard up and its kernel safely locked away until it has enough momentum and market share to make it a smart move.

I imagine that Microsoft's first look at a MacBook made them feel like Apple felt when it got its first look at Windows 98; "Holy shit!"

Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[eko33]

Personally I find Apple very much like Microsoft. They are trying to take over as "King of the Lock-in Mountain"

It's not like the concept of take over and control is limited to software. This is fundamental human behavior. Anyone ever hear of the Roman Empire?

I don't understand why everyone bitches so much when a corporation makes a strategic decision that takes them one step closer to market dominance.. If it's really that bad. If it is that bad, you should go make your own OS/mega-corporation that will be better than the one you are bitching about. You aren't elite because you compile and you aren't elite because you're an arm-chair business strategy professor... If you really knew better, you wouldn't be here complaining about it know would you?

/rant

the explanation that didn't come

[jdbartlett]

"...without a word of notice or explanation."

Try: too many people hacking OS X to run on PCs.

Re:Part Deux

[vertinox]

When asked by Apple, according to his own account, Tom Yager could provide no examples of people who had written to him to complain about this issue.

Umm....

FTFA

The meeting started sliding downhill when Apple asked, "Has anybody ever written to you about this? How many people actually recompile their OS X kernels?" I do, for one. I rattled off some of those groups that value open source in its fullest sense. I included academia, high-performance and high-throughput computing experts, and shops that want to roll in system-level enhancements before Apple gets around to packaging them.

Did you need specific examples? I suppose you could ask him what he rattled off but it is very clear that he did give apple names of people that had contacted him.

Tom Yager goes on to accuse Apple of suggesting people who recompile kernels are an "underclass". Way to create a straw man, Tom Yager. How easy it is to knock that down.

He didn't say that. He was talking about his readers who may or may not recompile kernels.

FTFA

Apple pushed back, saying that as eclectic as my readership is, the subset I described is only a "fraction of a fraction" of the geeks (Apple's word) who are my regular readers...I go on the defensive whenever a vendor suggests that any portion of my readership is an underclass because of its numbers. It is our fraction of a fraction that is the bellwether for the next leading edge.

He is preaching to the choir, but sensationalism it is not.

He actually has a desire to recompile the kernel and not get ad hits as far as this article appears.

Re:Perhaps I Was Off-Planet And Missed It...

[Ibanez]

the quality of Mac hardware has plummeted now that they have been forced to turn to Intel for chips and I don't see many people rushing to trade in their existing non-Mac hardware.

I'm sorry, what? I fail to see even the slightest logical connection in the switch to Intel chips being due to the low quality of Apple hardware.

What exactly are you comparing the quality to? Certainly not your average PC...

Re:Only official Apple response

[shawnce]

Don't forget that Intel version of XNU may contain code licensed from Intel and others that they don't have the right to distribute. The delay could be as simple as Apple needing the time to work out the legalities and/or repackage the code to allow distribution of a subset of Intel XNU. It is known that some of the Intel related drivers are not releasable because of legalities.

Personally I bet it is a mix of several issues (including time and resources) and that come WWDC 2006 more will be made clear (one way or the other).

Re:Jobs upset?

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve J. had the vision of a world where technology was put in the hands of regular people

You mean people with enough money to afford Apple's hardware. That's above average income, not regular people. As much as I hate MS, I have to say that Gates was the one with the vision that regular people - even those with somewhat below-average incomes - should be able to have a computer, not anyone at Apple.

Underestimating the network effect of FOSS

[Zigurd]

I can cite two examples of a "network effect," where FOSS has improved commercial products. One example involves Apple.

1. Embedded Linux has a huge growth rate in mobile handsets and other embedded applications, most of which are big commercial product development projects. These projects benefit from widely available experience with Linux kernel building. Anyone with a spare old PC and the time to read an O'Reilly book (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/belinuxsys/)can get into configuring and building embedded Linux kernels and persuse and modify source code as much as they like. Contrast this with what it would take for you to get into porting Symbian, or even VxWorks.

2. The Web browser in the Nokia E61 (and probably many upcoming Nokia handsets) is based on WebKit: http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/S60browser/ [nokia.com] This means Nokia customers will benefit from having the same HTML engine and Javascript engine as in Konquerer and Safari.

So Linux users may or may not "care" about FOSS, but the elements of the value chain bringing Linux-based and other products that include FOSS certainly do care, and so should Apple. In fact I think the customers will begin to care quite a bit.

If Apple doesn't do all they can to cultivate a FOSS community around MacOS, they are missing a trick. Even if they triple their market share based on iPod users switching, that's still an 8:1 ratio (or worse) of Windows to MacOS in market share. Apple can't afford to stumble the way Sun did in their relations to the FOSS community.

Re:Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[Golias]

I am frustrated to see them cavalierly drop the principles that got me to switch. It might be a different matter if they had already captured a 50 percent market share, or for that matter even a 20 percent market share, but their number are right where they always have been.

Why do you give a fuck about the market share of a computer company whose products you are no longer buying? Is your IRA tied up in APPL shares?

I use Macs all the time, and I don't give a rat's ass about their market share. As long as they are doing well enough to continue to exist, and as long as I prefer their OS and software, I'll keep buying them.

By the way, if I may ask... What (if anything) were you hoping to do with all that Kernel source which is currently unavailable for the x86 version of Darwin?

Re:OS X

[tyrione]

Which Community? Last time I checked there were many Communities in this "FOSS" World.

A possibly less partisan point of view (or not)

[Wry Cooter]

The kernel was more open to OSS tweakers when it was not so common knowledge that Macs would eventually run on Intel. It became closed, apparently, after the switchover. How does this make business sense? During the development of OS X, Darwin helped portage of code written to various *nix flavors, to one compatible to be run within OS X. Including truly cross platform stuff that worked on different CPUs. And Old Next wares, etcetera. It increased the possible market for the open source geek, and development flourished. Do you think there would have been nearly as many Cocoa apps if not for the encouragement of this community? The old school PPC developers would have stuck with their legacy C and Carbon code, because, why bother? Now that the kernel is apparently closed (and may have even forked a bit, perhaps dropping some Mach here or there), it may be, now that it is public that intel had to be used as a platform because of supply and other issues, it is more important to keep the kernel stable and closed during the transition, or less prevalent to sabotage from competition. Once the entire mac line is refreshed and another cat is let out of the OS bag, and Boot Camp may become virtualized, the kernel might reopen as a playground. But all I know about kernels deals with fried chicken anyway.

Steve Jobs has NEVER supported open source!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who thinks that Jobs is an open source advocate is sadly mistaken. He does not believe in free software (by either the "liberty" or "free beer" definition) unless it is software that he needs to acquire from a third party to bundle into Mac OS.

I distinctly remember, as if it was yesterday, Jobs telling a group of us at an early NeXT developer symposium that closed source was a benefit since then software vendors could trust that these "university hackers" would not change the system and break something. That closed source was the reason for Microsoft's great success; and therefore NeXT would be closed source.

Jobs even tried to stop distribution of the NeXT gcc and EMACS sources.

So to any of you who were deluded by Darwin, sorry but the truth was out there. The sole purpose of Darwin was to lure in the suckers who thought that by going with Apple they were choosing the anti-Microsoft, a Big Company that would be Open Source but much more professional and better-designed than the various Linux distributions.

Uh-uh. Apple is at least as evil as Microsoft (perhaps more evil, since they also are in the proprietary hardware business). They just aren't as successful.

I'm sorry to have to say all this, but this is the truth. Mac OS X is a turnkey GUI UNIX environment for people who don't want to maintain it themselves; but it is not an open source environment.

For what it's worth, I use Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux on a daily basis. I prefer the GUI of Windows over Mac OS X; and prefer the GUI of Mac OS X over KDE/Gnome/etc. in Linux. For a serious server, I wouldn't think of using anything other than Linux.

Re:So what?

[MBGMorden]

It'll have to disagree with you. Here's a point by point refutation:
(1) So was BeOS and it died.
(2) So was BeOS and it died. Beside, Windows if "free" if you get most new computers and you actually have to throw it away if you want to install Linux. It's also "free" if you "have a friend who knows stuff about computers" (i.e. most people) and you're okay with pirating.

BeOS makes for a very poor counterexample. For a very long time, BeOS was not free (and all during this time, Linux was indeed free). This whole time Linux was able to gain more "marketshare" away from something like BeOS. Even when it came out for free it's own installer was a "launch from windows" setup that most people just didn't like. Sure most of use ./ers who played with it installed it to it's own partition, but that process wasn't exactly intuitive.

Windows being free doesn't really matter as I gave other examples as to why people wanted to use Linux instead of Windows.

(3) Neither are BeOS, MacOS, QNX, etc.
Indeed they aren't. QNX only has an older version available for free though (if even that is still available. Was a neat system when I played with it though). MacOS isn't really a good counterexample, as it seems you're trying to list unsuccessful OS's. MacOS has been extremely sucessful, and has never really been open source (yeah Darwin was open source, but to call that MacOS X is laughable).

(4) Ditto for MacOS, BeOS, QNX.
Again, MacOS is successful. It SHOULD be on the list. BeOS and QNX have already been discussed.

(5) Ditto for MacOS, BeOS, QNX.
Ditto #4.


IMO, the reasons the most of current crop of Linux users choose Linux is because:
(1) It's open source, so even if you don't look at the source code, you know someone is, so you can be more certain that you don't have to deal with corporate spyware like the Sony CD.

I'll not argue this point. It is a benefit of OSS, but not really a reason a lot of people switch.

(2) It's open source, so you know it will still be there even and be maintained (even if you have to pay for support) if everyone abandons it.
If everyone abandons it then you're back to maintaining it yourself (or paying to do so). Very few single users would ever bother, relegating this to mainly beneficial to businesses. Also, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but have you ever heard of source-escrow? It's a fairly common practice. Basically, it says that if Company X buys a closed source product from Company Y, then company Y has to place the source with an escrow company (and regularly update it). If Company Y flops, then the source is released from escrow to Company X.

(3) It's open source, so you don't have to feel guilty about pirating stuff.
This has nothing to do with being open source, and everything to do with being free. My favorite newsreader is Xnews. I love the damn thing. It's close source, but free. == no crappy pirating feeling ;)

(4) It's open source, so it's non-proprietary and thus you don't have to deal with the crap of vendors forcing planned obsolence changes on you in an effort to get you to pay for an upgrade. (E.g. Microsoft file formats)

Apps don't need to be open source to have open document formats. PDF is a very open well documented standard, yet I don't see the source for Acrobat anywhere.

(5) It's open source, so it's likely that your files are in a standard format or are convertable to a standard format. (There's less need to put up proprietary roadblocks)
See previous response.

(6) It's open source, so things like the Debian package repository and Synaptic allow you to gain a huge collection of programs simply without any proprietary barriers.
That has nothing to do with the OS being open source. By default apt-get grabs BINARY packages. They could just as easily setup a system to do this for any OS for which free software is available. A

how can they "lose touch"?

[m874t232]

OS X wouldn't exist without open source software, and huge chunks other than the GUI in OS X are derived from open source software; yet, both Apple and NeXT have given back very little in return--even when the license forced them to open something, what they put up has often been completely useless to the original open source project.

Prior to OS X, Apple for years was shipping a clunky, single-tasking OS when other systems were already robust and multitasking, and at some point, Apple tried (and fortunately failed) at their attempts to shut out all other GUIs from the market.

I don't think Apple has ever been "in touch" with the tech community.