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Apple Businesses

Apple Plans To Give GCC Changes To FSF 187

Posted by CmdrTaco from the no-complaints-here dept.
Zippy writes, "According to a message posted to the Darwin-Development mailing list, Apple plans to assign the copyright for its changes to gcc to the Free Software Foundation. Sounds like there are a growing number of folks at the company that get it. Now if they'd just open the hardware ... "
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Apple Plans To Give GCC Changes To FSF More

Apple Plans To Give GCC Changes To FSF

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  • Re:Open hardware (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    MacOS 8 booted on IBM PowerPC Reference Platform (PREP) hardware, so MacOS at least in that instance doesn't require any proprietary hardware. MacOS X shouldn't require any proprietary hardware, because (1) it runs on both PowerPC and Intel platforms, and NEXTSTEP runs on SPARC, HP PA RISC, etc., so it's extremely portable, and (2) the lower levels of the OS (AKA Darwin) are open source, so any sufficiently motivated person could write device drivers for whatever hardware they care about. Apple ships some proprietary controller chips, for the serial ports, I believe, but every revision of their motherboards seems to move to more and more off-the-shelf components. Rumor has it that this is primarily motivated by a desire to avoid the supply problems they've had with custom chips.

  • Re:Open hardware (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Try saying that to the NetBSD guys. They usually port to new Macs within a few weeks. The information is available and it's just sour grapes from the Be camp that Apple doesn't do everything they want. I suspect the real reason is that Be doesn't have enough kernel developers to full support ports to new Mac hardware.

    Matt (Can't be bothered loggin in)
  • He probably already knows this, but he likes to live with the illusion that everything Apple makes is perfection in plastic. Help him maintain his illusion--it keeps him passive. Many of these Apple apologists want to think that they have something special, something they can't get without enduring the operating system crashes, lack of pre-emptive task scheduling, and not having the desire to ever want to do something cool with the hardware they already paid for.

    Most likely our Anonymous Coward uses his Mac to draw pretty pictures, check his Hotmail accounts, and of course show up to inflict his thoughts on others on Slashdot (it would be too much trouble for him to create an account here, it appears). It wouldn't occur to him that people who want modern operating systems (multiple users, multiple processors, protected memory, and source code) would want to use Apple hardware. Apple produces very good hardware products, but they change their specifications and components so often that it's hard to keep reverse-engineering them. I'm typing this on a PowerBook that compiles, networks, serves web content, and has an uptime of 89 days, and you can bet it doesn't run MacOS. And you can bet that as soon as a PowerPC laptop comes about with even cooler hardware, and true specifications so that the PPC Linux guys know their drivers will work, I won't be here blubbering and drooling over Apple--I'll be ordering one of those new computers. I'll be doing real work.

    --

  • But, then again, a quick check of gnu.org shows a founding date of 1984 for both Gnu AND the FSF. This is STILL almost a whole decade *AFTER* Woz had started freely giving out the schematics for the Apple I at the homebrew club.

    The FSF was founded in part to as a reaction against the proprietarization of software that had happened since the very late 70's. RMS realized that culture alone, wasn't/couldn't keep software "free", that you had to "fight fire with fire" use the proprietary weapon of copyright law.

    While some BSD'ers will say that the GPL is too strict, it is clear that RMS and the GNU'ers helped maintain the "culture of openess".

    RMS didn't invent free/open software, that concept was created spontaniously everywhere that computers cropped up. RMS just fought back, while most other people just accepted the new restiction with an occational grumble.

  • Apple's Darwin operating system -- the kernel and utility layer of Mac OS X -- is Open Source.

    Therefore, if you want to know how Apple's hardware works, download the Darwin source code and read it!

    The Darwin source code might even have helpful comments about working around hardware bugs and the like. Very useful for people implementing support for other operating systems.

    So what's the problem? That this information is not all codified in a Hardware Reference Manual? That would cost money, probably at least $100K-$200K per machine. Can you prove it will sell $200K-$400K more hardware -- net, not gross! -- for Apple to put together such a manual rather than just continue to make the details available through their Darwin source code? If so, I bet you could convince Apple to do it.

    Be's failure, I think, was that they didn't have this kind of business case when they went to Apple and demanded a nice, complete hardware reference manual.

  • He didn't say Apple was first, he said they "defined" open source. It means they were a great example of it. Read, please, before posting (RPBP).
  • Apple is indeed using PCI and USB and such now, the problems arise with the motherboards for Apple machines. Often now like in the past apple makes their own fnacy chips and controllers for things, used to be like their scsi chips,and such. Sound chips is one thing that I wish apple would have documented. Now a days I dont think there's tons of stuff, But I'd bet that there is still enough custom made parts on apple motherboards and Apple doesnt want to tell.
  • It is sorta open enough for linux hackers to use it, but only because damn there are some determined hackers that want linux on Apple machines. It would be a lot nicer with some more information, let me tell you. Especailly with Apple's older hardware. One of the biggest problems the linux-m68k project faces with Apple machines is there is virtuallly no documentation or info on some of the stuff inside the computer.
  • You can download programmer's guides for the PowerPC from Motorola's web page, even stuff for Altivec. It's a standard processor, nothing proprietary. What *is* proprietary, is Apple's motherboard design and chipset (Apple recently moved all 4 of its hardware lines to a unified architecture).
  • PReP was much less tastier than say, the IBM RT
    pre-PowerPC ROMP stuff. It was like the little
    piece of garnish on the side of your plate...

    *sigh* troll.
  • Troll. Cant you stop this damn "MRBILL DID X"
    stuff? I'm tired of it, and I have no idea how
    I've pissed you off, apparently.
  • Troll, cant you stop this? Have you nothing
    better to do?

  • DMDx86 wrote:
    Yep. This is exactly how Apple pulled off the "No G4 Until we say so" stunt. I was quite close to buying a Mac for Linux purposes, until I heard about this. If I can't upgrade my machine as I please, I do not want it. Now I am buying an Alpha instead..

    The "no G4 until we say so" was implemented in firmware - there isn't a Mac OS ROM on a chip anymore - the MacOS ROM is loaded from disk on all recent machines. The G4 firmware block is suspect... but on the balance, not as bad as it initially sounds. The Blue and White G3 motherboard and firmware wasn't designed to work with a G4. Apple doesn't produce a G4 upgrade for those machines, doesn't plan to, nor touts that machine as upgradable. 3rd party manufacturers have already worked around the issue and so you can get a G4 upgrade now, but now it is obvious to all involved that Apple has no responsibility for the results. After all, if there is a data corruption or stability issue, Apple doesn't want to be on the hook for it.

    Personally, I wouldn't upgrade to a G4 in a Blue and White G3. If you want to upgrade, buy the latest G3 chip or sell the machine and buy a G4. The new UMA chipset G4's have much higher memory bandwidth - it doesn't make sense to drop it into a Blue and White machine which still uses a 60x protocol. Plus the G4 upgrade pricing is too expensive (compared to other PC's, not Alpha's or UltraSPARCs).

    IMHO, this issue is a poor one to use when deciding between a Mac or an Alpha for Linux. There are tons of other technical and price issues to work with first which should decide the point. How much are you spending? What kind of support are you expecting? What applications to you expect to use? Do you need to run commercial applications or do you have source for everything you want to run? What kind of upgrades? What level and kind of performance are you looking for? What peripherals do you need to get? The Mac and the Alpha don't really compete against each other since the answers to the above questions can be very different.

  • I think this guy is trying to spread rumors here or make people think

    (Unlike,say, Linux, which is probably half-owned by Microsoft by now, only Microsoft doesn't know it yet... :-) )


    http://theotherside.com/dvd/ [theotherside.com]
  • Now if they would release the .nib format, everything would be peachy!
  • Correct; but I was thinking of older NeXT applications.
  • Even the IIgs came with complete schematics, although it was mostly (V)LSI custom ICs, unlike the earlier IIs which for the most part could be built entirely with stuff from Radio Shack (before RS became one word and stopped carrying parts).
  • A contract is only viable if it does not break the state or federal laws.

    In California, an employer does not have rights to your code if you do it on your own time on your own equipment off the work site. Your employer may have lame-clauses like this even if you work in CA, but its invalid.
  • Rob Malda did not write that statement. Note that it is a quote from "zippy," the person who submitted the story

    --

  • Sorry but I have to disagree, do you get paid for working on your own projects at home? I doubt it highly, so why should the company that employs you get the copyright to anything you do outside of thier employ.

    As for your argument about doing private research on company time, I would say that an equal amount of time would go to doing company research on private time, you know when you got that itch. :)

    FYI I will not sign a contract with this clause in.
  • Apple doesn't use ROM chips anymore. They boot using OpenFirmware. Mac's still have ROM file's though, which is how they blocked G4's until they were ready. Released a patch for the OS which incendentally blocked the use of G4's until the folks at Newer and MaxPower could develop software that bypassed that.
  • Actually the low end of the first G4's (the 350's) were intially based on the G3's motherboard, because apple couldn't get their hands on enough chips to transition all of their motherboards to Sawtooth at once. They've since upgraded their capacity and have now retired the Yikes motherboard... But for a few months everyone shied away from the G4/350s'
  • OpenStep ran on all the platforms you mentioned. Rhapsody DR 1 or 2 was basically Openstep with a "Finder"-ish interface. That OS ran on Power Mac 85/86/95/9600's and some Intel boxes. But that's the last release that ran on intel. Don't believe or hope that OS X will run on anything but apple's boxes.

    The kernel may be open-sourced, but OS X is a lot more than just a kernel, to the point that the only people that decide what OS X will be released for are the folks at apple. No amount of coding will get you their binary add-ons, unless someone wants to write a PowerPC emulator for x86.

    They have moved to using more industry standard components as a means to keeping costs down and from benefiting from advances that effect the industry at large, but that does not mean that they're going to release their crown jewel for running on commodity hardware.
  • Same thing that happened to:

    Windows NT on PReP
    Solaris on PReP
    Netware on PReP

    and a few others too.

    AIX made it there, but that's easy since it was already running on the Power family of processors. The rest of the company's just couldn't see any real motivation to move to PReP. It would have been a move that benefitted almost nobody. There's already a commodity platform available... And for the companies with the most to gain from a stardardized platform, the ones that actually make hardware, PReP would have stood to eat into significant portions of their hardware business, which is where the money is for them.
  • No. Other people are making money from it. You can't legitmatately go to work for Company A during the day, working on their OSes sound drivers, go home at night and work on your own open source sound drivers, release them to the world, where upon Company C picks them up and distributes them with their OS, unless Company A states that it's okay.

    Non compete agreements hold up. I don't really like working at places that make me sign them, and I love the company's that hire me and explicitly state that they don't care what i do on my off hours.
  • Non-competes that last for more than a year are pretty scary things. Nowadays most of them are very specific, as company's realize that they can't ask a programmer not to program for a year after they quit, as what would they do?

    But they're still scary for potential employers. When i've spoken to head hunters in the past on of the first things they ask is if I had to sign a non-compete with my current employer, and if so how long does it last and can they read it so they determine exactly what it effects.

    Unless you're an ace, most company's will rather pass by someone with NC rather than having to deal with their ex-employer in court or just through lawyers.
  • the serial ports are zilog's (the same as used on sun hardware) and their specs are definetly NOT secret (since all the open source oses i know have drivers for them, and also, amd's site has docs for their 8350 clones). also, this whole thing about apple keeping their hardware secret is simply not true anyway. i don't know why people continue to think it is. for those that don't know, apple has a full time employee who's job it is to help developers get hardware specs (and has been doing so for a while now).

  • In fact, I would even be willing to settle for a closed source release, so long as they just make the flipping binary available.

    You would sell out your BSD, HURD, etc. brothers for this convenience? You would even sell out fellow Linux users, who run on PPC or Alpha?


    ---

  • this whole thing about apple keeping their hardware secret is simply not true anyway. i don't know why people continue to think it is.

    They think it because of what Be [be.com] says about running BeOS on G3 Macs [be.com].

    They also think it because, in general, you usually only see MacOS running on Mac hardware.


    ---
  • Hmmm...I wonder if the law is different in Washington?
  • Nope again. "Defined" means it was previously undefined, meaning that Apple would have invented the concept, when in fact it was already in practice even at the Homebrew Computer Club, birthplace of the Apple. He also claimed that they did it before RMS, ESR or Linus, which isn't the case. You might want to take a bit of your own advice.
  • In the days of "Steve & Steve" Apple defined "Open Source" before the term was coined, and before anybody had heard of RMS, ESR, or Linus.

    Sorry, not true. By 1977, Stallman had already been on MIT for six years, and was already working on the TECO macros which would one day become Emacs. And most of the "golden-age" MIT hackers (those which hadn't already gone to Stanford, that is) were leaving for Symbolics. (I should also mention DEC (now Digital (now Compaq)), who made the legendary - and very open - PDP series.) Now these guys invented "open source"... and they did it back in the early 60's, when Steve & Steve were still in diapers.

    Was the Apple II open? Yes. Was it cool? Yes, very much so. Was Apple the first one to make "open" stuff? Nope.
  • I can think of only one part of any modern Mac that is closed: the ROM chips for booting the computer.
    Yep. This is exactly how Apple pulled off the "No G4 Until we say so" stunt. I was quite close to buying a Mac for Linux purposes, until I heard about this. If I can't upgrade my machine as I please, I do not want it. Now I am buying an Alpha instead..
  • I can think of only one part of any modern Mac that is closed: the ROM chips for booting the computer. Everything else is a common, open standard: PCI, AGP, ATA, Ethernet, USB, Firewire, PC100 memory etc etc.

    And that one proprietary piece of hardware doesn't prevent Linux or BSD from running fat and happy on G3/G4 hardware. Be could do it to if they'd get off their lazy asses and do some programming instead of expecting Apple to hold their hand.

  • For that matter the NC agreements that stipulate that you cannot work for a competitor for X number of years after leaving the company never hold up in court either.

    Perhaps, but the NC argreements that stipulate that you cannot work for a competitor for X number of months after leaving are likely to be enforceable, according to all I've read. The enforceability depends on the length of time covered, how widely the term "compete" is interpreted, what alternative employment you have, how well you've been compensated, etc. This means it's up to a judge to interprete what is reasonable.

  • Well everyone else seems to think this guy thinks M$ employees have written half of linux on company time. If that's what he thinks he's an idiot.

    Well, everone else is an idiot. Of course that's not what Stan thinks! It was a joke. Duh.
  • I really couldn't care less about Apple's hardware, as they've pretty much gone commodity at this point, except for a few ROM toolboxes that are only of interest to MacOS people. What I want them to do is open up the Sorenson CODEC!

    Sorenson, for those who don't know, is one of the most popular (if not the most popular) CODECs (compressor/decompressor) for Apple's QuickTime system. With Sorenson, I'd finally be able to play most kinds of digital video on my Open Source OS based workstations.

    In fact, I would even be willing to settle for a closed source release, so long as they just make the flipping binary available. But Apple won't even do that much. The xanim guy has asked over and over again for them to let him implement Sorenson for them, under NDA, with a binary-only release. But Apple continues to give a big "F**k you!" to the Linux community in that department.

    This GCC release really isn't that big a deal. The GPL already requires Apple to make the source code available; the release of copyright to the FSF just lets the GNU project integrate their changes. So once again, Apple is "opening up" something that was already open!

    They did this with their Darwin project, too. The only part of Darwin that Apple is "opening" is the core BSD kernel code, which was already Open Source when Apple got it! All of Apple's additions, like the GUI and multimedia layers, remain tightly under lock and key.

    Are you listening Apple? Why do you continue to "open" up technologies that were already open before you got at them? Make a real Open Source release for a change!
  • Well, they are moving from a binary nib format to XML, so you should be able to figure out the format pretty easily.
  • There isn't even a ROM chip anymore on new macs. What used to be in the ROM is stored in a file in the system folder, and loaded into RAM at boot. Booting is actually controlled by Open Firmware, which as the name implies, is open.
  • ?!?

    How do you equate Apple's next OS release being a new port/distribution of BSD, with a tremendous amount of NeXT and Apple GUI development and integration factored in... with pure glitz? Isn't glitz what we're already getting from M$?

    A pure hardware vendor? Have the rumors of MacOS X on Intel, Transmeta, and AMD possibly becoming a real product totally escaped you?

    You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but it doesn't seem to have much basis in reality.
  • You are right, it's pretty open by now. You can use any recent Apple box with off-the-shelf PC components over PCI bus, USB, Firewire, and EIDE, provided you have a vendor driver or a suitable generic driver for the hardware you wish to use. I even have an older Mac with a generic Voodoo 2 card and an aftermarket cheapo PCI-USB card in it and it works fine with all my USB stuff.

    People who are asking for the mobo design to be open might as well ask Asus or Tyan to give away all their trade secrets as well. Open source hardware just hasn't arrived yet, IBM's PPC mobo offering notwithstanding. It's nice for things to be open, but companies have to figure out how to make money some how. If there were no money in making computers, we wouldn't have an open source software scene at all.
  • By some miracle, your post didn't get moderated down into the netherworld of negative scores.

    How rare it is to read someone tell it like it is on Slashdot. Thank you.
  • The gcc maintainers are free to reject the patch, which they will if it breaks portability. If Apple wants their changes in mainstream gcc (which is what the article says) then they will submit good patches.
  • Quicktime TV server and a quicktime client are both available for linux and the former is OSS'd. Just check out Darwin site.
    MT
  • I know there is a Quicktime client for RedHat, because I have used it. It may not be at apple.com, but I would check RedHat and elsewhere.
  • also, this whole thing about apple keeping their hardware secret is simply not true anyway. i don't know why people continue to think it is. for those that don't know, apple has a full time employee who's job it is to help developers get hardware specs (and has been doing so for a while now).

    As another point of reference, consider the Apple IIe Technical Reference Manual, which contains not only a complete schematic for the motherboard, but also source code for all firmware except the BASIC interpreter (I'm guessing Microsoft didn't allow them to publish the source for that). Other Apple hardware documentation usually had schematics and/or source included as well (earlier manuals for the Super Serial Card had a schematic and source code, though later editions of the manual were greatly abbreviated down to a "here's how you install it and here's how you use it" format).

    (Granted, this is all for the Apple II and not the Macintosh; I'm not familiar enough with the tech info available for the Mac to speak one way or the other about it.)

  • Linux will boot on any modern apple computer. The exception being the firewire powerbook. It now boots even the imac dv, iBook, G4. I'm writing this on my iBook right now. Apple has good hardware, I don't see why they should change. It seams open enough that the linux hackers can find a way to use it.
  • The problem with Apple's changes to GNU C in the past has not been that they haven't made the source available under the GPL (they are obliged to do that by the license, the FSF's curious obsession with copyright assignment notwithstanding)

    No, no. The GPL forces you to release sources only when you release a binary. If you modify GCC for your own use, you don't have to release your patches at all. There are many internal ports of GCC for custom processors that are not released at all, and this is fine as long as the use is only internal. You can't distribute the modified GCC binaries without the sources, that's all what the GPL says.

    Of course it makes sense to release your patches to benefit from the GCC community maintenance efforts, especially if you are no a compiler vendor ;-).

    As for the obsession with copyright assignments it's to avoid to have to undo change if a contributor employers decides to play legal games, it already happened that is why the FSF is careful about it. --LG

  • Let's hope Micro~1 never does this deliberately in order to damage Linux. You know a "plausable deniability" thing where the guy who made the improperly GPLed code ends up living the good life in Alcapulco... out of the public eye, or course.
  • Maybe Apple will switch over to using the IBM reference PowerPC motherboard. It's a possibility...

    Is there anyone who knows Apple hardware who can explain what parts are still proprietary? I thought they were using PCI, USB, etc now.
  • If your company owns every line of code you write, and you happen to work for Microsoft, then Microsoft actually owns all the code that you write that goes in the Linux kernel. Or so the theory goes.
  • While many people think that Apple has an Intel version of Mac OS X ready to roll out, should it ever be deemed good for Apple, there has never been any official word on any other version than the PPC one.
  • "Innovation" without (adequately) well documented public specs is hopefully becoming a thing of a past. Like Apple, the PC industry has its warts, but unlike Apple the PC industry gives customers (and OEMs) the choice of buying/building non-proprietary systems which *cannot* be singlehandedly obsoleted by some arrogant CEO.

    Apple's "PC's" are nice thanks mostly to their choice of CPUs (that "G3" or "G4" after "Powermac") but otherwise always a little behind the "PC industry's" cutting edge. That's because on the PC side it's not just Compaq, Dell, Gateway etc. "innovating" their own closed technologies but a much richer ecosystem of specialized companies who want to be compatible with the industry to maximize the size of their potential market. Like with Open Source, the New Apple is tapping into the large pool of freely available resources with pleasure while still keeping the end result essentially a locked "Apple solution".

    And what "additions to OSC work" is Apple giving back to community anyway that they weren't required to give back in the first place _and_ what didn't primarily advance Apple's own platform-challenged agenda behind the curtain?

    What benefit is it for Apple to e.g. keep withholding the _specs_ (and not complete system schemas btw.) of discontinued systems?

    How do you and Apple "get" that in an intellectually and artistically superior way?
  • sure... that's why Apple won't license their OS to any other hardware maker, forcing every Mac user to buy from them.

    That level of documentation was much more common back in the day; the only people who bought computers were hackers who required it. Plus, just because you give people parts of the assembly code doesn't mean it's GPL'd (far from it).

    Apple is no better than Microsoft; they just had worse marketing, so don't have the market control Microsoft does. At least Microsoft has helped bring down the cost of PC hardware (by making huge bloated apps that require PIII's to send an Email).

    Drew
  • I agree, unless they are paid for the work they do in their off hours (in which case it wouldn't really be off hours) then MS, or any other employer is going to have a hard time to legally claim ownership.

    Now, it would not be unreasonable for their employment agreement to state that they won't work on such in their off hours (a sort of no moonlighting clause, which a lot of employers have and is itself questionable in some US states), but the only result of that would be termination from their day job and then only if the employer were to find out and then be so foolish as to make a big deal of it.

  • I can't claim to have seen the non-compete agreement, but I highly doubt they can claim ownership to something you coded at home, on your own equipment. Any attempt to enforce that (if it's actually in the agreement) would be tossed out of court anyway.

    If you and your employer sign a piece of paper that specifically states that your company owns everything you write either at work or on your free time, there is nothing you can do about it, unless the contract is broken or dissolved. If you went to work for Microsoft and signed a contract that said you had give all your worldly posessions to Bill Gates, it is technically enforcable in a court of law if you refused.

    This isn't about freedom or rights, it's about the terms that you agreed to when you decided to work for said company. This is why it pays to go over the fine print before you sign anything.
  • this is that Microsoft probably owns any code written by an employee (even in their off hours) because of the non-compete contract they probably signed as a prerequisite of employment
    but if it came to it, which would stand up? Microsoft's contract with it's employee or the bit of the GPL that states that any GPL'd code in a piece of software automagically makes that software GPL'd.
  • At least from what the xanim guy has said. Yes, the codec is the property of Sorenson...but, they say that it is Apple that is preventing them from licensing to him, which they indicate they would otherwise be willing to do.

    So, the fact that Sorenson would need to do the licensing is pretty much a non-issue at this point.

    The organization standing in the way of this happening is Apple.

    New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

    /bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.

  • It's not Apple's to open. You'll have to go to Sorenson the company, which made the Sorenson codec, if you want that.

    What Apple can do is change its terms with Sorenson slightly. Unless I'm mistaken, Sorenson is currently not allowed to open their codec (which is a shame; all told I've found it to be better than even MPEG if the encoder is skilled enough).

    So if you want this codec opened, it's going to take at least two actions: by Apple to loosen its terms with Sorenson, and then by Sorenson to actually open the codec.
  • I want to be fair... why is it when there's an Apple story, even Commander Taco has to put his 2 cents into the story summary?

    How about Slashdot stories that are summarized with "Now if only CommanderTaco would fully open the Slashdot codebase".

    News should be news and editorials are clearkly labeled JonKatz.

    Pre-emptive comment: Please, moderators, don't knock this post down -- it makes Slashdot look bad when the mob can't rule itself.

    For what it's worth, I also would wish for Apple to open their hardware. I also wish for Sun and SGI (IRIX) to do the same, I wish BeOS was open source, I wish BSD were more open to outside involvement (or updated their perception so), and if I were feeling really selfish I'd wish for everyone to get read/write CVS accounts to the Linux kernel tree and we vote on it's direction (no offense to our Fearless Leader).

    Apple gets it plenty... they choose to open where they can and stay closed where it maximizes their chances for success. Simply being open isn't a recipie for success... Alpha is doing OK but it's a stagnant market relative to x86 (and maybe PPC?)

  • I've always been intrigued by Objective C's messaging model, but I've never used it because it's been too closely tied to Apple OS's... BUT, now it just got more interesting.
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  • Apple sales counted for 35% of all sales to educational institutions last month. But the next highest vendors were Dell and Compaq with 15% each. Ca-ching for apple...

    Except that there marketshare for educational institutions used to be 70%...

  • You would sell out your BSD, HURD, etc. brothers for this convenience? You would even sell out fellow Linux users, who run on PPC or Alpha?

    I am a practical person, and I realize their may be Business Reasons(TM) why a full source release is not possible or feasible. Thus, yes, I am willing to accept a binary-only release of the Sorenson CODEC if that is the only way possible to get it done. At the same time, I will continue to push for open audio/video encoding formats, so that you don't need a binary-only CODEC to get things done.

    More importantly, if you check the xanim website [pubnix.com], you will find that:

    (1) The author provides DLLs for FreeBSD 3.1 already.

    (2) The author will happily provide DLLs for any other platform, if you give him the tools to do so (either a cross-compiler or a machine with software).

    Don't attack me about "selling out" the other platforms without knowing the situation.
  • Apple's Darwin operating system -- the kernel and utility layer of Mac OS X -- is Open Source.

    You mean, "Apple's Darwin OS -- the kernel and utility layer of Max OS X Server -- is basically just BSD, and thus was already Open Source."

    I am so tired of people pointing to Darwin and saying that Apple is a Good Company(TM) because they Open Source'd their OS. The fact of the matter is, it was already OSS before they touched it, and all the Darwin source release gets you is basically some device drivers and other low-level code.

    The Darwin source release is not without worth, but it isn't the Big Deal(TM) so many seem to think it is.
  • <em>GPL, GCC. I assume they would use something else if they could.</em>

    I thought the BSD people were pragmatic?
  • The GPL states in paragraph 4 that the license cannot be revoked as long as the licensee stays in compliance with the GPL.

    But the GPL cannot take effect unless put in place by the legitimate copyright owner. If you work for a computer company, odds are that you have already assigned all copyright to all works to your company. Some companies, such as IBM, are pretty nice; you merely have to ask your manager to get permission to work on soemthing outside of work. But others are much tighter.

    But anyway, the problem is that the owner of the code (the large company) has not placed it under the GPL; a legally unrelated person has done so. It would be somewhat similar to an employee selling, or even giving away, his employer's staplers and fax paper.

    IMHO, the sign-over-copyright scheme is not as unreasonable as it first seems. It is obviously fair for work which is done on company time and on company hardware. But even work which is done at home probably benefits from the company; who among us has never researched something private during work hours? I don't particularly like it, but as long as people are dishonest and spend three hours a week working on a private project instead of their job, I cannot complain.

  • From what I had heard at an AMUG (Arizona Macintosh User Group) meeting, ATI hasn't been that forthright about releasing the hardware specs of their newest cards. The presenter said that should change soon since Apple is somehow fully supporting Linux with OS X.
  • Well... maybe the Microsoft server is actually running a *nix... I bet there are servers within Microsoft that do, people just don't tell Bill Gates ^_^

    Hey, are you aware of the story of the German guy who this actually happened to? Except he wasn't sitting in front of a computer monitor but in front of his TV set (left on, of course) for some remarkable number of years (four) after he died. [nando.com]

    Of course, if a dead, mummified guy sat in front of a BSoD for 4 years or more, I'd be afraid the forces of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt would resurrect him as some sort of Barrow-Wight... scary, ne? O_o

  • Don't forget about VisiCalc!!!

    http://www.bricklin.com/patenting.htm [bricklin.com]

    Ok, VisiCalc wasn't OpenSource in the FSF sense because it wasn't copylefted. However, what it does show is that there was a more innocent time in computer science when:

    At that time in history, and before, few fundamental programming concepts were patented. We all borrowed from each other. Just a few examples of concepts where patents played no role in those days: word wrapping, cut and paste, the word processing ruler, sorting and compression algorithms, hypertext linking, and compiler techniques. --- quote from the above page
    I'm just glad this has been turned into a positive philosophy (with a legal backbone) rather than operating from just good will among hackers.

  • No, there is something known as the doctrine of apparant authority. As long as you appear to have authority to make a contract on behalf of a corporation (or partnership, etc.), then the contract is binding, even if you didn't actually have that authority.

    So in this case, I'd say the person submitting it probably had apparant authority, and thus the code is, in fact, licensed under the GPL forever.
  • No, not at all. They couldn't be sued, because they own the software. Say I'm an MS employee and write a piece of software which I put into the Linux kernel. The act of putting it into the Linux kernel indirectly puts the software under the GPL. Now Microsoft can come along at anytime and sue me for doing that. I'm their employee, and thus they own that code. Thus, it is not my desicion what license it should be put under. When I put it into the Linux kernel, I put it under the GPL. However, I did not do it legally, thus the GPL cannot apply, and MS has every right to rip that software out of the kernel.
  • Microsoft's contract with the employee. If the software wasn't allowed to be GPL in the first place, MS would have every right to revoke that license. The guy who wrote it would get in trouble, and the code would be returned to MS. For example, if I work at MS, and I sign the no compete contract. Then, I write an amazing new VM for Linux, and place it under the GPL. A year passes, and by now my VM is a critical part of the system. MS then finds out, and fire me and revokes the license. Now the GPL can't control that. It says if you use GPL software in a propriotory program you're in trouble. It doesn't say that if you use propriotory code in a GPL program it automatically becomes GPL. In this case the VM would be propriotory code, and GPL would not control how it was licensed.

  • ... that of automatically associating open source with Linux, and forgetting about the earlier efforts of GNU and the FSF. No wondcer RMS seems irritated whenever he writes anything about how it should really be called Gnu/Linux.

    But, then again, a quick check of gnu.org shows a founding date of 1984 for both Gnu AND the FSF. This is STILL almost a whole decade *AFTER* Woz had started freely giving out the schematics for the Apple I at the homebrew club.

    john
  • Normally, I simply ignore these posts, in order to not encourage the trolls. But you aren't really trolling. Trolling at one point was almost an art-form. Trolls would post highly controversial messages in order to start a heated discussion.

    This on the other hand is mindless drivel repeated over and over. The shock value is gone, and it sure isn't a troll. Hell, I wouldn't even call it flamebait, at this point it's redundant.

    All you're doing is enforcing the moderation system, many people don't even read below 1 anymore due to this foolishness. You're simply wasting your time and energy, and in effect ruining it for the interesting trolls.

    Get a grip, get a life, stop being so friggin moronic. In essense, its just stupid now.

    PS - In case this reply pops up without the parent, no need to look for the reference, it was the "Heil Jon Katz" canned post with the swastikas, etc.

  • Wilfredo Sanchez at Apple has contributed back patches for a LONG time to the BSD projects.

    This is not some kind of 'grand enlightment' here people.

    Fred on the developers page [freebsd.org]
    Apple joining BSD [freebsd.org]

    So as you can see, Apple has no problem 'getting' the concept of OpenSource.

    Apple STILL sees themselves as a hardware company and not a software company. (they look at where the money comes from) And if the latest rumblings out of the Apple rumor mill [macosrumors.com] are to be believed:
    1) 2+ years ago Jobs went to Moto and said 'it will be great in 2 years when we aren't using you as a supplier' (fact)
    2) Apple backed down...they never DID carry through with the Rhapsody on Intel project. (fact)
    3) Rumor site claimes "t Steve Jobs himself has met with Motorola executives and hit them with both barrels recently" (rumor)
    4) "Apple in talks with Wintel vendors regarding OS X for Intel?! " (rumor) Is that the 'both barrels'?

    It is possible Apple might just see themselves as a software company that HAPPENS to sell hardware, and make alot of money there. Parts of Apple grok what they do, and the world they live in. The question to be answered yet is: Does Steve Jobs and his management understand and be able to execute?

  • Having big companies freeing their product sounds like a Good Thing to me.
    But why does everybody always say "this is nice, but...". Can't we just be happy with what we get?
    If they want to keep the source code, or in this case the hardware, to themselves, let them.
    It's just the way they choose to do business. It may not always seem fair, but i think a lot of companies have shown interest in Free Software lately and all they get in return is "ok. thanks. whatever. now give it all!".
  • That's what almost killed Apple in the past. For a while Apple did allow certain manufacturers to make MacOS compatible machines. The problem was, Apple did all the development, the clone makers just took Apple's work, put out a cheaper machine, and almost drove Apple bankrupt. The first thing Steve Jobs did when he came back was get rid of the clone makers. It cost Apple huge sums of money to buy back the clone makers' contracts, and it was (and still is sometimes), hotly debated among the mac community, but in hindsight, it most definately saved Apple.
  • Since gcc is distributed under the GPL, derivitave works, including Apple's, need to be distrubted under a license compatible with the GPL. Apple's modified gcc is just as free as the one distributed by the FSF.

    The FSF requires all patches that want to be considered for inclusion in the main development sources (rather than remaining as a fork) have their copyright assigned to the FSF. This is done to prevent a situation that they have run into in the past where companies have said that their employees have had no right to give the FSF code created on company property and time.

    So the only interesting part of this announcement is that Apple is trying to minimize their own work of backpatching their changes into newer versions of gcc to maintain their own forked gcc.
  • > not really familiar with the apple-patches, but

    There's no such thing as an "apple patch." You're thinking of an "orchard."

    heh...

  • Thanks, I agree that half is an exaggeration, And you hit what I thought was the underlying gotcha. If even x number of M$ employees bound by their non-compete or intellectual property clauses have contributed in ways that begome widely used, which I'm sure is happening, It puts M$ as many other companies who are propriatary and closed in approach in a very odd position, supporting that which they are philisophically opposed to. Interesting business problem, no easy way out.
  • Do Alpha motherboards include the full source code to the firmware? Are you going to complain when your 21164 motherboard won't take a 21364 CPU?
  • > And what about Apple's Objective-C runtime (not all the libraries, just the runtime)? Is that available as part of Darwin?

    Yes. Tears almost flowed from my eyes while looking at the code. If only they released this before... there are sooo much things I wanted to do when I was an hard-core NeXTer that would just have been possible with the access to this source...

    Cheers,

    --fred

  • So, exactly what hardware would people like them to 'open'? You can already stick in any graphics, sound, whatever, yeah? Dunno but I think you can also attach USB and FireWire devices too(not a MacMan, sorry if I'm talking crap!)

    Open the motherboard or processor? Hmm. Don't think that'll be happening any time soon. Then again, why care? Transmeta has already raised interesting possibilities in the area of hardware emulation of other platforms, so soon you could run all your Apple and x86 software on one of those. So why care about what Apple does with its hardware? If its good, buy it. I was under the impression that this was the way most people thought... :o)
  • Which raises the intriguing possibility that the original author is incapacitated or dead, so the process could run forever on some forgotten server in Microsoft's basement...

    Uh, no. Microsoft's servers dont run forever. The process would be dead in a few months...

  • ... then it's true that all said code is owned by Microsoft and they could revoke its license.

    Not so! The GPL states in paragraph 4 that the license cannot be revoked as long as the licensee stays in compliance with the GPL. For Microsoft to be able to close up it's GPLed stuff it would need to prove that every licensee in the whole world collectively has violated the GPL (and thereby nullified their license). Not bloody likely!

  • "Get it"? Slashdotters are the ones who do NOT "ge (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18, 2000 @10:42AM (#1194135)
    ...there are a growing number of folks at the company [Apple] that get it. Now if they'd just open the hardware ...

    Apple "gets it" far better that most /.ers do. They have been "getting it" long before /.ers noticed that they "get it". But what exactly is "it"? Not, I'll bet, what /. wants it to be.

    "It", for /., is complete specs to all of Apple's hardware and software so that cheapskates can go to radio shack and build a complete clone without paying a cent to Apple. Never mind that they didn't have anything to do with making the Mac & MacOS the effortlessly working combo that they are. nor is this to Apple's benefit in any way. After all, how dare they not just give away everything for free, the bastards!

    "It", for Apple, is that they are using the work of the Open Source community in parts of their products, and have some extremely cool additions of their own, and want to give this back to the OSC. And they do. "It" for Apple is also doing REAL design and engineering to make their hardware & software work effortlessly and seamlessly together in dimensions that the average kernel-hacking, hardware-soldering weenie will NEVER GROK, because some of us don't give a flying hoot about that stuff. We have work/fun to do and our Macs are tools to get that work/fun done as efficiently and easily as possible, i.e., by being in the way as little as possible.

    Let's just, for a second, pretend that Apple did open up the hardware specs to the point where somebody could assemble a complete clone from scratch, firmware and all. What happens? Hundreds of vendors immediately rush to assemble shoddy replicas of the incomparably well-designed Mac and flood the market, without grokking the fundamentals of what makes the Mac so elegant, or why excellent design and architecture are important. How many shoe-string taiwanese shops do you think could do justice to Apple's current product lineup? Soon, the clone industry degenerates into a price war, since this is the only differentiator. Margins become so thin that simply sustaining profitability is a herculean struggle. Research and product advancement get short shrift for lack of investment, and absurdly incremental advances are touted as "next generation" by marketing flacks. The entire industry quietly sighs into an endless quagmire of mediocrity, forever condemned to rote by its own shortsightedness.

    Oh, wait, that already happened. It's called the PC industry.

    No Thanks. I'd rather Apple kept everything top secret and closed if it lets them roll out things like the PowerMac G4 and OS X.

  • Actually, it doesn't work exactly like that. Contracts that employee's sign when joining a company can specify that code the employee writes for the company, or code written using the technology provided by the company belongs to the company. The company, however, cannot claim ownership of code written by that employee in his own time in his own house. And, I doubt any Microsoft employee would be working in Linux code at work (where all machines most probably run just Windows).
    ------------------

  • Re:M$-GNU Reference?? (Score:3)

    by maynard ( 3337 ) on Saturday March 18, 2000 @03:20AM (#1194137) Journal
    I understand why FSF wants/needs the copyright assigned to the FSF so that the efforts remains fairly unbastardized, but what did he mean by the M$ comment?

    He's suggesting that many of the kernel coders are Microsoft employees hacking Linux on the side for fun. A side effect of this is that Microsoft probably owns any code written by an employee (even in their off hours) because of the non-compete contract they probably signed as a prerequisite of employment. If there is significant amounts of code written by MS employees (and MS forces employees to sign such contracts -- standard industry practice) then it's true that all said code is owned by Microsoft and they could revoke its license.

    I doubt it's half the code base, however. Though I suspect it's probable that if certain employers found out they owned chunks of the Linux kernel because of this we might see some real legal battles in the near future... it's not just Microsoft that sees Linux as a threat to their market strategy.

  • Will this give us Objective-C++? (Score:3)

    by jetson123 ( 13128 ) on Saturday March 18, 2000 @04:04AM (#1194138)
    The problem with Apple's changes to GNU C in the past has not been that they haven't made the source available under the GPL (they are obliged to do that by the license, the FSF's curious obsession with copyright assignments notwithstanding), but that their code was too difficult to merge back into the main tree.

    So, the question is: are we going to get Apple's current version of Objective-C/Objective-C++ into the main branch of GNU C? And what about Apple's Objective-C runtime (not all the libraries, just the runtime)? Is that available as part of Darwin?

  • It isn't going to happen...

    Apples stratagy includes ownership of the Mac design. This allows Apple total control over the future of the Mac. The ability to discontinue what Apple wishes to reguard as obsolete and the ability to include R&D costs in the price of the machine (as such they can afford outragous R&D costs).
    If Apple were to open the Mac hardware Apple would lose money.
    Mind you they have no choice but to price compeate with PCs however they can charg a little more if/when nessisary. However when ever posable Apple would prefer to sell Macs for less than PCs rather than more. If Apple openned the hardware Apple would not be able to include R&D into the price as Mac Clones wouldn't have the same R&D costs (the price of making a clone Mac vs the price of develuping a whole new Mac and writing the operating system and providing support)

    Instead of asking Apple open the existing Mac hardware it might be better to ask Apple to build a Mac around an existing standard. This way clonnerd don't have cheapper R&D costs as the primary costs would be on say IBM.. who could add the cost of the R&D to the CPU used in the design. This way everyone end up carrying the R&D costs down to the user.

    Or better yet.. just ask Apple to document the existing Mac hardware and make it easyer to port other operating systems.. such as switch back to firmware drivers (Like that found on the NuBUSS) larg roms are cheap
  • Apple is IMHO a pure hardware vendor, I wouldn't even be surprised if they budgeted their software development efforts under the marketing department.

    Are you kidding? If AAPL were a pure hardware vendor, they'd get off their high-horse and start making money where the real profitability in the computer industry is: Wintel notebooks. There's a reason why AAPL doesn't have any official support for running operating systems other than Mac OS.

    Apple couldn't care less that the first thing we do is wipe out MacOS and install a linux distro as long as we buy that G3 or imac.

    Yes, that's true. However, they still don't support that. This is very similar to some ISPs, for instance. My ISP, Telocity, does not provide ANY technical support or installation assistance for Linux computers. But, they DO advertise that there service works fine with UNIX (and therefore Linux) computers. And they have no use policy which prohibits the use of UNIX or Linux-based computers. But, its obvious that they prefer you to use a Windows OS.

    The same holds true for AAPL and Mac OS. Sure, their computers work with Linux. But you don't see any color glossy ads in CompUSA proclaiming that their systems work with Linux (although there is mention of course on their Web site, but only in the dedicated Linux areas). And they won't provide technical assistance for people wanting to replace Mac OS with Linux, although they will probably point you to some Websites that could help.

  • Open up their hardware? (Score:4)

    by Chilles ( 79797 ) on Saturday March 18, 2000 @03:44AM (#1194141)
    Apple is IMHO a pure hardware vendor, I wouldn't even be surprised if they budgeted their software development efforts under the marketing department.
    The outside of the imac or G3, the Aqua GUI of the new MacOS and all colorfull adverts are just there to create an image for the apple hardware. Opening up the source of any part of apple created software won't mean their computers become cheaper, it'll just mean their image just became a little better in a part of the hardware market that used to dislike them for their crappy OS. So now linux geeks will also start buying apple hardware because apple is a company that embraces the open source movement. Apple couldn't care less that the first thing we do is wipe out MacOS and install a linux distro as long as we buy that G3 or imac.

    This is just proper marketing for a company that get's it's money from hardware and it's image from software. If they keep on this track I'll have to start buying APPL stock.

  • Apple "got it" from the very beginning... (Score:5)

    by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Saturday March 18, 2000 @07:00AM (#1194142)
    Apple "got it" from the very beginning. They just lost the way when the suits (john sculley and his cronies) wrested the company from its founders.

    In the days of "Steve & Steve" Apple defined "Open Source" before the term was coined, and before anybody had heard of RMS, ESR, or Linus.

    I still have all the documentation that came with the Apple ][+ that my dad brought home that day in 1981. Sadly, the Apple ][+ itself fell prey to a Florida thunderstorm some years ago.

    That documentation includes:

    A complete plan of the motherboard that my dad was later able to use to build his own Apple][ clone.

    Commented assembly code for all the ROMs.

    Documentation for the Apple Disk ][ 5.25" drive which consisted of a pair of books about 2" thick, including hardware plans for the drive and controller card as detailed as those for the computer itself. (*when was the last time you saw a 2" high stack of manuals for a COMPUTER? much less a 5.25" floppy?!?!??!?*)

    Code (not source tho... mostly 6502 assembly)for damn near everything else as well.

    The documentation that came with that computer is ASTOUNDING by today's standards. With the rise of Linux, we're only beginning to see the reemergence of such comprehensive docs.

    And it is nice to see that Apple is returning to it's old ways.

    john

  • This is something that was long awaited for (Score:5)

    by f5426 ( 144654 ) on Saturday March 18, 2000 @04:23AM (#1194143)
    As a old-NeXTer now on OSXS, I was hoping for this long ago. I'll try to explain the issue to one unfamiliar with it:

    NeXT basically forked the gcc compiler, adding better objc support, extended the objc spec (protocols, distributed obejcts) and the objc compiler (ObjC++, ie: mixing objc and C++ in the same source). The compiler front end also changed (support for frameworks, for instance).

    They also changed gdb (adding support for their additions and improving IDE support)

    Those modifications were avalaible (well, it is GPL), but the objc runtime was proprietary. Hence, the whole thing was close to useless, as you could not integrate the modifications in mainstream gcc.

    Gcc got better and better, so NeXT copied amount of code from gcc/egcs in their forked version of gcc, transorming it in a very strange beast.

    But you just can't fight against open-source, so the OSXS compiler is now outdated, have bad C++ support, a lot of quirk, and long outstanding bugs.

    Apple is not in the business of make dev tools (but NeXT was). They just have to secure their position by not relying too much on an external vendor (ie: metrowerks), hence MPW. Now metrowerks is owned by motorola, a company with which they have intimate relationship. So assigning gcc mods to FSF is a very logical move:

    • They don't spend resources backporting egcs code to get the level of support MacOS developer are used to have
    • They don't compete with Metrowerks
    • They don't depend on Metrowerks

    And, it is very good for the community as it will reduce the differences between Cocoa and GNUstep, which is good for everyone.

    Cheers,

    --fred

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