Apple Announces New Open Source Efforts 323
Today Apple announced a few expanded open source efforts. First, beginning with Mac OS X 10.4.7, the Darwin/Mac OS X kernel, known as "xnu", is again available as buildable source for the Intel platform, including EFI utilities. Second, iCal Server, Bonjour, and launchd are moving to Apache 2.0 licensing. And finally, Mac OS Forge has been launched, as the successor to OpenDarwin as a conduit for hosting projects such as WebKit that were formerly hosted by the OpenDarwin project's servers, such as WebKit. Mac OS Forge is sponsored by Apple. DarwinPorts has already moved to its own servers. Update: 08/08 01:43 GMT by J : The official Apple announcement is now out. Other fun news: Leopard will ship with Ruby on Rails.
Darwin on PC (Score:4, Interesting)
Very nice ... (Score:3, Interesting)
OSx86 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Alot of damage needs to be undone (Score:5, Interesting)
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So last year when my GF got a Mac Mini and I started using OS X, I've come to realize that I'll gratefully pay money for Quality closed-source software. I've since even bought iWork '06, and I never would have thought I'd pay money for an Office Suite.
So what you say might be true for a select few of the harder-core FOSS zealots, but I don't see why FOSS zealots would have even been on the Mac platform anyway if they're as zealous as to switch merely for the closing of Xnu. But anyway, for the rest of the 99% of the computing populace, this OSS initiative will be welcomed.
Re:Darwin on PC (Score:5, Interesting)
In any case, Apple's future is likely in hypervisors--small kernels that allow Linux, Darwin, BSD, and NT to run on top of them. In a sense, that's what Mach was supposed to be from the beginning, but it's being achieved using different technologies now.
Why not open J2SE mods? (Score:2, Interesting)
The reason I really care is that I can't use anything but Java 1.4 on our OS 10.3 systems; I have no interest in upgrading to 10.4 except for the fact that Apple refuses to port J2SE to such an old and outdated os as OS 10.3
Re:OS X (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that the outright sale of their O.S. to the unwashed masses who don't have the hardware to run it (and run it well) would be suicide. They might develop a rather small niche geek market, who wants a lower-end new PC (rather than a new high end one direct from Apple) with OS X, assuming that piracy in this demographic wouldn't be rampant.
But they'd have many, many more people who would buy it & just couldn't run the damn thing or would refuse to buy it (or a Mac) after hearing of others who couldn't run the damn thing.
Re:Alot of damage needs to be undone (Score:5, Interesting)
During the whole antitrust thing, Be had gone to the DoJ and presented their case to them stating that, basically, with all the evidence they had, it was an open and shut case against M$. the DoJ, for whatever reasons, decided to instead focus on the fact that IE was bundled and embedded inside windows.
Be's case was that M$ was using unfair business practices to force them out of the industry. the M$ contract, to bundle and pre-install windows with your computers was that you were not allowed to sell any other operating system software, even if you bundle windows in addition to Windows, whether it's installed or not, or sold separately.
I believe it was Toshiba that was in talks with Be to bundle their OS as a dual-boot option, but M$ started throwing their lawyers at them.
The reason this didn't hit mainstream was that this contractual agreement between vendors and M$ was protected as a trade secret.
Re:Darwin on PC (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Alot of damage needs to be undone (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft is the exception, because they are 90% of the market. The reason you can't have a proprietary OS is because you can't get past MS. At this point, it is currently impossible.
The only exception I can think of this would be to have a proprietary OS and give it away for free. Even then, you'd have a very tough time.
What about college kids? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OS X (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always used a shell since 16MB was a chunk of RAM, and it's going to stay that way. Every time I've tried out a new Desktop Environment I've just ended up frustrated at the waste of time that it was. Geez, guys - at least borrow some old Mac running OS8.1 and take some tips from that for a start. I've resigned to using XFCE, I've managed to tweak it so that enough shit stays out of my way graphically, and don't use much past launch menus and the dock, usually to open a Terminal or a Browser.
I often wonder if the very fact that it is free (as in beer) will doom it forever. Nobody can complain, because nobody pays for it. The guy who wasted time writing Wanda the Gnome fish can't be fired. The guy who stayed up until 3 coding a fix that would keep once again instill peace of mind in millions of administrators might get a pizza or a box of beer. There's little incentive or disincentive in it. While I'm not entirely chuffed with OSX myself, I give it 10/10 for "The devs giving a crap about the users experience"
Interesting; G5 is in software. (Score:5, Interesting)
At least on the G5, the firmware acts only as a "fail safe." If the software doesn't come up after some reasonable amount of time and take control of the fans, and keep the core temperatures within a normal range, it will kick the fans on to keep the system from melting (or going into some sort of thermal-shutdown mode, also bad).
You could test this easily by rebooting the machine into single-user (recovery, safe, whatever you want to call it) or target disk mode, in which all the hardware/firmware systems ought to be running normally, but many parts of the system aren't loaded, and watching what happens: after a delay, the fans would be ramped up to their highest setting and left there. The intelligent control normally performed (which regulates the fans/pumps based on temperature) doesn't happen at all.
Seems like it would be a pretty easy test on any other machine to reboot it in Target Disk mode or single-user mode (maybe it was open firmware mode), and watching what happens to the fans, to see if they're managed by a firmware system, or by a combination of hardware and a kernel extension.
Re:Retractions, Please? (Score:2, Interesting)
I personally think Tom Yager does deserve to be pooh-poohed now his sensationalist spin on a piece of non-news has been proven incorrect.
Apple's Teams (Score:5, Interesting)
This along with the iCal Server leads me to believe that OS X Leopard will include systemwide collaboration functionality that will integrate with any Apps that are programmed to use it. More evidence: How come during the demo of iChat's ability to share Keynote presentations, photos, videos, etc., we never saw the interface for the person sharing the documents? I would guess it's part of Leopard's collaboration system, named Teams.
Uhm... (Score:3, Interesting)
You're conveniently forgetting that most people would simply not buy Mac OS X for PCs. Yeah, the margins are higher for software than for hardware. Doesn't matter if you ain't selling any.
And even with the high margins, Apple makes more money on each Mac sold than on each Mac OS X box sold if the box is priced below 400 US$.
Look at Be OS: It was free, and people still didn't want it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Interesting; G5 is in software. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not uncommon to need to provide about half of the fan's rated power before it will spin up when stopped, so providing an initial full-power jolt to the fans helps make sure that they are really spinning; once they are, it's OK to slow them down even below the point where they wouldn't be able to start from a standstill.
Not in Switzerland (Score:3, Interesting)