Subject: Re: MacOS X 10.1
From: nathan r. hruby (nhruby@arches.uga.edu)
Date: Fri Nov 09 2001 - 10:33:03 MST
On Fri, 9 Nov 2001, Michael Tucker wrote:
> Hey,
>
> I know it's "wrong" to feed trolls like Adam, but since the topic of
> Free software came up... I had a chance to hear Richard Stallman speak
> last week, so I am familiar with the idea of Free software (vs free beer
> ;), but I was under the impression that Apple was moving towards a free
> software model for OSX. Is this not the case? I don't really know anything
> about it, but wasn't Darwin their Free pet? Or is it merely Open
> Source? Anyone know for sure? Has anyone here worked on it at all?
>
Darwin is release under the APSL (Apple Public SOurce License) which is,
inthe FSF's & RMS's eyes, a non-free license. See http://www.fsf.org for
some info and debate about the APSL. That said, the APSL has made great
strides of late to come to GPL and FSF compaince. This IMHO is a good
thing, Apple is learning. They're also starting to employ people from the
BSD community to work on Darwin Full time. Again, these are Good Things.
So yes, you can grab the OSX underpinnings (called Darwin) and run them on
ppc and or x86 hardware. What you don't get are the really neat
OSX-isms.. the COM implementation, Aqua / Cardon / Cocoa, etc.. So you're
getting a *nix-alike that few people use and no compaines support (and the
support for OSx require carbon, cocoa, COM, etc.....)
Is apple getting close to being an Free Software comapny? Yes, but they
have a long road ahead. I think in the end though, it will prevail over
more tradtional software devlopment models such as Microsoft's. Think
about it this way. IBM, Compaq-HP, Apple and Dell are moving towards more
"open-source" ways of doing things. Even Microsoft can't stop the
combined forces of those compaines....
-n
-- ...... nathan hruby - nhruby@arches.uga.edu computer support specialist department of drama and theatre http://www.drama.uga.edu/ ......
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