Is Apple going completely proprietary?

[BWF89]

An anonymous reader writes in to say that "Rob Braun (OpenDarwin core developer claims Apple's open source efforts are now dead, because Apple is afraid of assisting OSx86 piracy. First, Apple withheld the source of cctools required to to build Darwin. Now it seems they are no longer releasing the source to OS X's xnu kernel. "
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/06/02/23/1849231.shtml (clickable links)

[BoyOfDestiny]

http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/06/02/23/1849231.shtml (clickable links)

Well dunno if it's true. Frankly I think it would be like shooting themselves in the foot...

Do you think people will jump ship and check out linux and freebsd? Something tells me they'd be reluctant to jump to windows...

Mini-rant:
All I can say is that Linux is immune to this type of behavior. You'd need every dev who ever worked on any code in circulation to agree to change licenses (or remove/replace their code), not only that... all the existing codebase would still be available for people to run with. No double crosses in the world of GNU ;)

[Virogenesis]

I think they need to go proprietary to protect mac os we have already seen their products get abused and they are only a small company still ths easy for companies to go broke when it comes to computers wheither they are software or hardware based or in mac's case both.

They are scared and I would be too quite frankly the efforts mac put into their products is superb, highly polished off and markerted well its a shame the hardware costs so much.

[bjweeks]

I think they need to go proprietary to protect mac os we have already seen their products get abused and they are only a small company still ths easy for companies to go broke when it comes to computers wheither they are software or hardware based or in mac's case both.

They are scared and I would be too quite frankly the efforts mac put into their products is superb, highly polished off and markerted well its a shame the hardware costs so much.

Protect the code they didn't make?

[Virogenesis]

no protect aqua and the packaging system used.
Piracy is bad apple make most of their money through hardware and if someone decides to pirate mac os and everyone does that the company will suffer badly.

Mac OS has a BSD license which will work for them as it allows proprietary products I might be mistaken mind.

[BoyOfDestiny]

no protect aqua and the packaging system used.
Piracy is bad apple make most of their money through hardware and if someone decides to pirate mac os and everyone does that the company will suffer badly.

Mac OS has a BSD license which will work for them as it allows proprietary products I might be mistaken mind.

Well, OSX is built upong FreeBSD 4.4, but I don't think they license code under a BSD license. It is not like the GPL, even windows has some bsd code (tcp/ip stack: finger.exe,ftp.exe,nslookup.exe,rcp.exe,rsh.exe AFAIK).

As for piracy, I'm tired of this argument. I understand they want hardware sales, for their machines are essentially PC's just like from Dell etc. So, you go buy a retail version of OSX (again I don't know if they have these, they might just do oem and offer upgrades stand alone), you take it home, it won't install on your computer.
If someone wants to run OSX natively on a non-mactel, the only two choices are cracking it or pirating it. Some people may then run out and spend $1300 or so dollars on a mactel... Considering that some people won't spring $180-$300 for windows xp, guess what those people will do. I'm sure there are people who would buy mac osx and just install on their machines, but I guess this does not match Apple's business model.
Anyway, I'm not advocating stealing it, what I advocate is: if you want freedom, get linux. There ya go.

[Brunellus]

when have they *not* been proprietary?

[xequence]

they are only a small company

O_O

Theyre not small.

[Bandit]

I think it would be in Apples best interest to lower the cost of there systems and offer AMD64 alternitives to the Intel CPUs.
IMHO,
Joey

[DigitalDuality]

It was only a matter of time, they're no better than MS in terms of business ethics. OSS is used by tech companies who aren't at the top of their game. It helps develop a bigger fan base (like apple really needed one of those.. they've had more devout fanboys than any other tech company and for the longest running period of time i've ever seen).

[Iandefor]

O_O

Theyre not small. Compare market shares- Apple seems like just a wee little fella compared to MS' ~90-95% market share. I think that's what he means.


when have they *not* been proprietary? They used an open core before. Now it seems it's getting locked down.


no protect aqua and the packaging system used.
Piracy is bad apple make most of their money through hardware and if someone decides to pirate mac os and everyone does that the company will suffer badly. Aqua and the packaging system aren't relevant here- they're locking down system headers.

[LordHunter317]

They used an open core before. Now it seems it's getting locked down.A totally uselss and uninteresting one.

They always were effectively 100% properietary because there's nothing interesting in Darwin. Not a single thing.

[3rdalbum]

Agreed. Apple thinks the Mach kernel is cool and interesting, but in fact it's an embarassing throwback to the early 1990s.