Linked by Tony Steidler-Dennison on Wed 9th Jul 2008 12:03 UTC, submitted by estherschindler
One benefit to open-source applications is they can run on any operating system you want. But getting open-source software developed for the Mac is -- depending on whom you ask -- slow as molasses or quick as lightning. Mac expert Lisa Hoover collected several viewpoints. Which do you think is right?
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Member since:
2005-07-07
Macs are definitely not the redheaded step child of the open source world. I find some of the opinions in that article hard to substantiate. For example, on page 2 John Mark Walker claims that opening up the OS X widget libraries will spur open source adoption. Like ... huh?
Though one thing I do agree is the statement that Mac users will not settle for poorly written pieces of software. Anything that doesn't have as it should, gets thrown away. The end result is that open source projects specific to the Mac appear, and flourish.
One example would be Adium. Pidgin looks like crap on the Mac thanks to the lack of a viable GTK+ Mac port. So Adium steps in and uses libgaim as its backend and slaps on a nice professional looking Cocoa front end. The result is a beautiful application that integrates well with OS X that leverages open source software.
Open Source on the Mac is fine. Developers just cannot bank on having one code base and then expecting it to work on all operating systems without any issue.