One of the three authors of Sun's DTrace, Adam Leventhal, has discovered something very interesting using DTrace on Mac OS X. "As has been thoroughly recorded, Apple has included DTrace in Mac OS X. I've been using it as often as I have the opportunity, and it's a joy to be able to use the fruits of our labor on another operating system. But I hit a rather surprising case recently which led me to discover a serious problem with Apple's implementation." So, what is this problem? "Wow. So Apple is explicitly preventing DTrace from examining or recording data for processes which don't permit tracing. This is antithetical to the notion of systemic tracing, antithetical to the goals of DTrace, and antithetical to the spirit of open source. I'm sure this was inserted under pressure from ISVs, but that makes the pill no easier to swallow. To say that Apple has crippled DTrace on Mac OS X would be a bit alarmist, but they've certainly undermined its efficacy and, in doing do, unintentionally damaged some of its most basic functionality. To users of Mac OS X and of DTrace: Apple has done a service by porting DTrace, but let's convince them to go one step further and port it properly."
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Member since:2005-04-01
You are TOTALLY right that Apple is not a FOSS company at heart, but the fact is, open source is meant to be (ab)used in this manner, and that is the reasoning behind things like the BSD license. The idea is that when this code is open, anyone can do anything with it. I, for one, would prefer a crippled port of trusted software than ground-up proprietary software.
Member since:2006-06-21
Considering Red Hat 100% dedicated to the ideals of FOSS may be just as much of a mistake. Companies have their own interests at "heart" and it's not a perfect world out there.
Of course, one can't help but feel something is wrong when a company takes advantage of a FOSS piece of software on one hand, but stops short of giving it access to all its own secrets on the other.
What I'm trying to get to is that we're not "there" yet. FOSS is making its way into the IT world more and more each day, but don't expect things to change overnight. At least for another while such hybrid approaches are the best there is, and it may never go past this point.
Member since:
2005-07-24
And I'm sure that Steve lost a lot of sleep during the period in which he was wrestling with that tough decision under pressure from those nasty ISVs.
I'm all in favor of friendly relations with our friends here who prefer MacOS. But Darwin, Webkit or no, it's best not to forget that Apple is no FOSS company at heart. It has no problem with using FOSS opportunistically, and follows the letter of the license. And that's OK. But never fall into the trap of thinking that Apple is anything at all like Red Hat.