Apple recently released Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, the latest update to the flagship operating system. Featuring developer-oriented features such as Core Data under the hood, the Unix-based Tiger and the introduction of powerful yet increasingly cost-effective Mac hardware is enticing many a curious Linux enthusiast to prowl over to the nearest Apple Store and get their paws on a Mac. Read more at NewsForge.
OSS on OS X
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Their probably just waiting for Sarge.
hehe.
Well, I will be migrating from GNU/Linux to OS X real soon and some of my favorite OSS will be on there. Linux is great, but it’s not quite there yet. Some things need to be dealt with if there are going to be people wanting to use GNU/Linux as a desktop. Although, some in the community feel they don’t need to improve certain things because they believe they solved their problems. Not so if people still find it unusable at times.
Maybe I’m not the target of the article since I am an OS X user, but I would have prefered more depth.
I have AbiWord installed. Hub has done a pretty awesome job of porting AbiWord. My oppinion is that this is the OSS word processor to support, on any platform.
I have used OO.org on three platforms, and have been less than impressed with its abilities as a WP. Since this article doesn’t really mention, OO.org can be used in OS X although it requires X11.app. I do find OO.org to be rather buggy short sighted in some of its OS X assumptions: you get strange errors if you install OO.org as one user and try to run it as another.
Never tried NeoOffice/J. Heard mixed things about it in every review I have read, but never really had a reason to use it.
For OSS spread sheets I would reccomend Gnumeric, hands down. Beautiful peice of software, but you will be using X11.app for that, and I do.
All of these requirements can be filled by Microsoft Office, which isn’t to say that I endorse this but instead to ask OSS developers to think of ways they can distinguish themselves from MS… other than Linux support.
MPlayer is a pretty cool program. It keeps me from having to worry about Real Player, Windows Media Player and DivX’s player. Why install these three when I can just install MPlayer. I tend to use it from the command line, but the GUI is okay.
Firefox? Of course. Camino is fun for a bit, but has always gotten on my nerves after a while. Safari has gotten better over time and is now useable, but I stick with Firefox for most things. I was using Mozilla up until Firefox’s 1.0 release.
Fink: Learn it, use it, love it. … at least if you intend to be compiling free software. There is always some obscure project out there I want to try (say http://trollvm.sourceforge.net/ ), and fink is the easiest way to get the libraries I need to have a chance to compile.
Okay, so what OSS is out there which is actually interesting to Mac Heads?
I’m a big fan of http://www.scummvm.org/ for my gaming needs. Oddly enough, most of my game collection is playable on OS X, but only through OSS: Doom 2, Quake 1 & 2, Abuse, Myth 1, and a whole mess of adventure games.
How about http://earth3d.org/ and http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ ?
The http://www.gimp.org/ of course has to be mentioned, although I tend to use the shareware http://www.graphic-converter.net/ even when Photoshop is available.
What am I missing?
Many open source developers want a polished Unix desktop so they are migrating to OSX from Linux. Linux is fine as a server OS.
OS X is very nice, I use it at home (100% now) for work and play. But I think your statement seems to intimate that linux has a poor interface and is only useful as a server; I disagree. Both GNOME and KDE are very polished and I have enjoyed using them in the past and will, no doubt, use them again in the future. The linux kernel is becoming more powerful and flexible – different model than a mach micro with layered services, but but effective nonetheless.
As far as polish… OS X is pleasing to the eye but once again Apple has introduced incongruities to the interface and Finder has come through another iteration with little change. If it were an option, I’d rather have the old Platinum OS 8, OS 9 interface (obviously rewritten to take advantage of Darwin underneath it, or perhaps something else, like Copland which has recently been mentioned). But even with its shortcomings, OS X is a fine operating system and I DO enjoy using it. I would like to see more OSS on it and I would like to see Apple contribute more back to the OSS community, but I am also realistic in that Apple is a business and will GIVE back as little as possible and developers won’t be doing a lot of native development on OS X… it will continue to be X11/Gnome/KDE based in the future so that it can continue to be built on multiple platforms, easily.
RE: mommy and mummy. viva la differance (French spelling?)
I use OS X (Panther so far, upgrading to Tiger in the next month) and depending on the Linux distribution I find out a little or quite a bit better.
I don’t care about doing a whole lot of tweaking. I’m a tech nerd but I have lots of work I need to get done. LinSpire does very well for me in this reguard. And at $50 a year I find this a VERY good deal for all the apps that are available for free or for a very reduced price plus all OS upgrades are included in the $50.
.. how many previous Linux users will end up wiping OSX when the novelty wears off, and when they have to put up another $129 to get the latest update of the system?
I could very well imagine myself buying a mini-mac for instance, but OSX would have nothing to do with that.
I used Linux as my primary desktop OS from 1994 to November 2003, I then grabbed a Mac – 2 years later I’d never consider going back to Linux, imho the novelty is with Linux, all that oh yes it’s free and open source so I’ll look passed the fact their are no real applications. You can keep your politically correct OS, I’ll use my computer with software!
You can keep your politically correct OS, I’ll use my computer with software!
I never understood why you mac-zealots get so defensive all the time.. as for the quote above. What a load of crap. As if I didn’t use my computer with software… I use konqueror, kdevelop, openoffice, amarok, latex, gimp and gaim all the time, and they do all that I want and need. In what way does that not qualify as “software”?
I had a Mac back then when OS8.1 and 8.6 where brand new. And quite envoyed my experience. But after that, I got to like linux better since last week when I bough my new mac mini. OSX is a really nice OS.
The only thing that I miss, is xorg anti-aliasing and windows Cleartype. OSX antialiasing suck hard and cant be disable. Font are really blury and harder to read. Hope that I’ll get used to it or apple improve it (that will be better 😉 )
I’ll try mplayer tonight, I wasn’t please with the image quality of vlc.
Just wondered what the problem is you’re having with OSX fonts. I’ve been using OSX for some time and the fonts are crystal clear. I’m using a LCD monitor, but I have an old Imac with CRT and the fonts look great on it too. Perhaps you can tell us what your setup is and perhaps someone will have a suggestion as to what the problem is. Since the Mac is extensively used for content creation, I find it hard to believe that their font technology is lacking.
.. how many previous Linux users will end up wiping OSX when the novelty wears off, and when they have to put up another $129 to get the latest update of the system?>>
Aroo? It’s $$$ if you want the latest full point release, not the updates.
It’s not mandatory to buy the next version. I know people who are still using 10.1.5 or 10.2.8. Me, I’ve got 10.4 on a laptop but I don’t have any compelling reason at the moment to switch my main computer from 10.3.9
But frankly, I’m sick’n’frikkin tired of nickle and dime zealots like you whinging and pissing about the *possiblity* of paying $129 about every 15 months.
I’ve got a laptop with Ubuntu on it, and I like it, but even after spending a month of time with Ubuntu, it’s not as functional to me as OS X.
I make $15.50/hr. The ease and convenience of OS X paid for itself in just a few minutes over 8 hours.
“Not so if people still find it unusable at times.”
Not a very strong argument:
Some people find Windows to be an unbareably insecure OS, therefore it must be so.
Some people believe microkernels are awful, therefore OS’s that use them are: So OS X is awful?
Some people (me) believe Apple makes Microsoft look nice, so therefore Apple must be evil.
Some people think George Bush is a great leader, so he must be.
Some people think George Bush is satan, so he must be that too!
Satan is a great leader?
Just because some people believe it doesn’t make it true
. But you’re right, there’s always room to improve.
Well, I use default font (verdana I think it is).
I tried all the option for the level of quality.
I have a samsung 151v (15″ LCD) connected with the VGA adaptor (1024×768@75hz).
It seems to be I common problem ( http://discussions.info.apple.com/[email protected]@.68a38… )
Someone said that on the apple discussion forum :
If you’re coming from Windows XP, Microsoft’s version of anti-aliasing, called ClearType, I think produces much better, sharper, clearer text. It takes a while to get used to it on the Mac though.
http://discussions.info.apple.com/[email protected]@.68ac27…
here is a screenshop (windows-linux-OSX)
the font in the mail(left from safari) really look fuzzy and the one in safari, even bigger are not clear as firefox in linux.
http://us.share.geocities.com/franz04/comparaison_font.bmp
(it is not compress)
It missed out two of my favorite OSS applications that are only available on OS X. TexShop and BibDesk. There’s also LaTeX Equation editor that’s OS X only. If you’re a heavy LaTeX user, OS X is bliss.
No mention either of QemuX, a very neat and easy to use front end to Qemu. Makes using it easy like using Virtual PC. Sure, there is Qemu Launcher on Linux, but QemuX is hands down easier to use for non-geeks. Speed still sucks though.
I see this written about constantly and I don’t know why Apple implemented X11 this way. The default mode for X11 on OS X is rootless, and when you run X11 an xterm window opens up. Anybody who’s used xterm and Terminal would surely agree with me that Terminal is MUCH MCUH nicer to use than xterm. So why jump through all the hoops to get X11 and Terminal to behave nicely?
Case in point: The author of the article states, “Graphical applications requiring X … can be run from an xterm window in X11.app or by using the command open-x11 applicationname in Terminal.”
What’s that command again? Why can’t we just type the application name into Terminal like we do on all our other *nix machines?
It turns out its not terribly difficult to prevent xterm from opening when X11 runs, and to run X11 applications normally from a Terminal window. But why the hassle? Maybe the only reason is because someone might want to use X11 in full screen mode, where Terminal will be absent. Anybody else have a better reason?
Enough with the cat related puns. The more OSS Apple uses the more it will just be a GNU based box with a different Window Manager.
I got an iBook a while back with OSX on it, seeing as I didn’t want to pay for Windows. It was nice for a while, everything “just worked”, so I thought. The just worked wore off when I looked under the hood and to my suprise all my friendly *nix apps were gone. I had to go d/l developer utils which only brought back soem of them. There was no portage system for OSX, fink sucks and still sucks, darwin ports the same, Gentoo portage on OSX is still experimental. So I ditched it and wen’t back to Gentoo. I got all my stuff back up, kismet, fluxbox, root-tail, metalog etc. OSX is nice on the eyes but lacks the utility that native {Linux/BSD}/GNU has. All those apps that people mention that makes OSS on OSX so great were born and bread in the Linux/BSD world and are just ported to OSX every so often. Just my opinion and experiance.
darwinports 1.0 released.http://www.darwinports.org/
install a emacs 22 for example:
In the OS X 10.4 Finder, type Command-K or select Go | Connect to Server …
Enter this server address
http://packages.opendarwin.org/Tiger-Packages
Click Connect. (note: this will not work with Safari you have to do it in the Finder)
Go take a walk. The Finder is going to mount a webdav (http) network drive that has 500 packages in it. This will take a while even over broadband connection. Be patient and let the Finder finish.
Scroll down to the package emacs-22.0.50.1.mpkg or whatever version is currently listed.
Double click the mpkg.
a system that works differently is broken?
and dude.. it is called developer tools.
How about kismet, avrdude or projectM ?
I think I must be the only unix geek who doesn’t like the look and feel of Mac OS X.
Plus, not having decent CLI tools (I find the GNU tools better than the BSD tools) is intensely frustrating. Of course, given that I find this an issue probably explains a lot about why I don’t like the GUI of Mac OS X.
If you set your environment properly, you can run X apps from Terminal.app or any other terminal program you happen to be running. Here’s the code from my zshrc which takes care of OS X stuff:
# OS X hacks
if [[ `uname` == ‘Darwin’ ]]
then
# make X stuff work if started from Terminal
if [[ -z “$DISPLAY” ]]
then
export DISPLAY=’:0.0′
fi
alias cdrecord=’cdrecord dev=IODVDServices’
alias top=’TERM=vt100 top -o cpu’
fi
The cdrecord alias isn’t really necessary as I recall, and “hdiutil burn …” works just as well, if not better.
I don’t like the OS X look(s) either. And the thought of paying extra for the bad old days of proprietary unix drives me nuts. Besides, the only applications that I’d be interested in running on an Apple work better on Linux. The hardware is OK but 32 bit OS is last century. OS X’s 64 bit support is really weak from a developer point of view. Why would I want to be stuck writing console apps when there are complete 64 bit environments available for Free with a capital F?
Michael
Let me get this straight.
Apple thinks a Linux user, who’s used to being able to run his OS on nearly ANY hardware he wants and has the source code to nearly every application he runs would prefer an OS that only runs on the hardware designed by the company who made the OS?
Something doesn’t seem right here.
But Mike , according to them nobody cares about freedom that why they where a 3% OS until there great IPOD and current Powerbook lead.
That one copy can be used by everyone in the shop both at work and in there familly dont mather , that you are free to do absolutely what you whant exept close it to others dont mather. That you can make a copy and sale it to anyone at any price dont mather.
That you can have the same computer OS working on PPC , X86 and 64 bits dont mather. That you can improve by yourself and change it exactly to what you whant or that you pay someone to improve the code dont mather to them according to them nobody cares.
The Fun Part is where in the Middle of the Software War we have really started to fire any shot and play the same dirty tricks they are doing to us.
I will really hate to be them when we open the third phase and that we start the Hardware War.
Yes but Mac OS XII dont support WinterStorm Hardware that hardware must be bad answer will be its free , Open Hardware and you got the spec and docs , you whant your OS to work on it do the job. Anyone can improve upon it without restriction exept close it to others.
And this article forget That MAc OS X is OSS but its OSS as certified by the OSI , its crap as it can be made closed source by design of the BSD license.
OSS certified by the OSI lack of a real definition is crap , Open Source software should be Open Source all the time , not just when we politicaly like the one doing the closing.
This hardware war; it sounds kind of funny to be honest.
If you mean hardware war as in development of hardware; I think you’re in for a rude awakening. Open Source and collaborative development works well with software because it isn’t tangable. People can make changes and if they don’t like them roll back to a previous state. Additionally transfer of software; creation of more copies; and even testing can be done without significant cost to a development community. Its not very hard to download the lastest nightly build of a piece of software and test it or play with the source.
I’d like to see someone accidentally crack their Radeon card in “open hardware development” and magically revert back to its original state. It seems kind of hardware war would be very unlikely this “hardware war” will be useful – not everyone can make the hardware to tinker with; hardware has a physical cost associated with it; and its not easy “commit/test” changes in a large distributed environment like it is with software.
If you’re talking about having OSS mandate that hardware has to be have open and freely avaliable documentation of features; I’d say its still a pipedream. Even with the current dominant OS; hardware support is written by the hardware manufacturers. So a mandate from say the linux kernel saying hardware has to be open for it to supported wouldn’t work because the hardware companies would just write their own drivers and include them on a CD with the hardware.
As it stands now people who invest in expensive hardware don’t use the standard drivers that come with windows or linux — they go to the manufacturer’s website and get the latest/greatest drivers.
In all seriousness your hardware war sounds a bit like fantasy land.
I have used Linux since Caldera Open (a while ago now), and cut my teeth on it editing printcap files to get my epson working (sweated buckets doing it 😉 I love Open Source software and the whole “bazaar” (AKA Eric Raymond Bazaar) ethos around it. Three years ago I bought a second user G4 tower from eBay and have never looked back. I still use and love Linux (and I actually like Server 2003 from MS which I think is their best product).
But Mac OS X Tiger melds the world of open source software I use every day (GIMP, AbiWord etc) with Apple software like iMovie, iTunes, iDVD etc etc (and FCP Express). And I actually use and enjoy using Fink too(!). I also make sure I download said applications (the open source ones that will work) onto my Windows machines at home too- and they work great as replacements to expensive costed applications like Photoshop and others.
All in, this is a great time for OS development and use no matter which OS you are using and enjoying!
Paul
Native drag-and-drop support
Native copy-paste support
Huh? Where do you guys come from? You have to mention this as a feature???
Boy, the Linux world is scaring me. They’re hot on the heels of OS X and will make it redundant in… 50 years tops.
In all seriousness , Reality is we dont have a lot to do at all , just become legal , enforce legality and use our usal tactics which involve market force to demand Open Hardware.
http://www.upgrade123.com/catalog/index.php
http://www.mini-itx.com/
http://eshop.macsales.com/Customized_Pages/Framework.cfm?page=mini/…
http://www.bizcomcanada.com/home.asp
http://www.pcalchemy.com
http://www.xpcgear.com/
etc …
Even if you put all the brand name computer computer maker togheter they are only 23% of all computer parts shipped worldwide , the White box and personnal assembler are 77% of the market.
I find your comment inane :
http://www.onelook.com/?w=inane&ls=a
I find your comment insane :
http://www.onelook.com/?w=insane&ls=a
I find your comment unrealistic :
http://www.onelook.com/?w=unrealistic&ls=a
The computer your using right now as the same cost as the one which is all free ( as in freedom ) and Open Hardware.
You just like to pay for thing wich are restrictive to you and dont care about the consequence of your actions , but dont worry your tottaly irrelevant.We will change the world it will take time and money.
Everything worthwile take time and money …
Why would I want to be stuck writing console apps when there are complete 64 bit environments available for Free with a capital F?
Because 64-bit GUI code is a waste of memory bandwidth and cache space, i.e. performance?
And no, you’re not stuck with console apps, you can combine 32-bit GUI processes and 64-bit worker processes in one application.
All those hardware links you pointed to, those point to cheaply priced standard hardware – not open hardware. If you’ll notice those sites all sell hardware by Asus; Ati; nVidia; Epia; AMD; Intel; etc.
That hardware is not “open” by any stretch of the word. Those manufacturers don’t fully document the hardware specifications and interfaces; most of them don’t provide GNU compatible drivers; and they certainly don’t involve an open community of people to review and contribute to their hardware designs. Really, when was the last time you saw Intel or nVidia releasing the entire chip definition to peer review?
To put it simply you’ve yet to make a point as to how “open hardware” is possible. All you’ve done is shown cheap places to buy what is considered standard hardware. Standards based hardware is far from open hardware – just ask Theo de Raadt about how easy it is to write drivers for what is considered standards based hardware.
Maybe if you spent less time looking up what innane; insane; and unrealistic meant and spent more time trying to figure out exactly what “open hardware” is you’d have a point; unfortunately that was not the case.
Aroo? It’s $$$ if you want the latest full point release, not the updates.
oorA? It’s 0$ if you stick to the OS you are used to..
It’s not mandatory to buy the next version. I know people who are still using 10.1.5 or 10.2.8. Me, I’ve got 10.4 on a laptop but I don’t have any compelling reason at the moment to switch my main computer from 10.3.9
No, and it’s not mandantory to keep your FOSS system up to date either, however a lot of people do that anyway, since all it takes is “apt-get distupgrade” or something similar.
But frankly, I’m sick’n’frikkin tired of nickle and dime zealots like you whinging and pissing about the *possiblity* of paying $129 about every 15 months.
Oh, I see. Out of arguments on why you should fork out $129 for something that you used to get for free before you switched, thus we go on a rant with name-calling. Pathetic.
I’ve got a laptop with Ubuntu on it, and I like it, but even after spending a month of time with Ubuntu, it’s not as functional to me as OS X.
Very interesting. And of course everyone is just like you, and noone is like me.
I make $15.50/hr. The ease and convenience of OS X paid for itself in just a few minutes over 8 hours.
Frankly, who gives a shit about how much you earn? It has no bearing whatsoever in this discussion.
Finally, I’d expect someone posting from a .edu to show some signs of intelligence, but apparently that is no longer prerequisite for being let in into such institutions. You managed to totally miss the point I made and instead resorted to ad hominem attacks. Shame on you.
In case you missed the point; I’ll use your first link as an example – the one that sells parts to modify an X-Box.
At first glance you can buy a new motherboard; you can change the processor; cabling; etc.
But is that open? No.
Does any of this hardware you’ve linked to come with design documentation? No.
Does it come with programming interface specifications? No.
How about human readable driver sources? No.
All your doing is playing mix and match with standards based closed source pieces of hardware. In plan terms its the hardware equivalent of shipping only a software binary.
Frankly, who gives a shit about how much you earn? It has no bearing whatsoever in this discussion.
Finally, I’d expect someone posting from a .edu to show some signs of intelligence, but apparently that is no longer prerequisite for being let in into such institutions. You managed to totally miss the point I made and instead resorted to ad hominem attacks. Shame on you.
It has everything to do with money. The topic was whether paying for an upgrade is worth it. This individual clearly stated the relationship between what personal effort (a little over 8-hours of work) was required to attain the newer version of the system. Working an 8-hour day towards upgrading a piece of software (that someone mentioned is updated every 15-months) seems worth it to me as well. This is the same reason why I updated mine.
As for the education attack, you have exhibited a great deal of immaturity and closed-mindedness. This attitude is the exact opposite of what I experienced while in college. I guess this may be why you are hiding behind the veil of anonymity.
I’ve seen pkgsrc work a lot better than Darwinports or Fink. It’s also larger, more mature, and more portable.
It has everything to do with money.
No, the magic word is “value”. As in what you get for you money. If you think $129 is worth it for a cuter interface to the applications you used to use before you switched from the FOSS system of course you are entitled to that opinion, just as I am entitled to think it’s a waste of money. Please don’t give me that “superior programs only available on proprietary platforms” stuff since the case we are discussing is someone who have made do with the free tools available. And if you can’t resist it anyway, don’t forget they are $$$ too, and you were fine with the free tools to begin with.
The topic was whether paying for an upgrade is worth it. This individual clearly stated the relationship between what personal effort (a little over 8-hours of work) was required to attain the newer version of the system. Working an 8-hour day towards upgrading a piece of software (that someone mentioned is updated every 15-months) seems worth it to me as well. This is the same reason why I updated mine.
Personal choice again. You chose to work 8 hours and give away your money, I prefer to “apt-get dist-upgrade” and occasionally give a hand where I can.
As for the education attack, you have exhibited a great deal of immaturity and closed-mindedness. This attitude is the exact opposite of what I experienced while in college. I guess this may be why you are hiding behind the veil of anonymity.
Come on… Pardon me for expecting too much from what should by any account be adult people, I see that I’m clearly narrowminded and immature. You excuse an abusive and indefensible posting from someone who should have known better, and follow up that with another ad hominem attack… I admire your sense for the appropriate. As far as anonymity is concerned, inquiring minds wonder who this “mouth” dude who posts stuff here is..
“All those hardware links you pointed to, those point to cheaply priced standard hardware”
No , seems you cant follow links and go see what there all about , but you would have been right in pointing out that there not Open Hardware yet.
“That hardware is not “open” by any stretch of the word.”
You missed the modification some have done to those parts 😉
” when was the last time you saw Intel or nVidia releasing the entire chip definition to peer review?”
last time someone signed there NDA …
“To put it simply you’ve yet to make a point as to how “open hardware” is possible.”
No , because I just showed you some of the basic already in place , when the time will be , all will fall into place.
“just ask Theo de Raadt about how easy it is to write drivers for what is considered standards based hardware. ”
Why would I ask someone who does “BSD” (OpenBSD in this case) this guys dont even do real Open Source ( Real Open source is different from OSI certified Open source as the source code for the software is always Open and availaible at all time and is not certified based on politics but rather the real Open source source code quality ).
“Maybe if you spent less time looking up what innane; insane; and unrealistic meant ”
I knew what they meant , I made sure you understood it too 😉
“spent more time trying to figure out exactly what “open hardware” is you’d have a point”
I know exactly what Open Hardware is , you dont , and have some excuses to explain your lack of vision and of knowledge , and are very vocal why you think it whont happen , its fun to see you trying to point out where the flaw in my examples are.
Everything wothwile yake time and money.
“In case you missed the point”
I did not miss the point you made. I am just not taking you by the hand to show you where your thinking is wrong. What made Open source software a reality ? the same principle will apply to Open Hardware.
“the one that sells parts to modify an X-Box. ”
We both know that X-Box certification is not avalaible from the vendor and that all motherboard company offer no official replacement for it …
“At first glance you can buy a new motherboard; you can change the processor; cabling; etc.”
Yes , you can do that at any glance you like.
“But is that open? No.”
Then why do they do it ?
“Does any of this hardware you’ve linked to come with design documentation? No. ”
Actually it does , you have to ask for it , you can even talk to the one who made it. Fully Open Hardware no , but its a start.
“Does it come with programming interface specifications? No. ”
Its not included but there are some availaible.
“How about human readable driver sources? No.”
There is a GNU/Linux X-Box project … if you mean on the parts they are well documented for them to be used.
I said :
“In all seriousness , Reality is we dont have a lot to do at all , just become legal , enforce legality and use our usal tactics which involve market force to demand Open Hardware. ”
With your kind of thinking no Open Source software would exist. Open hardware is an idea , who’s time is about to come.
Everything wothwile take time and money.
“”That hardware is not “open” by any stretch of the word.”
You missed the modification some have done to those parts ;-)”
That doesn’t make the hardware open; I can take carbon from a number two pencil and make certain nVidia cards behave in SLI mode when they “aren’t supposed to” but its still closed hardware.
The ability to modify a piece of hardware is not the defining issue of open-hardware. Publicly making avaliable the design specifications and logical interfaces are what makes hardware open. Allowing others to implement hardware that interfaces with 3rd party hardware in a transparent manner is what makes open hardware. You still haven’t shown this to exist; or even be “up and comming” from anywhere. Randomly hacking on closed hardware until you find a nice side effect (like playing pirated X-box games) doesn’t “free” your hardware.
I didn’t miss it – its just not open; plain and simple.
” when was the last time you saw Intel or nVidia releasing the entire chip definition to peer review?”
last time someone signed there NDA …”
Very coy.
Since you seem to think you know what open hardware is; why don’t you explicitly define what you like to call open hardware. I’ve done that repeated; open hardware is freely avaliable documentation about the design/implementation and interfaces of a piece of hardware.
Why don’t you actaully say what you’re definition of open hardware is?
Open Source software is software that is given to an end user with the human readable source. Therefore you not only have the working complied program but you have the exact design specifications and interfaces the software uses.
Open hardware is the same thing; hardware plus the complete documentation of its implementation; logical interfaces; and programming interfaces.
You’ve not shown any hardware that does this. None. Zero. Zip.
“There is a GNU/Linux X-Box project … if you mean on the parts they are well documented for them to be used.”
No I mean like this: The X-Box; even your modified X-Box runs on an Intel Pentium processor – where is the documentation? Where is the definiton of the chip? Where is the information the defines all the logical interfaces and programming hooks? None of that obviously comes with any of the hardware you’re buying. So its not open.