GNU-Darwin will no longer ‘support or distribute any software which links to proprietary libraries, and that includes Cocoa, Carbon, CoreAudio, etc.’ They will also be putting PPC collections into ‘maintenance mode’ and moving all operations to x86. Read the story at MacSlash.
GNU-Darwin Drops PPC Support
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Eugenia Loli
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Does this mean apple will drop ppc, or as I susspect it means, will apple be stuck with the old/forked version of darwin?
GNU-Darwin is a distro based on Darwin, but is NOT the official release from Apple. Apple is not abandoning Darwin on PPC as such a move would be foolish in the extreme. These guys, IMHO, make us GPL lovers look bad. I prefer the GPL over most other licenses but am not religious about it. Every license serves a different purpose – had BSD not been released under the license of the same name then TCP/IP may not have become the protocol standard that it is today. Corporations, under the BSD license, were and are free to implement it without fear of having to release their code for all to see. As such I feel that protocols and standards are often best suited by BSD licenses – Ogg Vorbis is another more recent example. However – if I were a programmer releasing XYZ app I’d probably pick the GPL – but hey, thats just me. These guys resent the APSL to a weird degree. It might not be the most open license around, but its infinitely better then MS’s “shared source” scheme. I see this move as little more then a pissy fit.
It’s not only their dislike for the APSL …
Apple continues the wall-of-silence with respect to their repugnant DMCA-based legal action, and there is no reason whatsoever for us to think that they will not undertake similar action in the future. It is regrettable that the DMCA was Apple-sponsored legislation, and it is now time for them to disavow it and promise never to employ it.
That’s a pretty legit reason, if you ask me. I’ve always wondered what the GNU guys are doing on Apple’s turf, always seemed a bit risky to me.
monty
All right, who gave these GNU trolls the code in the first place? Apple, right? Bad Apple. Bad, bad Apple.
It’s rather funny, but isn’t the ones “stealing” code this time the GNU Darwin people? Certainly, stealing BSD code is impossible, since the licence is so free, but these people are turning Darwin into a piece of GNU proprietary software.
If they’re so anti-Apple, why did they even look at the source in the first place? And dropping PPC, that’s just jolly.
“I see this move as little more then a pissy fit.”
Amen. I don’t see how they could even remotely “support” software that links against Apple’s ‘proprietary’ APIs. If so it would be through GNUstep and XFree86, and not through Apple’s code at all. With everything Apple has given back to the community (a Mach kernel based OS for x86, which is something GNU couldn’t deliver) you’d think they’d get a little credit. Guess not. But this is GNU we’re talking about… of course they’re going to be overly fanatical.
Have you read why they drop PPC ? Have you read that they drop it at all? They just put it on maintainance tree!
Active development is on X86 now… Read on their page about it and its clear why…
Darwin is most (some)BSD as I know… So common. The question is who have stolen from which party?
-A
They’re a company. They will have some benefits from doing what they do…
By the way; Darwin is nothing special AT all, so Apple has NOTHING special done AT ALL.
Or better if you know: Why is Darwin so special?
What is so different from the initial (some)BSD code they started from?
Anybody knows here something about it?
You know, I’d like to find out their reasoning. But their page is far from clear. Much politics on the front page, and some ads. The news page is only politics. Where would one find some info about the system itself, or its development, for that purpose?
As I’ve already stated, it’s impossible to steal BSD code. The BSD licence makes the word “theft” irrelevant.
Yes, Apple is a company, they have some benefits from doing what they do. They’re also the chief Darwin developers.
BTW: If Darwin is so unspecial, why does the GNU crowd first branch, and then make a fuss about the licence? Why don’t they just work on that revolutionary HURD of theirs instead of working on Apple’s CVS dump off FreeBSD?
At this point, Apple have done more than the GNU crowd, that’s for certain.
Active development is on X86 now… Read on their page about it and its clear why…
Care to reiterate? I searched their page and couldn’t find any reason for it.
In general, I don’t like the attitude of the web page: To me, it sounds like “We hate Apple. But we’ll take your source code anyway, thank you.” Is that the open source spirit?
Thats all GNU BS. Just because Apple tries to protect their IP. But I think you cant expect more from those gnu people.. just political noise.
One of them is Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which I cannot find a bad one…
It’s some kind of going backwards instead of going forwards in the computer industy AND DMCA affects Open Source of course…
as well as TCPA… There’s a kind of relation to TCPA
(Hell:We’ll lose control of our own COMPUTERS)
Then there’s the reason that they aren’t supported from Apple at all and thing that Apple benefits from them BUT not vice versa…
Why they started with Darwin? I thing the reasons were pushing Darwin/MacOS at all forward …
Apple seemed not to act in concert 🙁
Maybe they thought Apple would give Aqua/Quark or whatever to them.
Now Darwin is just like another BSD/Linux on Planet.
-A
PS:You don’t know what happened in the background, it could be that they needed some more information about Apple Hardware or whatever but Apple would not give it to them… Just a thought..
sss. This is all still hypothetical, but I’ve no desire to search the page again and read again and tell you which line I found what 🙁
That those open-darwin guys just wanted to be cool…
But then they realized they could not program Apple PPC’s at all and so they stopped it…
And because of publicity they tell us… Apple is guilty
It could all be!
I complete agree with Iggy Drougge on this. Stuff like this truly gives GNU/GPL a very bad name. Who the hell do they think wrote Darwin in the 1st place and made it open-source ? It’s APPLE and nobody else and the GNU-Darwin folk really should go working on their “revolutionary” Hurd if they are so fed up with Apple. Maybe that way we will actually see Hurd support some “hardware that matters” before the year 3000.
The reasons they gave are reasons to drop Darwin development, not to drop the PPC. What does the DMCA have to do with the PPC vs x86 decision?
After all it is very unclear why they will work only on the x86 branch and won’t work on PPC. This will lead to a huge gap between Darwin (Apple’s Open Source MacOSX base) and GNU-Darwin. It will be just a matter of time when the two “systems” won’t have anything todo with each other anymore.
regarding X86 and PPC development.. (big gap?)
Endianness OKAY (source data byteorder!= host’s byteorder) does not matter as long as you don’t mix up your binary data
(should NOT matter at all)
[We’re talking of applications here]
IO Access OKAY [on low level]->this is done already
Higher Level IO Access could be the same or very similar
Where the lack will occur is with drivers for propiate Apple Hardware
This could be the point that they could not gather enough information from Apple…
But doing some apps like I don’t know
(which uses posix layer or whatever) is the same on X86 & PPC (at least if both platforms have similar compilers and dev-tools AND we know GNU has)
-A
drop Darwin development? Why. They just have that darwin?
They “thing” they will hurt Apple by not doing their work,
meaning improving darwin/macos on PPC.
The problems are inherently from Darwin.
And, yes, I wonder why the GNU/Darwin team doesn’t announce “from now we have nothing to do with Apple’s Darwin”, because…
1) APSL is a non-free and non-open source license, and it ALWAYS was. If you disagree with APSL, don’t work on code licensed by it.
2) DMCA sux, but it’s not only an Apple problem, and Jobs won’t back out from supporting it because his media friends won’t like it.
From the PPC maintenance move… No longer PPC desktop computer == Apple , thanks Pegasos!
The Apple licence only states that you must send all changes back to Apple and the code must remain licensed under Apple’s licence. Thats the bigest differnce between it and GPL; since, the GPL only requires you to give the changes to the people you give the software to.
The DMCA can be used to protect Apples copyrights; however, it can also be used to protect the GPL copyrights.
I think the main point of contentions is that some of the software in the GNU-Darwin project were compile against Apple’s non-open libraries; this will cause major compatability problems with the x86 systems that don’t have access to the closed libraries. The GNU-Darwin team is trying to have a cross platform version and don’t want to be sued by Apple for using the closed libraries.
As far as whats so great about Darwin; the kernel is OO (written in C++ and Objective-C). Device drivers are thus objects. An example is the file system: a block device (IDE, SCSI, … they all have the same object interface), a file system object (any file sytem, they should all support the same interface). The block device may be a vertual device on top of Ethernet, USB, or firewire. You can overlay extentions on top of the FS object; examples would be support for compressed data, encrypted data, or journaling.
Thanx for the information!
Now I thing they really wanted to be cool and do some work on something new… Just typical for those Applers 🙂
Hmm. If they don’t agree to the APSL & DMCA they should move to another project of course, since the Darwin is NOW licensed that way. This is the right that Apple has… And those darwin-gnus cannot change this…
-A
It won’t start in VMWare…
And I an too lazy to burn it
-A
The GNU-Darwin does not contribute to Apple’s Darwin project in any way. As a matter of fact, they chose to replace existing utilities found in Apple Darwin by the exactly same programs often rewritten from scratch and slap the “ohm-so-free” GPL on top of it. Way to go.
I can’t read the comments on MacSlash – the linked page comes up blank.
From:Cesar Cardoso
APSL is a non-free and non-open source license, and it ALWAYS was.
Incorrect. The APSL 1.2 is an OSI-certified license and is listed on http://www.opensource.org/.
Further, GnU’s official word on the APSL 1.2 is that, with modifications to 2 of the clauses in the license (both relating to not allowing modified code to be kept closed), the license could then qualify as free, albeit incompatible with the GPL. As it stands, it is an “almost-free” license.
Of course, that won’t help, since: (1) Apple still sells and defends a proprietry hardware platform, (2) Apple markets proprietry tools and APIs on top of their open-source system, and (3) Apple is associated with and has previously invoked the DMCA. These three facts put together will provide enough ammunition for GnU to recommend that people avoid Apple’s stuff, even if the APSL is revised to be free.
No, it wasn’t all meant to be bold… d’oh! 😉
“As far as whats so great about Darwin; the kernel is OO (written in C++ and Objective-C). Device drivers are thus objects.”
I don’t know much about Darwin, but I thought Darwin was just a run-of-the-mill derivative of Mach. I’m also fairly certain that Objective-C has NOTHING to do with the kernel (that just sounds crazy). There may be OO APIs available, but I didn’t think the Darwin kernel had an OOness to it. Could somebody please enlighten me.
(License- and politics-haters can skip this post)
> As it stands, it is an “almost-free” license.
Almost free is not free.
> Of course, that won’t help, since: (1) Apple still sells
> and defends a proprietry hardware platform, (2) Apple
> markets proprietry tools and APIs on top of their
> open-source system, and (3) Apple is associated with and
> has previously invoked the DMCA. These three facts put
> together will provide enough ammunition for GnU to
> recommend that people avoid Apple’s stuff, even if the
> APSL is revised to be free.
But on this situation it’s a pure POLITICAL move – especially (3). (2) isn’t an issue; SuSE does (despite RMS doesn’t like the Germans) and MandrakeSoft is doing.
I’m speaking purely for myself here:
The GNU advocates are as nuts as those who oppose them. For various political and economic reasons not everyone can support these models, and if so not yet. Given real-world project management issues it’s also not that big a deal that some projects force some sort of approval process on contributors. At least that way developers and users can have some sort of road map to judge and plan for.
reading you guys makes me feel like I’m reading a bunch of Yoda’s going back and forth. I applaud the efforts to learn English, but is there a single Native English speaker at this site anymore?
Some of you keep saying: well, they cite the DCMA, and that’s a good enough reason. What? How so? Apple used the DCMA to prevent a 3rd party from enabling iDVD to burn to external drives–what else did they use it for and what does that have to do with Darwin-GNU? Zero as far as I can tell. If there is another case, I’d like to know about it, but can anyone specifically mention how this applies… Are OSers so whiny and b!tchy that they run for the hills afraid whenever that acronym pops up? I don’t see any link, any causality, or logic.
Saying: “They used the DCMA. That’s a valid argument.” is not a valid argument. We all don’t like the DCMA and we’d all like to use iDVD with 3rd party drives, but what the heck does that have to do with this issue?
They could always fork the GNU-Darwin distribution and call it NOT SO GNU Darwin. For people who don’t care as much and just want decent GNU software. Apple is neither the best, nor the worst corporate citizen so I don’t see the point of their announcement.
I hope that “maintenance” mode means that GNU-Darwin-PPC will at least get some of the stuff from the “actively maintained” GNU-Darwin-x86. I like having convenient places for OSX stuff.
Then again, there’s always Fink at http://fink.sourceforge.net .
–JM
In fact no, but the poster’s intent was probably true. I think they are verbally mingling the kernel (which is a Mach derivative + BSD environment) with its extension/module mechanism. I have no idea what the Mach portion is written in, but i’d bet money on C.
The poster is probably thinking of the kernel extension mechanism. In OS-X, all the hardware and filesystem support (plus some aspects of networking, i think) is provided by kernel extensions, which rely on something called I/O Kit. I/O Kit based extensions are all written in Embedded C++, which is object oriented and allows subclassing.
This is actually somewhat relevant for an Apple vs. open source argument, because this is potentially one of the coolest things Apple’s provided the source to. The whole subclassing mechanism allows two very powerful things:
Rapid development: you don’t really have to write the code to handle something such as firewire communications with a drive – you simply subclass an exiting firewire drive kernel extension (Apple provided), and then add the specific features for your drive to that.
Inexact matching of hardware: let’s say a user plugs your drive in without having the drivers. As long as the OS can recognize it as a Firewire drive, it’s got basic drivers for that already, so it can work with it. It won’t have the specific features that you coded above, but it’ll often work well enough.
There’s some other interesting aspects to I/O kit, too. On first boot, the OS creates a cache of all the loaded extension code – provided no new extensions are present, it just loads the cache in all future reboots, really speeding up booting. It also just loads everything whether it needs it or not instead of wasting it’s time looking for hardware. The kernel extension manager unloads the ones that don’t match hardware after booting is complete (ie – when time is less critical) to free up memory.
Anyway, all this is in Darwin (though some of the actual extensions, developed in conjunction with other companies, aren’t due to licensing issues). Personally, even if no other OS winds up using any of this, i think it’s a significant contribution on Apple’s part, just to show one way how this sort of thing can be done.
Cheers,
Jay
The GNU advocates are as nuts as those who oppose them.
Meaning we’re all nuts. Yay! Have a nice day.
lets see…the father of FreeBSD is on Apple’s payroll.
Apple has HUGE quantities of BSD in it.
who helped who?
why on god’s green earth would anyone put the word STEALING, in a sentence involving apple,bsd,darwin.
you are just an inflammatory piece of work are you not?
gnu-darwin guys say they are unlinking from non-free libraries etc.
what else do you want?
if they want to kill the project…let them!!!!
you aren’t writing it…so quit your bitching.
All the Real Darwin hackers are working here: http://www.opendarwin.org . Leave the lamers to their 2nd rate GNUripoff.
there’s actually nothing more to say…
But I am still a bit curious why they forked it at ALL, since they could continue working on http://www.opendarwin.org
GNU seems to be a kind of god…(or wants to be) 🙂
It is everywhere and omnipresent even if isn’t..
No I’ve got some enemies, haven’t I.
We can say GNU here GNU there, but THESE GUYS did a really great Compiler Collection as well as all the tools needed to get your PC going like tools and ba… AND MORE…
You can get a complete PC working with GNU and GPL!!!!Thats impressive!
Thanx for that. But:
Are those AppleGNUers similar to those real cool GNUers?
Can one split GNUers in some groups…
Cool GNUers?
Uncool GNUers?
med-cool GNUers?
Hey men, I am not serious? Am I?
If you made it this far, you might like to have a summary of the key points of argument (rebuttal attempts included for free 😉
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Regards,
proclus
<a href=http://www.gnu-darwin.org/>
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/
“But I am still a bit curious why they forked it at ALL, since they could continue working on http://www.opendarwin.org“
GNU-Darwin is older than OpenDarwin. OpenDarwin just came out right before the Darwin 6.0 release. GNU-Darwin has been around since Darwin 1.2.1. So tell me, why should GNU-Darwin just decide to close up shop because OpenDarwin started?