This is an old article (Nov. 2000), but it is still a good read. Jordan Hubbard, the well known FreeBSD leader who later got a job at Apple’s kernel team, had written this interesting MacOSX review for Salon.com. His article was from a different point of view than other review articles at the time: the open source hacker who tries to find and uncover the UNIX underneath OSX.
Open-Sourcing the Apple
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Mac OS X is certainly an intriguing and tremendously interesting operating system. The very fact that it, as beta software no less, was able to impress a FreeBSD hacker is impressive. Furthermore, I am, among a surpisingly large number of my peers, extremely enticed by the platform and am planning on purchasing an Apple as soon as I can afford one. The premise of a first-rate desktop on what is essentially a complete UNIX system is of obvious interest, especially after having dealt with various X-based incarnations of such for the past three years. In fact, the sheer polish of OS X has led to some questioning of personal ideals that had previously been strongly-rooted.
Allow me to drop something that may be somewhat controversial: perhaps the open source–more specifically, the “bazzar” style as described in ESR’s well-known treatise–isn’t an end-all solution for all problems. I think the GUI is definitely one area where consistency, and, gasp, even a “fascist” policy can prove invaluable, and there are obviously others. I ran across an interesting bit of what was deemed flamebait on Slashdot, but seemed intriguing to me nonetheless. It certainly does seem as if open source software has difficult with innovation. Indeed, I can find little example of a truly piece of software, API, or you name it, having been produced within the open source world. Even its flagship organization, the FSF, was founded upon copying something the commercial software world produced. (Not to say there aren’t exceptions, as there obviously are — emacs, for one, comes to mind.) Sure, there’s refinement and an attention to detail that is almost completely unique to the open source model (it’s simply not economically sound for a software firm to worry about that next 5%, after all). Basically, what I’m saying is this… maybe the cathedral side of development has an advantage to the bazaar.
Something to think about. =)
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