Early this week, Apple on a site called Mac OS Force powered by WordPress (ref) opened the source for a few more parts of the Mac OS infrastructure including Bonjour network, Darwin Calendar Server (Collaboration), the Mac OS X kernel for Intel, Launchd startup program, and the WebKit browser engine. This is fantastic news.
Unfortunately, nothing of the Mac OS X “experience” has been open sourced. And at the same time, the concerns continue about Apple’s predatory treatment of independent software developers.
I like Ben Metcalfe‘s proposal to Chris Messina:
Hmmm, this is why I’ve always been surprised you use OS X and not linux. I know, you’re a OS X Fanboy
but a nice stable linux desktop like Ubuntu would suit you well.
Have you tried installing Ubuntu on your laptop with BootCamp or Parallels, or tried running the Live disk?
Chris’ discomfort is the only discomfort he can heal.
technorati tags:apple, mac os, mac os x, mac os forge, wordpress, ubuntu, linux, open source, free culture
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Lloyd,
the reason Apple does not open the “Experience” is simple: the “Experience” is what differentiates them from their competitors and makes them money (by driving hardware sales).
I will bet they continue to open up everything below the GUI. It doesn’t matter; OS X really is more about the interface, the underlying (*nix) tools are available anywhere (as demonstrated).
You can’t expect companies to give away all their corporate advantage can you? I don’t see Coca-Cola offering Pepsi their “secret mixture” of sugar, colouring and bubbly water.
E/.
Hi Evan,
Thank you for the comment!
I bet you are correct on all accounts, but I can hope and encourage.
Apple after Microsoft has the most to lose in desktop computing, but Apple also has more to gain.
The experience is not just theirs. Would open sourcing some of it affect their “corporate advantage”? Who is the competition? Microsoft would not benefit from Apple opening some of their “experience” applications.
Maybe some applications are not high value and these could be open sourced? What about also shipping some existing open source alternatives?
Also, Apple needs to improve how it treats independent developers. What about shipping some of their applications?
It is not just Apple’s experience that coud be shared, Apple could open their formats. This would satisfy many people, and what would the cost be?
I don’t expect much of corporations, but I like to be pleasantly surprised! We choose our values and we need to improve our values — by being creative we can still be financially wealthy.