Re: [TCLUG:4895] Linux vs. Darwin (Mac OS-X)

[Michael Hicks <hick0088@tc.umn.edu>]

> So, it's true that Apple is releasing most of the OS-X into Open-Source
> domain. Your opinion, please: Is Open-Source competition from Apple good for
> Linux? Or is OS-X already too late to play catch up? I'm tending to think
> that it might muddy the waters, but the more the merrier, right?

Nearly every time I hear about another company releasing their source, I
wonder if it's too much.  Usually, I worry that the projects that get
released are just too big -- I thought that way about Mozilla, but I'm
not entirely sure if I still feel like that..  However, I doubt I'd want
to go anywhere near a Microsoft OS, if their code was ever forced out or
something..

Download:  2% complete 
Recieved: 19,028,650 of 951,430,185 bytes at 3.6 kB/s
ETA: 2d 23h 56m 1s

*laugh*  But anyway...

I'm not sure if what Apple did is terribly extraordinary -- they just
decided to give away code that they added to BSD, Apache, and Mach
(which I presume are all under BSD-like licenses..  Maybe Mach isn't). 
This will all help Apple keep a robust platform (well, at least at the
kernel level -- The desktop may well be prone to problems..)

I wonder what Apple is doing to differentiate between Mac OS X Server
and the consumer version?  If you have access to the kernel, can't you
just tweak it to your heart's content?  They must have ideas other than
to limit logins, processes, or anything like that..  Better daemon
administration?  I dunno..

Darwin will be a very interesting thing to watch.  I wouldn't be
surprised if people at least try to create distributions of it, like any
of the other free *BSDs..  Not sure if Apple would like that, though ;-)
-- 
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|               Mike Hicks | Linux User Since: 1.2.13
: http://umn.edu/~hick0088 | mailto:hick0088@tc.umn.edu
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