Aaron Vegh, the former publisher of Macinsite magazine, and Drew Maynard, production manager at Canadian Homes & Cottages Magazine, have set up a petition for all Mac advocates to sign and to be forwarded to Apple in support of open-sourcing OS X.
Comments
If they open source, they may lose money on what they may have sold in MacOS X (at least at the start), no one knows if in the long run it will pay off or not. At best they could hope to sell as well as Redhat is doing with Linux (NBD) among tons of other people selling Linux. Sure the product MAY get better but If a free version of MacOS X ends up being ported to Intel then they really lose, no reason to buy Mac Hardware at a premium and this is where Apple makes its money - not from selling copies of MacOS X (MacOS X is supposed to sell the hardware). If they have a free version floating around for Intel - people will just get a cheap copy of MacOS X and install it on an inexpensive (and sometimes faster) Intel clone. Apple would end up in the same position IBM was in the 80's with its PC. Tons of clones running its hardware and its OS being spread all over the place by others (liscensed by Microsoft).
open sourceing OSX would be fatal for Apple right now. Open source is great for hacking, but you can't make money off it.
The problem is, if OS X gets open sourced the UI will end up being as bad as Linux. The KDE and GNome groups show how out of touch engineering geeks are with end users. This would be a complete flip-flop from what Apple really is trying to accomplish.
lukec@extricity.com
Apple gets most of its money from hardware sales. The attraction of software development is hig profit margins. But there's nothing stopping Apple from developing and selling its own software to run on OSX: AppleWorks, iMovie, iMusic, Final Cut Pro-
There would undoubtedly be a short-term loss. This is all about the long term.....
The core of the OS is already OpenSource. Darwin ever heard of it, a BSD/POSIX compliant foundation.
BTW, If we want Apple to survive and for ourselves not become like Amiga, and Atari users, they have to make money somewhere other than hardware. After all Apple like most companies is realizing hardware sales are only part of the money equation.
You're thinking short-term here. Look at how Apple is performing now. No matter how well Steve Jobs does in his turnaround, nothing's going to change the fact that the Mac is a niche market. This move can potentially upset everything!
Look at Apple's image in the outside world. It's honestly not as much about the OS as it is about their hardware! One guy talks about everybody running to the cheap beige boxes. I think a lot of people would choose the Mac hardware over the PC hardware out there. And for the guy who thinks there would just be a cheap copy of OS X out there, remember: that's for the hackers of the world. The majority of users would pay money to buy the top-of-the-line, stable software...from Apple.
You should go to the site and read what they say. There's a lot of information there.
isn't the core of X, Darwin open source?
There would be no refinement nor overall quality of assurance if it was made open source. Look at some of the linux, Just take a look at KDE, GNOME, Enlightenment, no refinement whatsover, doesn't follow most user interface guidelines. There is no incentive in open source, money talks. I'm sorry to say but making things proprietary (sometimes) is for the better. Open sourcing an encryption algorithm is helpful to increase security, but open sourcing an operating system for the joe consumer (keyword: joe consumer, not unix admin) won't work, simply because most of the contributors will do hack jobs. Some would argue that Apple makes most of the money on hardware, open sourcing the os won't hurt them, but it will, people buy macs because of the integration of hardware and software. Management of open source is difficult too. Enuff said.
-Jaffer
I appreciate the recognition of the power of open-source development, but I think there are plenty of alternative scenarios when you take the idea forward. One scenario is that, with Intel machines dominating, the open source community concentrates on on developing MacOS X for Intel, and Apple Hardware users have to make do with older versions or less features.
Personally, I think Apple should consider open sourcing more of the core OS above Darwin, but they're not daft, and I'm sure they've been considering it for a long time.
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Are you NUTS?!?!?!
OS X is Apples money pot! IF they open source it, then people will have absolutely no reason to by a mac! The whole point of OS X is to make money for Apple. I can understand pointing it to Intel then they can get licensing fees, but to open source the OS which is supposed to increase the sales of their Hardware would be the most stupid Apple could make. Remember how they screwed up the Licensing of OS 7.x? This would kill our lovely Apple.