albertlee Posted July 8, 2004 Share Posted July 8, 2004 Most open source softwares are designed under Linux/Unix system... and some of them are being compiledin on Windows so it makes it compatible with..... but it is only the majority of Linux/Unix users using the Open Source softwares in tendancy, that even the OS itself is open.... What I want to ask is: Is there a tendancy that Mancintosh uses Open Source softwares, and any thing on Open Source development? Albert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
admiral_ju00 Posted July 8, 2004 Share Posted July 8, 2004 Well, Microsoft likes to keep their source code to themselves and if by god you want access to it, they will charge you an arm and a leg(quite litteraly) or simply tell you to buzz off. Macs are completely proprietary so no on this as well. Unix w/ the exception of FreeBSD(Darwin) is not open source. Linux is 101% open source, well there are some commercial apps(they have to be purchased as opposed to downloaded, etc) that are not open source under Linux, but still the great majority of it is open source. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertlee Posted July 8, 2004 Author Share Posted July 8, 2004 Well, admiral,... the below link might explain my question better: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/wlg/4364 My computer of choice is a Macintosh with Mac OS X v. 10.3, Panther, loaded with Apple applications. At first sight, some users may think that it is as proprietary as you can get. But if you look closer you will see that I also use OpenOffice, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Firebird, Camino, KOffice, Chatzilla... and that all of this sits on a standards-based, open source operating system ! Why ? Because I think that open source truly shines when it can be combined with proprietary solutions, in an elegant way. and Let's take a few examples ! Darwin, a fully open source operating system, is the foundation of Mac OS X, the world's most advanced operating system. Mac OS X server leverages many open source technologies and allows many users who would not know what to do with the raw project files to use them. Best of all, Safari is the result of a true collaboration between Apple and the KHTML team. and above are the motives of my question...... So, admiral or any one has furthur explanation instead of that mac is proprietary? Albert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sayonara Posted July 8, 2004 Share Posted July 8, 2004 Be careful of articles written by zealots - it's not going to be very helpful for the average user. I would not call what this guy is doing a "tendency" for most Mac users. He's probably had to hack up a lot of his programs to get them to work, or take part in Mac-supported projects through their developer community. If you want to know about Mac the best place to go is probably http://www.mac.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertlee Posted July 8, 2004 Author Share Posted July 8, 2004 Zealots? who's zealots? the author's name is not zealots, but is François Joseph de Kermadec Albert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sayonara Posted July 8, 2004 Share Posted July 8, 2004 A zealot is someone who furiously champions a single cause because they really really like it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertlee Posted July 8, 2004 Author Share Posted July 8, 2004 The site I went is sponsored by o'reilly, which should be quite neutral with the issues..... Any way, what I need is more a neutral explanation......according to my question, again, is there a tendancy of macintosh on Open Source aspects? and I think the issue I found might be correct, since no one here rejects it............. Albert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertlee Posted July 9, 2004 Author Share Posted July 9, 2004 ANybody? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
admiral_ju00 Posted July 9, 2004 Share Posted July 9, 2004 I'm no mac expert, heck, I'll never own one, but Post what you've got and maybe it'll go in the direction you want. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertlee Posted July 9, 2004 Author Share Posted July 9, 2004 Any way, admiral, I have bought a book called "oreilly mac osx for Unix geeks" and it has many things to do with open source........ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertlee Posted July 9, 2004 Author Share Posted July 9, 2004 and also, thx to you guys... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
5614 Posted July 9, 2004 Share Posted July 9, 2004 just a question going slightly off the topic, why are you soooo interested in Mac computers, you must really support them, even though most of the world support Microsoft.... why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertlee Posted July 9, 2004 Author Share Posted July 9, 2004 5614, I am not soooooo interested in Mac computers...... I just want to be neutral on the information given from the issue I found that Mac is the best OS that it is half open source and half proprietary................ and the issue also stated that big company like Microsoft is also needed in order to build a solution compatible with every vendors, and that is what open source cant do within the community, and that is the advantage of big company. (Although it means Bill Gates will make it proprietary, but that's what companies are doing for ;-)) So, that's why I think that Mac OS X has both Open Source and Proprietary parts that other OS do not have, which makes it so interesting to me!!!! More over, I am not any zealot for Macintosh.... Honestly, I've only trie Mac, but I dont own one..... Personally, I think I am not any people who are either the zealots of Mac or Microsoft, both of them think the opposed system sucks....and believe me, that's the majority. People dont like others who are different to them in mind..... and those are not the wise ones..... Any way, I dont think there is not any advantages nowadays using Windows, because all its advantage in the first place when it first comes out is of the hardware compabilities that Apple dont and Bill Gates makes it with GUI and using mouse so earlier than Unix and Linux.......... but now it seems still so popular, because ordinary people have formed a habit using Windows and does not want to change it...... And from Sayonara, Why do you think the issue is from zealots? I find it really quite neutral and scientific Albert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sayonara Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 You mean that article? It's not in any way objective. He's talking about his preferences, and loading the discussion to justify it (exaggerating the ease with which a Mac can be made to do X, and downplaying the favourable attributes of Linux). He points out that BSD, Linux etc have the same open-source software that he has got working on Mac, but offers no reason as to why anyone should shell out $2000 for new hardware and a new OS when they already have those progs running on their box. He uses false dilemma liberally (such as "if you want support with Mandrake, you have to pay $40", which is true as a flat fact but only if you are using the Mandrake "donate and get extras" community instead of one of the thousands of other support sites, so the point is moot). He says: Many of the PC users I know installed a Linux or BSD distribution on their machines, tried to use them and to set them up, only to go back to Windows a few weeks later. Why ? Because they ran into compatibility issues, because they didn't want to read books and post in mailing lists to learn how to use their new OS All that shows is that people are lazy. If you sell your PC and buy a Mac, you will be spending about $1400 (assuming you got a good price for your PC). That's quite an incentive to not give up learning about it, whreas a Windows -> *nix convert has the option of rolling back (or, more likely than not, changing bootloader sequence again) at any time. I don't know many people who have the option of dropping everything to learn a new OS, even if the OS they need to learn is more suited to the work they want to do with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuTze Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 exaggerating the ease with which a Mac can be made to do X)Which bit was that? It's very easy for a Mac to run X apps - just start the X server exactly as you do in Linux. Hello again btw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuTze Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 So' date=' admiral or any one has furthur [b']explanation instead of that mac is proprietary?[/b]Albert OS X itself is a bit of both. The kernel is called "Darwin", which is an open source project. It's developed by both Apple and OS programmers - see http://developer.apple.com/darwin. The graphical bits on top of it are mostly proprietory. There's the OS X desktop - "Aqua" which is all done by Apple. The programming API's (Which is where the Mac really shines) are half and half. The Cocoa foundation API is "sort of" open. It has it's roots in the original NeXTStep, and there is a project called OpenStep that tries to mirror the official Apple API. Cocoa AppKit (Which does all the fancy graphics bits) is proprietory. As far as application software goes, on a bog standard 10.3 install you get both. Apple supply Mail.app, Calendar, iPhoto, iMovie, Safari, iTunes and a few other bits and they're all Apple closed source software. You also get lots of standard GPL'ed utilities, such as tar, gzip, perl, apache et all, and it's very easy to get other Linux software working as Apple supply a nice opengl accelerated X server for you to use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sayonara Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 Which bit was that? It's very easy for a Mac to run X apps - just start the X server exactly as you do in Linux. Hello again btw. Finally, welcome back. I understand it's easy to do that under Mac, but for the reason you gave it's no more difficult to do it under Linux. I'm saying that "Mac can do the same things as Linux", on its own, probably wont make people want to rush out and buy a new (and in most cases, alien to them) system. Not that I have anything against Macs, as you know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuTze Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 I understand it's easy to do that under Mac, but for the reason you gave it's no more difficult to do it under LinuxI'd say it's a little easier. There's no XF86Config to muck about with for a start, so if I plug in a 3 button mouse i've got 3 buttons without the "Why isn't this bloody thing working! Argh ffs" bit. Having said that, if someone goes to the trouble of downloading X apps on OS X they probably already know how to make XFree (Or Xorg, i'm not keeping up with which X server distributions are deciding to use this week) behave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sayonara Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 I'd say it's a little[/i'] easier. There's no XF86Config to muck about with for a start, so if I plug in a 3 button mouse i've got 3 buttons without the "Why isn't this bloody thing working! Argh ffs" bit. I wonder why he didn't mention that? Having said that, if someone goes to the trouble of downloading X apps on OS X they probably already know how to make XFree (Or Xorg, i'm not keeping up with which X server distributions are deciding to use this week) behave. This basic concept of knowledge-dependency was exactly what first made me think "hang on a minute... this guy is sounding a bit like a zealot". It's all very well going around telling people how great and easy something is, but advising them on the prerequisites might be a nice caveat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertlee Posted July 10, 2004 Author Share Posted July 10, 2004 Yes, Linux/Unix can also do what ever on Mac,,,,,, but, the great thing I have thought about Mac is the proprietary bit...... That part is really what Linux lack!!! And more over, Mac's hardware, esp its CPU, is so much better than PC!!!! Albert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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