Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 22:51:13 +0200 From: Szilveszter Adam <sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> To: advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ZDNet columnist bashes Apple for using BSD Message-ID: <20010502225113.B24364@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> In-Reply-To: <200105022027.OAA27329@lariat.org>; from brett@lariat.org on Wed, May 02, 2001 at 02:27:39PM -0600 References: <200105022027.OAA27329@lariat.org>
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On Wed, May 02, 2001 at 02:27:39PM -0600, Brett Glass wrote: > At > > http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2714722,00.html > > ZDNet Linux columnist Even Leibowitz bashes Apple for not using > GPLed software as the basis for OS X. According to Leibowitz, > Apple is e-vile because it used open source code so as to > avoid re-writing the wheel.... Horrors! Folks here might > want to comment in the Talkback about this. Hello, Well, I am sorry but I have a different - more balanced - view of the matter. While it is untrue and simply a repetition of an old mantra that BSD style licensing means that authors want their code to be sucked up and given nothing back, and in fact Apple has contributed to FreeBSD code as we all know, the part about Apple keeping a very close tab on its core technologies is true. They will release the specs for their QuickTime format at exactly the same time as MS will do the same for Media Player or Real Networks for its streaming products (or when mp3 will actually be a real standard, since standards that require you to pay for copyright are not real ones, a standard is a rule that everybody is supposed to follow, but then it must be free. Just as say all kinds of original texts have copyright on them, but texts of legal rules are specifically exempt, they can never have copyrights attached.) While we may be the "We don't care" group, I think it is very important to stress that we actually are not indifferent. We accept proprietary software for as long as it is necessary but stand for open source. We cannot be indifferent in this, because BSD system software (or any other BSD licensed product) is useless if it is only for development work. If you are forced to switch to Windows to watch a simple movie, something is wrong. Also, while getting the software in binary format may be a stop-gap measure, I do not think encouraging binary-only drivers and programs is doing us good. We are becoming more and more dependent on undisclosed software and are forced to believe what the manufacturer says. This is not what OpenSource (no matter under what license) is about. After all, Windows programmers are forced to do the same... believe that MS's APIs work as advertised and do only what they allow them. I do not want BSD (or Linux for that matter) to become another Windows, just better. That's why open-sourcing Mozilla and OpenOffice were such great achivements... they could eradicate the last two pieces of closed-source software from my workstation. (OpenOffice isn't there yet, but Mozilla is already cool, I haven't started up Netscape up in a while now...) So even if QuickTime etc are Apple's "core products", we must always emphasize that we would like to have an OpenSource QuickTime player etc ASAP. -- Regards: Szilveszter ADAM Szeged University Szeged Hungary To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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