On Thu, 17 Jan 2008 at 01:21:31PM +0000, Alan Pope wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2008 at 12:29:47PM +0000, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
> > On Jan 17, 2008 10:27 AM, Stuart Matheson wrote:
> >
> > > What do people in the Linux community think of OS X anyway?
> >
> > Well, what does Apple give back to the Linux community?
> >
>
> Why should they give anything to the Linux community? They have the
> platform and the software that they need, what could they possibly
> want/need from us?
>
> Oh yeah, printer support.
>
> They bought CUPS :)
A web browser engine "web-kit" based on KDE's khtml. While they did
give the code back to the KDE team it was almost unusable and caused
a big stink - now fully resolved I believe.
Much of the userspace is GNU... not that most Apple users use the command
line, they are mostly point and click users.
Apple's job is to make money and they took what they could without having
to waste money giving back where there was no benefit or legal compulsion.
Companies are not charities, when they give things away it's enlightened
self interest rather than genuine altruism.
I don't begrudge Apple or anyone else from using open source software
as long as they do it legally. I believe it's in their interest to give
back to the community but it's not compulsory.
I'm not naive enough to believe that IBM bank roll the Linux kernel
out of the goodness of their heart - there is something in it for them...
--
Adam Trickett
Overton, HANTS, UK
Every test I write reveals a different bug I have to write
another test for.
-- Zeno's Paradox of Unit Testing
