[Brass]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Chuckit,

I know you want to play Apple fanboy and find a way to prove me wrong and defend Apple to the bitter end just for the sake of it, but I haven't the time nor the energy, especially since you don't seem to have the time and energy to read up on these cases to make an argument that addresses the real underlying issues.

I will say that Apple was slow on releasing kernel snapshots because, IIRC, they were afraid that people would figure out how to get the kernel to run on Intel hardware. As a compromise to this, I believe they stripped out their own kernel extension that monitors for OS X running on Mac hardware. This code may have originally not been a kernel extension at all, although I don't remember the details. Because kernel extensions do not run entirely independent of the kernel and need to be tested against the currently running kernel, this was a problem. Ditto for some user space programs.

Read up on all of this if you really want to continue this conversation... I'm assuming you are just looking for an argument though.

Speaking of reading up... you might want to read up on Apple's own published explanation for why they temporarily stopped releasing Darwin source code for a while. It actually makes some good sense. I'll leave finding it as an exercise to the reader.

[Brass]

Originally Posted by ink 

That's my point, though. Apple can't change the license without consent from all the copyright holders. Perhaps they have received indemnification from the hundreds of people who have submitted code to CUPS; who knows.

I think you missed the earlier point that Apple CAN change the license because ALL of the copyright holders sold out. Before Apple bought it, the copyright was ALL owned by one individual - he specifically retained the rights to all the code by NOT including code for which the developers did not sell the rights back to him. In this way he retained full rights to all the code, and nobody else had any rights to it. When Apple bought the code, they bought the full rights to all the code, with nobody else retaining any such rights.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Brass 

Speaking of reading up... you might want to read up on Apple's own published explanation for why they temporarily stopped releasing Darwin source code for a while. It actually makes some good sense. I'll leave finding it as an exercise to the reader.

I found these articles:

Intel OS X kernel no longer open
MacNN | Apple limits Darwin for x86 source code

I also found the Tom Yager article where he speculates (falsely) that Apple decided to go proprietary with their kernel. Of course, the Darwin source is available now, and yes some unavailability during the transition to Intel is understandable, but the fact that the source code was unavailable for a significant period time after the first Intel machines were made available was probably the source of frustration for some.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

For starters, here is your gap...

In order to develop a kernel extension, it is most likely that you will need to see the kernel source.

I'm not sure I necessarily agree. If your kext is relying on the implementation details of the kernel, this indicates either a bad kernel interface or an ill-advised design. In either case, deploying such a kext seems a bit dangerous, since any upgrade could cause a catastrophic system failure.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

You have not demonstrated that you really understand what is at the heart of some of the issues I have laid out, specifically this one, as well as quite likely not really knowing the grievances the KHTML team had with Apple. I'd have to research this myself to be precise about it, but there was more to it than some FOSS nuts sniveling, as you put it.

Here's a recap of the KHTML and WebKit "controversy". Basically, Apple made a fork, which by nature was different from the original. This meant that porting back to the original wasn't always easy. Then a bunch of people starting banging up a storm and trying to make it sound like Apple was somehow doing some sneaky, dastardly thing by forking an open-source project, when it fact it's something that happens all the ****ing time. It's an intended use of GPL code.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Apple was not really interested in being a courteous developer that works well with the existing developers, but simply a leech and a bully.

A leech and a bully? Are you joking? Does anybody piss and moan about all the people using Konquerer and not contributing any code at all? "Oh, those users, always leeching and bullying us!" Apple makes improvements to the code, publishes the source and submits patches to the original team. If the original team was unhappy with the quality of the patches, that's their right and they don't have to incorporate the changes from the WebCore fork. But honestly, it's no more reasonable to bash Apple for this than it is to hate the Beryl team for forking Compiz.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Which is?

The GPL requires people to release all their code, which isn't always practical and is sometimes illegal. Thus, GPL software is much worse at playing with others than anything Apple has written. Many BSD-style licenses require you to openly display a long credit for the code's author on any advertising, which can become quite unreasonable.