23 Jun
2003
23 Jun
'03
11:43 a.m.
On Sunday, June 22, 2003, at 10:46 AM, Ivica Bukvic wrote:
Not a _specific_ OS. There are _many_ open-source OS's out there and
none of them have monopolistic agenda like Apple or M$. Nor do they use
the open-source community efforts to promote their own commercial
products.
It is important to note some of Apple's contributions to the open
source community besides darwin. Several compiler and debugger
engineers that I worked with at Cygnus Solutions before it was bought
by Red Hat now work at Apple. These people work full time on gcc and
gdb and all contributions go back to these projects. Optimizations and
improvements for the PPC architecture in gcc and gdb benefits Linux on
that platform as much as Apple. The html rendering engine of Apple's
Safari browser is based on Konquerer, and the improvements Apple made
are being contributed back to the project.
So where do you draw the line? Companies that don't contribute to open
source? Companies that sell anything proprietary (which would eliminate
Red Hat, check the licensing on some of their high end products). And
if you want to punish M$, nothing is more powerful than the GPL. That
license terrifies them.
The beauty of the GPL is that it is blind like justice. Free means
always and forever free.
Thomas