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Apple Open Source (opensource.apple.com)
94 points by vijaydev on Feb 2, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 33 comments



I don't know why, but it's worth comparing it with ... http://code.google.com/ and http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/

I really can't put my finger on it, but the message from those pages kind of show what kind of companies they are ...

* Apple doesn't care much, but here, a clean design with links to resources

* Google is like ... hey, we're cool open-source people, come join

* Microsoft is like ... "we partner with open source-based businesses and communities", bla, bla, here's a list of news


Microsoft has to deal with governments and corporations. And the opensource page at http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/ is an answer to the question: "What is MS's policy towards opensource" and similar questions.

For developer's there's always http://www.codeplex.com and http://port25.technet.com/ which http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/ points to.


i would just like to mention the following (yes, i think google rocks, when i look at where google participates in open source):

http://code.google.com/soc/2005/

http://code.google.com/soc/2006/

http://code.google.com/soc/2007/

http://code.google.com/soc/2008/

if thats not enough, we can go ahead with open source OS (android, chromium, hired linux kernel devs), browsers (chrome, firefox participation), python, go language.. just out of my head of course ;)

on the other side we have companies that just try to conform to licenses.Atleast that's my impression. I am wondering how open source contribution from apple or MS would look like if there where no GPL but only BSD licensed software.. (now, i'll most probably be bashed for trolling, sorry.)


I am wondering how open source contribution from apple or MS would look like if there where no GPL but only BSD licensed software..

For Apple, probably the same. Most of their open source software is under the APSL, or (more frequently) BSD or Apache 2 licenses. I can't think of any (L)GPL'd project started by Apple.


Microsoft makes a majority of its F/OSS software as the MS-PL which is functionally equivalent to BSD licensed.


Fair enough. I deliberately avoided commenting on how it would look for Microsoft, since I'm not at all knowledgeable on Microsoft's open source policy.


I don't really get that idea from the code.google.com. It looks to me rather like microsoft, but with cleaner design. Both have the search bar at the top, navigation bar on left and news/announcements at the center and on the right. Neither of them looks very inviting to me (as someone who's just studying programming and not already involved in any open-source projects).

As for apple, I didn't actually have any idea what to do if I wanted info about open-source on mac.


Yeah, well, the navigation bar on the left has links to some of their open-source projects and their web APIs, and on the right you have links to a bunch of videos, and their news links are targeted at developers ... I couldn't even read the stuff on Microsoft's page because it's full of weasel-words.

Apple's page doesn't bother me much ... they have links to resources. They are efficient and don't pretend like they care :)


It's also fun to go to the iPhone's page:

Settings > General > About > Legal

Lost of licenses and attributions you might not otherwise expect!


This is not completely a new site, but good to know, so +1

also, consider having a look at http://www.macosforge.org/


Interesting that the Objective-C runtime has a VS solution file and Windows #ifs: http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/objc4/objc4-437.1/


They had to build iTunes and Safari for Windows somehow.


Objective-C has bee around for a long time, and certainly isn't just for Cocoa/Apple.


Objective-C only continued to exist past the 80s because of Apple/NeXT. And the closest thing it has to a formal definition is the source code to Apple's GCC fork.


I like how whoever checked in the code included their .suo file, which is the user options for the solution!


If the way iTunes runs on Windows is any indication, I have no desire to develop for it on Windows. iTunes does run fine on my iMac, so I'm sure Objective-C is a fine framework... just not sure about the Windows implementation.


FWIW, iTunes is written with C++/Carbon, not Objective-C.


btw, I still have YellowBox (WebObjects 4.51) installed on my machine. Haven't used it in a while, but still....


Is it possible to create an iphone app and put it on just your iphone (i.e. no distribution) using this software ?

Ofcourse I mean without jail-breaking the iphone or without enrolling in the iphone developer program.

Has anyone here tried this?


You will have to pay apple $99 a year to be able to provision for your phone. That same $99 will allow you to distribute through the App Store, and on up to 100 devices outside of the app store. Right now, you pay to provision on phones, even if you aren't interested in distribution.

It is possible to create the app and run it in a simulator using some of these tools.


Apple's open source page is as useful as having Tivo's open source code. If they won't let me code for the iphone on my pc then it's hardly useful or open.


Nice to see, but in my mind this is just "Oh hey look at all of the FOSS software we are using but not providing back to."

Sure they did do CUPS, but what else has apple given back to the open source community, besides another source mirror?


"Oh hey look at all of the FOSS software we are using but not providing back to."

This page is just a central place for Apple to publish the corresponding source code for all of their released software. Among other things, this is a simple way to comply with licenses that require source availability, like the GPL.

"What else has apple given back to the open source community..?"

They released all their work on WebKit (including a whole new JavaScript VM) since forking it from KHTML, and have also done a good job of managing it as a real open source project (i.e. accepting outside bug reports and contributions, and giving commit privileges to people outside of Apple).

They've also made major contributions to LLVM, and released Clang (their LLVM-based compiler for C/C++/ObjC).


"All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?"


They've done a few nice things (let's say the baths, but not much else), but their instincts are certainly not friendly towards openness. It's tactical cooperation, kind of like in the saturday morning cartoons where there's always one episode where the bad guy has to cooperate with the good guy for some reason, and it turns out they work well together, and the good guy suggests the bad guy give up his evil ways, but it of course never happens.


Don't forget: civil law; Roman alphabet; architectural discoveries (dome); Caesarean section (?).


Not to mention releasing Darwin, libdispatch (Grand Central), OpenCL, blocks, Bonjour, Calendar and Contacts Server, Darwin Streaming Server, launchd and XQuartz.


Recent stuff: Clang, Blocks (in llvm), libdispatch (Grand Central Dispatch services), OpenCL.

Of course WebKit.


You know you sound like you're trolling, right? Clang, MacRuby, launchd, WebKit - that's just off the top of my head.


Others have provided stuff they have done, so I'll point out that they didn't do CUPS. They started using it in Mac OS X 5 years after it started and 5 years after that hired the developer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS#History


Interesting. I really didn't know they had given most of this stuff back, besides webkit. Also didn't know that about CUPS, thanks.


Darwin, DTrace modifications, WebKit...


WebKit, MacRuby




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