Text 11022, 86 rader
Skriven 2006-05-20 15:54:22 av Mike '/m' (1:379/45)
  Kommentar till text 11019 av RobertB. (1:379/45)
Ärende: Re: Apple closes down Intel OS X kernel
===============================================
From: Mike '/m' <mike@barkto.com>


Do they mean closed-source instead of proprietary?

 /m

On Sat, 20 May 2006 15:21:54 -0400, "RobertB." <rb28@nyu.edu> wrote:

>Since when was OS X's kernel ever not proprietary?
>r.
>
>
>In article <446b717d$1@w3.nls.net>,
> "Rich Gauszka" <gauszka@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> they'd be better off selling os x with approved motherboards as I doubt they
>> can stop the pirates
>>
>> http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/05/17/78300_21OPcurve_1.html
>>
>> Thanks to pirates, or rather the fear of them, the Intel edition of Apple's
>> OS X is now a proprietary operating system.
>>
>> Mac developers and power users no longer have the freedom to alter, rebuild,
>> and replace the OS X kernel from source code. Stripped of openness, it no
>> longer possesses the quality that elevated Linux to its status as the second
>> most popular commercial OS.
>>
>> The Darwin open source Mach/Unix core shared by OS X Tiger client and OS X
>> Tiger Server remains completely open for PowerPC Macs. If you have a G3, G4,
>> or G5 Mac, you can hack your own Darwin kernel and use it to boot OS X. But
>> if you have an Intel-based Mac desktop or notebook, your kernel and device
>> drivers are inviolable. Apple still publishes the source code for OS X's
>> commands and utilities and laudably goes several extra miles by open
>> sourcing internally developed technologies such as QuickTime Streaming
>> Server and Bonjour zero-config networking. The source code required to build
>> a customized OS X kernel, however, is gone. Apple says that the state of an
>> OS X-compatible open source x86 Darwin kernel is "in flux."
>>
>> Apple has only shipped client systems, the users of which care least about
>> openness. Soon, though, Apple will break out Intel variants of the kinds of
>> machines that InfoWorld readers buy and on which I depend; namely, servers
>> and workstations. I hope that Apple's flux settles into a strategy that
>> favors demanding users and developers.
>>
>> Apple's retreat to a proprietary kernel means that all users must accept a
>> fixed level of performance. The default OS X kernels are built for broad
>> compatibility rather than breakneck speed and throughput. That doesn't
>> matter at present, because all Intel Macs are built on the same Core
>> Duo/Core Solo 32-bit architecture. But Apple's workstation and server will
>> be built using next-generation 64-bit x86 CPUs. The chipset, the bus, the
>> memory, almost everything about the high-end machines will be much advanced
>> over iMac and MacBook Pro. Intel's road map plots a rapid course to ever
>> higher performance. Macs will inherit the benefits of Core
>> Microarchitecture's
>> evolution, but OS X is limited in the degree to which it can exploit
>> specific new features without creating branch after branch of OS code to
>> handle each tweak to the architecture.
>>
>> Users in demanding fields such as biosciences or meteorology do hack OS
>> kernels to slim them down, alter the balance between throughput and
>> computing, and to open them to the resources of a massive grid. The
>> availability of Intel's top-shelf compilers, debuggers, libraries, and
>> profilers create unprecedented opportunities to optimize OS X for specific
>> applications.
>>
>> Even if I don't need to hack the kernel, knowing that I can affords me a
>> level of self-sufficiency and insulation from vendors' whims that fixed
>> system software, such as Windows', does not.
>>
>> Apple is in the unique position of losing hardware sales to software
>> pirates. It faces the risk of cloned Macs being distributed in foreign
>> markets where intellectual property protection is weak. I empathize. But
>> there are ways to address the piracy issue without stripping the critical
>> and defining quality of openness from OS X. That's a subject addressed in my
>> Enterprise Mac blog.
>>
>> I hope it's discussed at Apple so that OS X's openness can be pulled from
>> its state of flux and restored to the state that OS X's most demanding users
>> expect and deserve.
>>
>>

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