Posted on 10/05/2002 3:22:29 AM PDT by MadIvan
That pretty much all of the cool stuff in "Linux" has nothing to do with Linux. Python is a very cool Linux scripting language. I run it in OSX all the time.....
ROFL
HELLO?!?
That's not possible, when everyone has the SOURCE CODE.
Egad.
You've summarized Apple's attitude towards customers perfectly.
There is a reason why they are undocumented, APPLE DOES NOT WANT PEOPLE USING THEM!
And there is why I can never go back to proprietary, closed-source software. I want control over my computer.
So use assembly and be done with it if you really want control over your computer. I for one am happy with the documented APIs they provide. They are consistent and stable. Apple doesn't want people to use the undocumented APIs because they want developers to maintain binary compatability between different versions of OSX. If the APIs were mature and/or safe enough to facilitate that, they would be public. I'm a OSX user and have no problem with them not disclosing certain APIs if they feel they're not things I should be playing with. They aren't Microsoft. They aren't hiding parts of core APIs to maintain a competitive advantage. They are doing so so that joe blow hacker can't write a mod that a bunch of idiot users will install incorrectly that will trash Quartz and Aqua or something like that. OSX's core is open. If you want to see how Darwin works, go to Apple's site and download the source. If you want to see how their supported APIs work, go to their website and download the developer documentation. Anything else, go to fink.sourceforge.net. Apple has been open sourcing stuff like Rendezvouz so keep an open mind.
Ummm, hate to break it to you, but Linus and the other core maintainers can break whatever the f$%^ they feel like breaking in the official distribution. If Linus changes parts of the kernel that control how to interact with device drivers and you didn't strictly stick with the offical driver APIs your drivers may be broken. Why? You strayed out of the safety zone of the official kernel driver APIs into unsupported territory that can change at the team's discretion. When you dig deep for hacks like what these OSX hackers are trying you often end up using code that was never intended for anyone other than the development team to use. There is no difference between OSS and closed source here.
They're the same thing, only less successful.
I've been through the proprietary ringer. Don't wanna go back there, and now, thanks to GNU and Linux, I don't have to.
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