Jun 99 Online
Volume Number: 15
Issue Number: 6
Column Tag: MacTech Online
by Jeff Clites, online@mactech.com
Apple surprised everyone when they announced the Darwin project, exposing the core
of their new operating systems for all to see and hack. It is a bold strategy, to try to
latch onto some of the momentum that is the Linux phenomenon. From where I sit, I see
three possible outcomes: Darwin could form a bridge to lure programmers from the
open-source community into the Mac fold; it could introduce traditional Mac
programmers to the larger, traditionally Unix-based open-source arena (same
bridge, opposite direction of travel); or it could flop. It's too soon to tell which
scenario will play out. Up until now, the Mac community has not been heavily involved
in open-source projects, with a few notable exceptions. (In fact, the only similar
Mac-based community project that I know of is FilterTop, and most people probably
have never even heard of it.) I suspect that this is more a logistical mismatch
stemming from underlying design issues than a fundamental reflection of the cultures
involved. Most open-source projects have originated in the Unix world, and Unix
applications tend to either lack a GUI, being command-line and text-configuration-file
based, or they have a UI based on X Windows. In either case it would take a considerable
amount of work to make such applications truly Mac-like, and new versions of the
core application would have to be re-ported with each release. The open-source
projects which have successfully been brought to the Mac have all surmounted these
potential problems in some way: Linux runs on PowerPC hardware, but since it is an
entire operating system it isn't subjects to the expectation of a Mac-like design;
Mozilla grew out of a product which was cross-platform before it was open-source,
and its design reflects this; and Perl, Python, and Tcl, the major scripting languages,
all have Macintosh versions, but as programming languages are inherently text-based
there is not a fundamental design mismatch between platforms.
Now that Darwin has arrived and Apple's operating systems are BSD-compatible,
Macintosh users are going to have an easier time participating in open development
projects, or in simply using the software that these projects have already developed.
Last month we explored resources to help Macintosh developers learn more about the
Unix world in general. This month we are going to investigate the open-source
phenomenon, with the hopes of helping Macintosh developers figure out where they fit
in the larger scheme.
http://www.publicsource.apple.com/
FilterTop
http://www.topsoft.org/Projects/FilterTop/Index.html
The Open-Source Movement
The open-source movement is definitely a movement, complete with its own
interesting characters, terminology, and culture. The most influential piece of writing
within this community is "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", written by Eric Raymond,
one of the leaders of the movement and the man who started the Open Source Initiative
which has actually trademarked the term "open source". You can read about the
requirements that a software license must meet in order for it to qualify as open
source, and the rationale behind them, at the Open Source Page. Another piece of
required reading is Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, a book
recently made freely available in electronic form by its publisher, O'Reilly and
Associates. Another site not to be missed is the home of the GNU Project and the Free
Software Foundation, lead by the other most vocal figure of the open-source
movement, Richard Stallman. This is also where you can read about the GNU Public
License (GPL), probably the most common and most restrictive open-source license.
Finally, you can read more about the history and economics of the open-source
movement in the online version of Tim O'Reilly's article "The Open-Source
Revolution", originally published in Esther Dyson's expensive Release 1.0 newsletter.
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/
The Open Source Page
http://opensource.org/
Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/toc.html
GNU's Not Unix! - the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation
(FSF)
http://www.fsf.org/
Release 1.0 - The Open-Source Revolution
http://www.edventure.com/release1/1198.html
When you are done with these, check out the other links available from the MacTech
Online web pages at http://www.mactech.com/online/, and stay tuned for next month,
when we'll investigate some open-source projects which could benefit from the
involvement of the Macintosh community.