Posts by Michael Homer
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That's enough to get them a bloody well done?
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I think the market advantage to buying it was in that linking exception they added*. The market advantage to hiring the developer was that he'd add what they wanted to it first, and he was already an expert on the code. Also, like Keir said, the test page now says "Apple Inc" on it. I guess that's advertising.
I don't really like seeing whole codebases bought up like that, but I don't think they did anything especially evil here. If I'd contributed something to it before I might be a little miffed about the new linking exception.
* I would like to know what that's used for, though; linking against system libraries is allowed by the GPL anyway. What else have they used that needs it?
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Apple can't pull the plug on HP any more than they can make you uninstall the software you've already got from the system you own. Which they can't (unless you're using an iPhone).
They also can't stop someone else forking the code and running with it, which is the point. There are a few issues with their buying up the code like that, but this isn't really one of them.
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CUPS, though "developed by Apple Inc" is a bit of a stretch, they've only had it for a few years. It hasn't done too badly over that time though.
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Including by Apple as a matter of fact, but see also IBM, MySQL, the FSF ... Should add I'm buggered if I know what IBM pays people to work on
Apple now owns CUPS, which they are still paying people to work on, along with WebKit, Darwin, launchd, and others (just counting the projects they administer). WebKit and launchd in particular they've been very good with, and CUPS is everywhere.
IBM has a whole bunch of Linux (the kernel) developers, and also a lot of people on OpenOffice, Apache, GCC, and Eclipse. Jonathan Corbet's talk at linux.conf.au last week had updated statistics on it all but the slides aren't online to check at the moment. The trend was towards more and more developers, though, and most of the code came from people with employer affiliations.
Apple, for all that I'm unlikely to buy anything from them in the near future, has improved a lot on the openness front over the last few years. Maybe they will get there eventually. They're a way off yet, with the iPhone or iPod or their computers or the new tablet. The processor in the thing really looks like it's a bigger deal when you see it in operation. Really remarkable, I'd like to see more from it.
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The problem with Apple's products is less that they're defective and more that the parts that work are designed to fuck you over. Apple is the king of the antifeature. Some people do find that an acceptable trade, and it's not necessarily because they're starry-eyed (though that happens too). It's still an undesirable position and not something that should be encouraged.
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The Crowd Goes Wild is far and away the best thing on at 7pm. That is not high praise.
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With all the attention given to the actual name here, what I'm wondering is how the TV networks were able to get away with airing clearly recognisable footage of him entering the courtroom. They blurred the face in the most token way, but not nearly enough for you not to be able to see who it was.
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The churches could also just set up affiliated organisations to carry out their actual charitable work. Those could register as charities on the same basis as anything else. In part they've already done that.
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Charting the turnout against the "yes" vote paints an interesting picture that suggests the "no" voters really were quite a bit more exercised about it all.