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Comment by ezfe | Hacker News Reader

>I would not be motivated by using some closed source, walled garden product from a company with business practices I don't like.

Most of the Development flow (and even most of the non-dev flow) happens in Open Source areas:

- Safari - Apps you download, like VSCode - Command line tools

The areas that aren't open source (The Calendar app, file browser) can be replaced as you choose.

I won't tell you to use a Mac, I just want to make it clear that the areas a developer works in are open. And, for anyone worried about things like SIP, that has a fully functional off switch

Oh, and you can run Linux (albeit with some work-in-progress features) - I've done it myself.

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Safari and VSCode are not open source.

Most people who value freedom in software for practical reasons are motivated by having a way to fix or work around inconveniences, having a community and an active discussion on features, general composability and hackability of software, …

macOs (with all respect to their UI achievements) gives you none of that.

Safari isn't, you're correct - but WebKit is. And Safari does fall into the category of things that can be fully replaced.

That's a bit of a ridiculous argument. Xcode is not only closed source, it is required for publishing to the App Store. You can't modify the hardware or the software. It's a virtual prison.

> You can't modify the hardware or the software.

It’s a tool to get a job done - I don’t need to modify it.

I don’t know what kind of tool users you hang around, but there isn’t a profession that doesn’t modify or customize their tools (through making jigs, combining pieces from different toolkits, outright rebuilding, making your own tools, …).

That’s the great thing about software - it’s already able to do whatever I need.

Note that the argument you've called ridiculous is a response to someone who does not want a

> closed source, walled garden product from a company with business practices I don't like

Such a person probably won't be using Xcode, nor has any plans of publishing to the App Store, so Xcode being closed-source isn't a factor at all here.

It's the main factor for a developer, actually. We're talking about Apple so it makes sense to discuss their products. It doesn't make sense to talk about Microsoft products.

Well, Xcode only needs to be used if you're publishing to the App Store, which you wouldn't do with a linux machine anyways so that's a moot point when comparing them...

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