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Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

This is missing the point and focusing on the 1st paragraph of the article. 2nd paragraph:

> Yet, there are many curl users on the different Apple platforms and sometimes these users run into issues that are unique to those platforms and are challenging to address without direct access to such.

In other words, it's to Apple's own detriment if the author of curl doesn't have access to Apple hardware.

curl is offered for free, and the consequence of that is the author of curl is under no obligation to support Apple platforms or shell out money for Apple hardware.

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So change the license or stop supporting Apple OS's. Or ask them, or the community for a donation.

> Or ask them, or the community for a donation.

First sentence of the article: "A generous member of the wider curl community stepped up and donated an unused Mac mini m1 model to me to be used for curl development."

So where is the problem?

The problem is that you've taken legitimate criticism of a BigCo and turned it into some kind of superfluous unsolicited advice for the critic.

Why is it a "legitimate" criticism. That's just you opinion. Doesn't make it any more (or less) valid than the question I'm posing; why is the developer entitled to Apple providing hardware for testing? Do people purchase Macs purely for cURL - I doubt it. It's merely a convenient tool that is not encumbered by a GNU license. It sounds to me more like the typical outpourings of the oft-entitled developers. You develop software for MacOS, do you expect a free Mac? The cURL license permits the form of re-distribution that apple are employing, does it not? Are other hardware manufacturers expected to donate hardware? Does the developer have reference machines from Intel or AMD?

Edit - Looking at https://opencollective.com/curl, the project received $64,000 in donations, and the developer is employed, full-time, by a company to work on cURL. You'd have slightly more of a point if this were not the case, however as it stands it looks like a whine about Apple.

> That's just you opinion.

If you read the other comments on this submission, it's not just my opinion.

> Doesn't make it any more (or less) valid than the question I'm posing; why is the developer entitled to Apple providing hardware for testing?

That's the wrong question. The developer is not entitled to Apple hardware and never claimed to be entitled.

The issue is explained in my earlier comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34183736

To repeat myself:

In other words, it's to Apple's own detriment if the author of curl doesn't have access to Apple hardware.

curl is offered for free, and the consequence of that is the author of curl is under no obligation to support Apple platforms or shell out money for Apple hardware.

> You develop software for MacOS, do you expect a free Mac?

This is a straw man. Apple does not ship my software with macOS, unlike curl. Also, I make money selling Mac software, unlike curl.

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