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Comment by NewAccnt | Hacker News Reader

HTML5 is not standard, certainly not open. Everyone abandoned WebKit for some unknown reason having to do with Apple. Please list these OSS Apps, I would love to know since Google and Wikpedia say nothing like that.

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>HTML5 is not standard, certainly not open

What, because some vendors take liberty with codec choices? HTML5, while not officially ratified as an RFC, has an agreed-upon standard version, and the implementations of it are far more standardized than HTML4 ever was. As for openness, it's a markup language, there's nothing that CANT be open about it. The only possible thing about html5 that isn't open is the popular choice of video codec, h264, in which case: whoop de doo.

Thanks for making my point for me.

Google does: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=apple+open+source&l=1

TextEdit and Chess are two.

And even more important - CUPS.

Yes, but they didn't create CUPS. Keeping it open source might have been a conditions of the purchase (citation needed :)

Perhaps you're right, I don't know, but for me it's irrelevant. Someone wanted examples of OSS from Apple, and in my opinion it's the most important one when I was a Linux User. I was not trying to defend Apple. I think they deserve a lot of criticism they receive, but that they also deserve some credit. This is also true for most (if not all) other firms that are often discussed here. Just wanted to highlight that rarely are things black or white, but that we rather deal with a lot of different shades of grey.

http://www.opensource.apple.com/

Crazy, huh?

I don't know if it's crazy, but I wouldn't say that site is the answer. Yes, it has the open source word all over it, but have you spent two minutes to look at the content? Most of the "relevant" stuff is just to comply with third party OSS licenses (read: non APSL projects).

Although not exactly the same, it looks to me more or less like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...

OSS is about community not just a website to release files (aka "code dump"). If you had pointed to http://www.webkit.org/ or http://www.cups.org/ ; well, that would be different.

EDIT: typos

You're thinking free software. Open source does not mean free. But you're right, open source without being free is pretty bad, as is locking your devices on your software and your own only, even for the purpose of making the experience "perfect".

Maybe not CUPS.

From http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/license.html

"CUPSTM is provided under the GNU General Public License ("GPL") and GNU Library General Public License ("LGPL"), Version 2, with exceptions for Apple operating systems and the OpenSSL toolkit."

I wonder why the OpenSSL toolkit needs an exemption.

OpenSSL's license imposes additional restrictions which are not compatible with the GPL. Thus, if you release code under the GPL but want to allow people to link it with OpenSSL, you need to provide an exception.

There's an article covering the topic with much more nuance at https://lwn.net/Articles/428111/

Thanks, I had originally thought it may have been some residual effect of the export embargo on crypto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_U...;

I'm going to have to do some more reading on this. I was particularly interested in the quote "the problem here is actually a former OpenSSL hacker who has no interest (and, in fact, a positive interest against) in changing the OpenSSL licensing". Sounds intriguing!

CUPS is developed by Apple and released as open source using the GPL (in fact, to contribute code you must sign a contributor agreement with Apple: http://www.cups.org/articles.php?L186+T+Q).

I'm not sure if I understand your comment.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS#History

"Michael Sweet, who owned Easy Software Products, started developing CUPS in 1997. The first public betas appeared in 1999.[3] The original design of CUPS used the LPD protocol, but due to limitations in LPD and vendor incompatibilities, the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) was chosen instead. CUPS was quickly adopted as the default printing system for several Linux distributions, including Red Hat Linux.[citation needed] In March 2002, Apple Inc. adopted CUPS as the printing system for Mac OS X 10.2.[4] In February 2007, Apple Inc. hired chief developer Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code"

CUPS is currently chiefly developed by Apple but, unlike many other commercially "owned" open-source projects, it has a license clause that exempts them from the license that applies to you and I.

I'm sure there are many other examples of this, I was originally pointing out that the licensing terms for WebKit and CUPS are not really that similar from Apple's perspective. From our perspective, yes, both GPL (well LGPL for WebKit)

Oh come on, even Microsoft has their "open source" website: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/openness/default.aspx

This is marketing bullshit directed at developers angry at all their surveillance, their walled gardens, their "you can't replace our OS" and so on.

You do realize that Apple's Open Source site has been around prior to "all their surveillance, their walled gardens?" Or are you trying to claim that Apple was creating PR for the eventual iPhone fallout back in 2001/2002?

http://www.opensource.apple.com/release/developer-tools-45/

This means that I can build the developer tools in, say, ubuntu, and/or that I can cross-compile to target iOS?

http://www.puredarwin.org/blockers#TOC-OpenDirectory-depends...

Good luck with that.

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