Apple has a fairly decent Open Source history.
http://www.opensource.apple.com
There is things to complain about but there are more I am concerned with in regards to Open Source (Oracle).
EDIT: I don't like Apple's products or the way the conduct business BUT I think they have done more good for Open Source than bad.
Oracle is one of the major contributor to open source, see the lineup here, chances are you're using some of them: https://oss.oracle.com/ starts with Java
If you remove what they got from Sun, what reminds?
Ever heard of the fasted embedded database engine called Berkeley DB. Doesn't matter came from where, Sun or what ever is still being developed and contributed in the open source environment.
And the Java topic is not different altogether, it is disturbing to claim to be "open-source friendly" when you release an open-source implementation for the JVM but sue on the basis that the API is copyrighted.
What is off-topic it talking about Oracle at all in this thread ;-)
From Wikipedia:
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Oracle Corporation makes versions 2.0 and higher of Berkeley DB available under a dual license.[15] The sleepycat license license is a 2-clause BSD license with an additional copyleft clause similar to the GNU GPL version 2's Section 3, requiring source code of an application using Berkeley DB to be made available for a nominal fee.
As of Berkeley DB release 6.0, the Oracle Corporation has relicensed Berkeley DB under the GNU AGPL v3.[16]
As of July 2011, Oracle's list price for non-copyleft Berkeley DB licenses varies between 900 and 13,800 USD per processor.
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Initially I was partnering with Google, but now I side with Oracle's decision, as it is now proven how Google just pulled a Microsoft and fragmented the Java eco-system.
Now we are stuck with partial Java 7 assuming 4.4 devices, good luck using try-with resources in lower versions and no plan for future versions as of the Android Developers Fireside at Google IO 2014.
The Android team seems more interested in porting the whole Eclipse/Ant infrastructure, building more Google APIs or making Android run everywhere instead of improving the language support.
[0] http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/my_attitude_on_oracle...
I'm not sure that's a good enough reason so say that it's "ok" to claim that an API is copyrightable. The idea that I might have to ask someone permission just to make API-compatible alternate implementation seems ridiculous.
Actually:
> Just because Sun didn't have patent suits in our genetic code doesn't mean we didn't feel wronged
implies just the opposite.
The rest of your post has nothing to do with whether APIs should be copyrightable or not.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/26/2977858/former-sun-ceo-jon...
"Google totally slimed Sun. We were all really disturbed, even Jonathan: he just decided to put on a happy face and tried to turn lemons into lemonade, which annoyed a lot of folks at Sun."
MySQL as packaged by Oracle is quite literally a corpse. MariaDB is a reanimated corpse.
And such is the tale of an open-source product acquired by a multi-billion-dollar company who made those multiple billions of dollars entirely on selling a commercial product against which the open-source product competed. Competition-elimination-by-acquisition at its finest.
Looks like to me, like it is far from a corpse: https://github.com/MariaDB/server/commits/10.1
I agree with you on both PostgreSQL and MongoDB, but saying MariaDB is a corpse is ignorant at best.
Trust them to do the right thing at your peril.
Fucking no.
Effectively all of Oracle's "open source" things come from Sun Microsystems, upon which Oracle happily latched onto and sucked dry.
Oracle has what's called the "sidaM Touch". It's like the Midas Touch, but instead of gold, everything Oracle touches turns to shit:
Java -> shit (though maybe slightly less so now).
Solaris -> shit. OpenSolaris -> shit, now dead (thank the Lord for illumos).
OpenOffice -> shit.
GridEngine -> shit. Lustre -> almost became shit and died; would have if it weren't for the Oracle-side devs jumping ship.
NetBeans -> in the process of becoming shit.
MySQL -> shit (though it pretty much already was; somehow, though, Oracle managed to make that worse and prompt the existence of MariaDB); I realize this wasn't Sun's, but it's still an open-source project that Oracle assaulted, robbed, and left to die on the cold streets by the dock where Larry Ellison's (admittedly pretty badass) sailboat is docked.
OpenDS -> dead (though it was mercifully forked into OpenDJ).
Project Wonderland -> now limping around as "Open Wonderland" after Oracle forcibly amputated its leg.
By some miracle, the only things that haven't completely turned to shit or died (or both) yet are Virtualbox and SPARC (though OpenSPARC is effectively dead since Oracle didn't continue it).
As a result, MySQL is effectively dead outside of legacy deployments that haven't migrated to PostgreSQL, MariaDB, or one of the NoSQL monstrosities like MongoDB.
Even InnoDB was eventually forked; MariaDB and Percona both use XtraDB nowadays, probably because they didn't feel like being tied to something that - like every other open-source project Oracle has owned - would be fated to eventually wither and die.
Maybe I was thinking of InnoDB or BerkeleyDB or somesuch and just conflated them all together...
Like, I'm a pretty well-natured person in general and am happy to give even some of the most despicable companies the benefit of the doubt on occasion, but I seriously can't find a single reason to do so for Oracle. They're just that fucking irredeemable.
Use to be a System Librarian and had to run Oracle DB.
Issues:
1. OpenOffice gave it to Apache Foundation and not LibreOffice
2. MySQL is abandoned by many major users but we have MariaDB
3. Java suite against Google to make API Copyright-able
4. Oracle's White Paper stating that Open Source cost more and is less reliable.
5. Oracle Linux (Just a rip off of Red Hat)
6. KSplice bought by Oracle none of us gets to use re-bootless kernel patches with that technology since it has no development after it was bought 3 years ago. EDIT (FALSER: Was going off the top of my head) It is available to people who purchase support convert to Oracle Linux and they are making updates to legacy customers (Which is good to know)) corrected bellow.
I could go on about Oracle :)
So yes a bias against Oracle's Open Source stances and activities.
Disclaimer: I'm on the Ksplice team.
i can never forget the freetype hinting death trap... that thing persisted for too long, and was unreasonable to start with. i think i can forgive now that i have seen this. :)
EDIT: i take it back, i got the wrong end of the stick, it looks like they have open sourced important things, but actually its a list of nothing.
Not all is gold, but that's certainly more than "complying with copyright".
To me, this is like calling someone who occasionally eats a vegan diet a "Fairly decent Vegan". No, if you eat meat or cheese on a regular basis you're a terrible Vegan!
Just because Apple releases the source code as read-only doesn't really make them fairly decent with open source.
To me, if you're not willing to pull commits from outside your walled garden or allow external forks of your technologies, then you're terrible at open source. Sure, you technically checked off the very first checkbox ("make source available") but you stopped there. That's not a success, that's a stillborn effort...
Heck, when I look at the wikipedia entry for Open Source, the first line is: "In production and development, open source as a development model promotes a universal access via a free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone." Which I don't think Apple is really engaging with any of the OSS spirit on any level.
I mean is that what open source is now? As long as the source code is technically viewable, it's "open source software" now?
Nevertheless, they are doing so.
That's still significantly better than what a lot of big "open-source" companies do.
Not that I disagree with you. Just putting things into perspective.
His points are valid. Apple's business models are hostile towards open source software in most cases.