Apple and Open Source

[Lynn Winebarger]

On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Darren Benham wrote:

> I'm amazed at the near total lack of trust in the Gnu developer community
> towards their fellow developer.  We have a long history of matching and

    It's not the developers I don't trust.  It's the management.  We have
no way of knowing what kind of politics are being played here, i.e. how
much of this arises from their developers thinking its a good idea, vs.
the management seeing it as a free work force.
    I don't expect Apple to go off the deep end in making its source code
open.  I'm sure their lawyers would be tearing their hair out if they did.
On the other hand, I've got better ways to spend my coding time than
contributing to works that can be yanked out of an open state.
   In other words, I'm impressed to see Apple take this step in the right
direction, and not surprised that the first step is somewhat timid in its
scope.  I'm sure someone had to have some guts to even propose the idea
(media blitz or no).  And if I were a Mac owner/user, I would be glad to
have the source code so that I could fix the inevitable bugs that
interfere with daily computing life.  But I have some doubts if I would
release my fixes, when Apple could co-opt them.  
   On the other hand, making modifications to a copy of a program you own
and distributing those modifications is legal with or without Apple's
permission.  But I'm not sure how that would be affected by the "license".

Lynn