[UFO Chicago] Apple hires chief evangelist for FreeBSD

[Thomas]

Let me begin by saying that I'm a big fan of the Macintosh platform, and
most Mac software, but I am not very happy with Apple as an entity.  That's
my disclaimer...

Quoting Peter A. Peterson II:
> > So. The question to be answered is: Is Jordan Hubbard whoring himself
> > out to Corporate Interests? Or is he making a logical step that could
> > help to promote free software? Or is this promotion of free software
> > limited in the sense that it's free as long as you're using Apple
> > Hardware?

I won't go into his reasons since all I have to go by is the letter, but
Apple has made it clear that they don't want to port their system software
to other platforms... I can't say whether that means they want to run on
only Apple hardware, or only on the PPC.  I have heard of people porting
Darwin run on intel, but I haven't actually seen anything.

>
>> It's a hard question, but I'd start by saying that Apple's trying to
>> have the cake AND eat it by making Darwin open source, but afaik the GUI
>> is not. (Anyone know about that?) That's annoying, but possible with the
>> BSD license. (Can you say Microsoft TCP/IP Stack?)

No, the GUI isn't open, and Apple has actually cracked down on people who
have posted "schemes" that modify the look of the GUI (something that is
really p.ing a lot of Mac users off), though at the moment this MAY have
stopped or at least quieted down.
I have read from more than one trusted source that, in their opinion, the
GUI cannot even be created with the source code Apple has released.  I have
also read that the Darwin licence allows for Apple to make it closed at ANY
time for any reason.  I haven't read the licence, but as an OSX owner I
probably have a copy that I can post here if anyone wants to have a look.

>
> So I inherently distrust Apple hiring him, and i also inherently dislike
> the exploitable nature of the BSD license. I guess it remains to be seen
> whether Apple lets him continue (and he as the time/gumption to
> continue) working on FreeBSD. It'd be great if somehow his
> work/development could be coincidental -- he works on Apple's stuff, and
> they let him do his FreeBSD stuff, knowing that allowing him to do that
> is ultimately in their best interests.
>
I wonder who contacted who first?  Did they make him an offer he couldn't
refuse?
We'll just have to wait and see what comes out of it.

> I wonder what kind of IP contract he had to sign?
>
> pedro
>

Tom