The future of open source at Apple

Apple has always been an open source-friendly company. In fact, as the company's website declares, it is "the first major computer company to make Open Source development a key part of its ongoing software strategy. From its Safari browser to its exceptional OS X operating system, Apple is open source to its core (pun unintended).

So, yes, Apple incorporates open-source projects into its products (which you can follow here). But its adoption of open source goes far beyond development. Apple is also an aggressive purchaser of open-source software. I'm familiar with several open-source companies that do business with Apple.

So, Apple contributes code and cash to the open-source community. While not transparent in many things (It's a tremendously secretive company), the company (to my biased eye) is clearly one of the "good guys" in open source.

The question I have, however, is what should come next for Apple and open source?

1. Widen its (open-source) developer network. Spend five minutes at any O'Reilly conference and you'll see that Macs are almost the majority. Why? Because they're cool, powerful machines that make great development platforms. (You're never far from a terminal command line.) While Apple will remain secretive about its product plans, it need not impose the same code of silence on third-party developers. With a few more open APIs the Mac and iPod/iPhone can be the platforms of choice for many open-source developers.


2. Invest in OpenOffice (NeoOffice). The only reason I was able to move to the Mac is because Microsoft ported its Office product to run on the Mac. As the Mac continues to gain market share, I suspect that Microsoft will grow increasingly uneasy about enabling a competitor, because more money is tied up in Windows + Office than Mac + Office. Apple therefore needs to have a credible alternative to Microsoft Office on the Mac, and iWork is not it. It has some nice bells and whistles, but it's just not up to Apple's standards.
   
   OpenOffice, on the other hand, is finally becoming a good product. I loathed it for many years, but I actually prefer it now for building presentations and I'm neutral on its spreadsheet program. With IBM working hard on the enterprise-y side of OpenOffice, Apple could round it out with some style. There's no point in reinventing the office productivity suite-wheel. It's time to effectively commoditize it and move on.


3. Invest in FireFox and stop "forking" the market with Safari. Don't get me wrong. I love Safari. I think it is, hands down, the best browser out there, mainly because it's elegant and very fast. But the browser is another area where a community effort is better than any single company's efforts.
   
   I resisted Firefox for a long time. But I finally capitulated because of this blog, of all things. CNET only supports FireFox for its blogging software. I've since skinned FireFox to look (almost) exactly like Safari, and have tricked it out with Adblock Plus, Video Downloader, Wesabe's plug-in, etc.
   
   Would I prefer Safari? Yes, but I'd prefer even more to have Apple contributing its Safari resources to improving FireFox. It could always distribute a specialized version (as Novell and Sun do with OpenOffice), but its efforts would be better directed toward a community.


4. Stop trying to lock down open-source development on the iPhone. There may well be good reasons for Apple doing this, including exclusivity clauses in its contract with AT&T (and the European carriers), but the future for Apple is not AT&T. It is the consumer and the developers who serve them. Try to convince me that AT&T wouldn't love to have its iPhones as the hottest development platform on the planet? Of course it would. It just doesn't know it yet.
   
   Apple needs ubiquity and community before it needs a few dollars from AT&T, because ubiquity and community will command dollars from AT&T and other carriers. Win the developer and her downstream users first and Apple wins all. Even Steve Ballmer knows that.

These are just a few suggestions among many. Net net: Apple can own the future, but it at some point it needs to open up (even further) to open source to get there. Apple arguably didn't need developers to make the iPod successful, because few people care about outside applications on a closed device like that. But the minute Apple touches computing (iPhone, Mac, etc.), a certain measure of transparency is critical to success.

Just ask Microsoft. It has billions of dollars that prove it.

[brad-x]

Open Source a requirement?

This article presupposes that Open Source software is a requirement for the <br />future progress of any company. <br /><br />The reality on the ground is, most open source projects are poorly managed, <br />are licensed in such a way that minimizes its profitable use in a product, and <br />is generally of lower quality than that which can be designed by <br />professionals.<br /><br />Yes, the core of Apple's operating system is Open Source, but it answers all <br />the above criteria: It's BSD largely licensed, it was first designed by AT&#38;T and <br />then by UC Berkeley, and is therefore of tremendously high quality. <br /><br />If any additional open source commitments are going to be made by Apple <br />they're going to be similarly exceptional. Firefox, while an exceptional <br />browser, needs Safari around to keep it honest. The Firefox browser has <br />become an increasingly large user of memory, and has slowed down with <br />each new release. <br /><br />OpenOffice / NeoOffice are a bit of a good bet, but not overall. If Apple were <br />to take pieces such as the Word import filters and expand on these, that <br />would be great. But again, these are licensed in such a way that they can't be <br />profitably integrated into products like iWork.<br /><br />On the iPhone - hell yeah. The iPhone should remain modifiable, and AT&#38;T <br />needs to be educated on just how much it will benefit from this.

[dylan214u]

As Apple Grows

it appears to be a company that is more and more trying to squeeze too many <br />profits out of the small things. One example is things like ringtones. Makes no <br />difference to me, but I think it appears kinda petty from where I look at it. Don't <br />sweat the small stuff. I agree with your column that this is the time for them to <br />think a little bigger about the next level and not to forget how they got here in <br />the first place. They must protect their core but in the same time give people <br />some freedom in some things outside Apple or they will become more and more <br />like the guys in Redmond.

[ThaiDiamond]

Camino, Mozilla's Mac "Gecko" browser

As to "open source" browsers, why Firefox over Camino?<br /><br />Camino, like FireFox, is also based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine but is specifically designed for the Mac OS X operating system in that it uses Mac-native Cocoa APIs.<br /><br />It is reputed to be faster (on a Mac) than either Safari or FF1<br /><br />According to Wikipedi's entry on Camino:<br /><br />"One of the major advantages of Camino over Firefox is the use of native Mac OS X widgets, instead of the XUL interface, which means that Camino blends in with other applications better. It is also faster than Firefox. <br /><br />Another advantage that Camino has over Firefox is in its bookmarks management. It allows tab groups to be 'auto-tabbed', providing the ability to open a group of tabs with a single click. Also, Camino provides a much more intuitive bookmarks management system similar to that of the Safari web browser (which in turn borrowed its bookmarks management system from the popular music jukebox iTunes). This has provided a familiar environment for users of Safari which comes as the standard browser in Mac OS X.<br /><br />Furthermore, Camino uses the Mac OS X built-in Keychain, which is preferable for many Mac users to Firefox's built-in key management."

[Papa Chango]

So no one wants to mention OpenDarwin?

At one point, OpenDarwin was the place to start your search for open source applications ported for the Mac.<br /><br />A company reknowned for its paranoia and anal retentive practices and secrecy never seemed the best fit for an open and collaborative model.<br />But Apple is a business first and open source is good for business so they are interested. So is IBM, whoopdeedoo.<br /><br />I think we are all aware of the sordid OpenDarwin story but for those who arent, here are a few words from long time Darwin/Apple open source developer Rob Braun:<br /><br /> With the release of Mac OS X for x86 processors, Apple has chosen to not release source to key components of the OS, such as the kernel and all drivers. This means Darwin/x86 is dead in the water; Darwin/ppc has many closed source components and is a deprecated architecture. One has to wonder why Apple even bothers to release non-GPL?d source at all, if it is unwilling to cooperate with external developers to increase their return on investment and accept external bug fixes and features. Even worse, one has to wonder why people would want to donate their time to such a fruitless and pointless cause.