May 23, 2008 8:42 PM PDT
The Mac's allure for open-source developers
OStatic's Mike Gunderloy sifts among the rubble of an Ivan Krstić's One Laptop Per Child post to discover something truly interesting: Open-source developers are flocking to the Mac.
I switched to OS X and find it to be an overwhelmingly more enjoyable computing experience....The vast, near-total majority of computer users aren't programmers. Of the programmers, a vast, near-total majority don't dare in the Land o' Kernel tread. As one of the people who actually can hack my kernel to suit, I find that I don't miss the ability in the least. There, I said it. Hang me for treason.
Gunderloy then suggests that this preference for software that "just works" over software politics may be something that comes with age. Perhaps at some point we just want things to work. When we do, we move to the Mac.
Does this mean that the Mac will become ever more popular as we wither and die? Perhaps. :-)
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
If any other software/service providers are reading this, be careful about hiring OS X-based developers. I've found that many of them simply do not - for obvious reasons - grasp the importance of FOSS technologies *on the desktop.* One fundamental misunderstanding is, "it must first work, THEN we can deal with any licensing issues." In fact, with my business the rule is, "we have the talent, let's make it work on our own terms." I find it amusing that some OS X developers have a perfect grasp of server-based FOSS but let everything go when it comes to desktop development.
If you feel your business should head in a similar direction, watch out for these guys because they can become prima donnas really quick. To me it's just one of those little signs to keep an eye out for.
If any other software/service providers are reading this, be careful about hiring OS X-based developers. I've found that many of them simply do not - for obvious reasons - grasp the importance of FOSS technologies *on the desktop.* One fundamental misunderstanding is, "it must first work, THEN we can deal with any licensing issues." In fact, with my business the rule is, "we have the talent, let's make it work on our own terms." I find it amusing that some OS X developers have a perfect grasp of server-based FOSS but let everything go when it comes to desktop development.
If you feel your business should head in a similar direction, watch out for these guys because they can become prima donnas really quick. To me it's just one of those little signs to keep an eye out for.
- by penguiniator May 24, 2008 12:36 PM PDT
- "Perhaps at some point we just want things to work. When we do, we move to the Mac."
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- by bmarquis65_dotmac June 13, 2008 6:07 AM PDT
- The Mac is a fully certified Unix operating system with hundreds of open source applications, utilities, servers and languages like Samba, Apache, X11, Ghostscript, CUPS, bash, php, python, perl, ruby and more.
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(5 Comments)Meaning, I suppose, that when we are too lazy to configure the one-off component of our system that is not auto-configured by the install routine of our chosen distro that we are better off embracing the most proprietary of proprietary desktop operating systems? That certainly does not jive with my experience! I wonder, does the O with the slash through it in "The Open Road" mean "Not"?
Who are the "we" you are referring to in your post? If it is developers, it would be very interesting to know the names of some prominent free software developers you know of that prefer the ultra-proprietary Mac OS to anything free, and to hear them explain how they rationalize a preference for that system while advocating the use of free software to others.
If it is well-informed users you are referring to, it would be instructive to know why they prefer the Mac to GNOME, KDE or XFCE beyond the lazy "I don't want to deal with it" attitude. Again, specific examples would help support your assertion better.
Either way, you imply that using a free system requires the user to configure or fix problems and that using the Mac does not. I know a Mac user, and his experience is anything but trouble-free. He experiences daily system crashes while using Photoshop and has trouble burning data DVDs with valid filesystems readable on other platforms, often requiring him to recreate disks.
Still, he persists in believing that his OS provides a computing experience that is superior to that of other OSes. I'm not going to go so far as to say that Linux has no problems, or that there are not times when I don't want to deal with configuring or fixing a problem. But that laziness on my part has never tempted me to abandon it and to embrace a system that gives me the distinct feeling that I am operating under a very big thumb.
Maybe I just don't understand how that makes it the "most proprietary of proprietary desktop operating systems". Or perhaps you are just misinformed and are basing your assumptions about the Mac on an older release of the OS. There is a huge difference between OS X and it's predecessor OS 9.
Regarding your friend's issues, do you know what version of the OS he is running, or whether he has checked his hard drive lately? Does he have at least 512Mb of RAM. Regarding the DVD issues, perhaps he needs to purchase Titanium Toast.