Matthew Garrett: How-To Drive Developers From OS X To Linux

[Anarchy]

my 2c.

Apple hardware is preferable because of three simple reasons:

1. Excellent hardware and driver support, a.k.a., it just works.
2. Macs are a status symbol. They're shiny and sexy machines, and everybody wants one.
3. When you consider price/performance/quality the only real choice is Apple hardware. The other OEMs are seriously struggling to release hardware of equivalent quality.

So, if you buy a Mac you know that it'll work as prescribed. There is absolutely no need to worry about bugs, missing features, compatibility problems, or anything like that.

There are downsides to having Apple hardware as well. macports/homebrew/fink/appstore/etc. are second rate at best when compared to what we have in Linux. Homebrew is for children. Macports downloads the source files and proceeds with compilation, although, if it's your day you might find that the package has prebuilt binaries. fink is badly supported and misses a lot of software. Other times you need to download software by yourself from somewhere on the net and handle the updates yourself (Windows anyone?). Then it's the app store, where even the most stupid app can cost a fortune.

You might have other problems if you need to run a lot of software that works on x.org, in which case you're totally fucked, if you have one of those new retina macbooks. Some of my colleagues run such software and what they get is just shit. Eye watering total garbage.

Finally, if you don't like the default apps then you're out of luck. Or if you have non-Apple phone or tablet (this might not be as bad as it was during the reign of Jobs). Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention the rudimentary windows manager that doesn't even have "Always on top" option. If you want that sexy aerosnap from Windows you need to buy an app that costs only 10 Euros. People also complain that Linux has bad multimonitor support, but OSX isn't really better in that respect. It also suffers from the same craps as Linux.

However, all of these problems are never encountered by most of the people buying and using Macs, and if you're a developer then Apple doesn't really care about you. If you want "Always on top" I'm sure you can dig up something in an obscure configuration file somewhere and do it yourself. Apple will never support that because it confuses most of its userbase.

[zortuga]

another 2 cents...

I have a MBP on-order right now.

The reason why is the hardware. (I plan on casing it with a skin that covers the Apple logo. Who needs that?)
I can (and shall) multiboot OS X, Windows, and Linux. The power is top-notch among professional-grade laptops. Battery life is unparalleled. It's also light, and thin, making portable use much more convenient.

It's replacing a 2 year old "perfectly fine" Dell Inspiron. (yes, I know, apples-to-oranges, because the Inspiron is more of a consumer-model). The Dell is pretty much a battleship, in comparison. By weight, and thickness. It's also a pretty fast machine, but was equipped with platters rather than SSDs. Battery life with Ubuntu 13.04 was an hour, if I was lucky. (this situation improved dramatically with 14.04; now I get about 2.5 hours). The UEFI is flaky as hell on this thing, and the built-in optical drive broke after about 3 months. (as-in; decided that about 95% of disks were unreadable). I can't get this thing to boot off a USB flash drive for any reason now. It's a mystery. (yes, I've tried various BIOS/UEFI configurations). (also - Dell's BIOS-update process sucks rocks; really? I can only install it from Windows? don't even provide a DOS compatible loader? Die in a fire, Dell.)

And even without this issue, I can't ever get it to boot OS X. It beats the MBP out, in that it has 4 USB-3.0 ports. But the MBP has Thunderbolt; which helps with the external-storage situation. The Dell's screen resolution is 1080-lines, so that's nice, but still not up to Retina screen standards. The Dell really does have a delightful backlighted keyboard, that's much easier to type on than the MBP. (and I really do hate the MBP's trackpad). But those minuses are outweighed by the positives.

Other minuses about the MBP; un-upgradable ram. Internal battery.

But still, I think it's better hardware, and more versatile.

I've worked mostly on Windows in my career. IMO; Windows 7 with Cygwin does it all. But I am not that excited about using Windows 8, and find myself using Linux (either RedHat or Ubuntu) more and more. (Not to mention - holy CRAP does Windows take up a lot of disk-space!). OS X, as an OS, I find to be mainly a complete waste of time. But it, also, does everything I need. (just awkwardly). But really, I need to be able to develop on all three. Virtual machines help, but for some development, I need to be able to work on a native host.

[Cyber Killer]

Yes, I can see how Xorg and Wayland are closed source apps and give nothing back to the community. Oh, wait ...

I see you mastered reading & understanding at pro skill level there... not ;-P

What I meant: While there are a lot of FLOSS projects that use permissive licensed code, the leechers are people who take BSD/LGPL/etc code and use it in proprietary apps (e.g. nearly every commercial software company). GPL makes sure the code stays free forever.

[zanny]

I see you mastered reading & understanding at pro skill level there... not ;-P

What I meant: While there are a lot of FLOSS projects that use permissive licensed code, the leechers are people who take BSD/LGPL/etc code and use it in proprietary apps (e.g. nearly every commercial software company). GPL makes sure the code stays free forever.

Unless they modify it and don't distribute it, such as through web apps. They can use GPL parts on web servers an as long as you aren't directly linking against GPL code with the user-facing stuff, you can do whatever you want and never contribute back.

Though leechers use GPL code in the same way all the time - you run your servers on Linux, with free software http servers, free software encryption libraries, and make all kinds of money off of it, and very rarely contribute back. That code enables trillions in revenue every year by not making every business either sell their soul to a proprietary black box solution or by reinventing the infrastructure themselves. All the GPL is doing is guaranteeing that there will never be a situation where the software you write will be given to someone in a form where they lose their software freedoms. If you want to avoid server side modification in that way, you need the AGPL.

[Vim_User]

I see you mastered reading & understanding at pro skill level there... not ;-P

What I meant: While there are a lot of FLOSS projects that use permissive licensed code, the leechers are people who take BSD/LGPL/etc code and use it in proprietary apps (e.g. nearly every commercial software company). GPL makes sure the code stays free forever.

Really? So how many closed source projects have you reviewed to be able to make such a statement? And how many of them do use GPLed code behind their closed source walls? To those people it doesn't matter at all if code is GPL or not, if nobody outside can see it anyways. And when I see a statement like "GPL makes sure that code stays free forever.", how exactly do "the leechers" close BSD/LGPL code and make it proprietary? The code is still there, as far as I can tell.

[sandy.martel]

You clearly haven't been paying attention to marketshare statistics if you think that. It's honestly doubtful that Apple will even still be relevant in 10 years, ...

I feel like it's the 90s all over again :-)

[zanny]

Really? So how many closed source projects have you reviewed to be able to make such a statement? And how many of them do use GPLed code behind their closed source walls? To those people it doesn't matter at all if code is GPL or not, if nobody outside can see it anyways. And when I see a statement like "GPL makes sure that code stays free forever.", how exactly do "the leechers" close BSD/LGPL code and make it proprietary? The code is still there, as far as I can tell.

It is not there. With the GPL, it is a license violation to distribute modified GPL code - either by linkage or direct modification - without source release. With the BSD / MIT licenses, you can take anyone elses code, do whatever you want to it, make as much money off of it as you want by denying user freedoms, and never bat an eyelash at the source.

MIT and BSD code is effectively slave labor. Hell, I'd say it is the epitome of everything wrong with free culture to let those who do not participate and try to abuse artificial government rights for profit to take your work and profit off it without any reciprocation from them back to you.

Because even when individual developers say "I really don't care if they simultaneously use my productive labor for profit, never mention my name or give anything back to the community, and deny the users of my labor their software freedoms, just as long as people are using the code I write" is writing off software engineers as a non-scarce resource. As if they aren't real people who have real commitments. It damages fundamentally the ability for free software to self sustain itself because it grants a cart blanche license for the non-free industry to exploit it.

And it can be obvious if someone is using modified GPL code in some proprietary software through assembler analysis. If you compare similar binaries of both sources and see significant overlap that would be reasonable grounds to have the source of the project subpoenaed to see if it is really license violation.

[Vim_User]

It is not there. With the GPL, it is a license violation to distribute modified GPL code - either by linkage or direct modification - without source release. With the BSD / MIT licenses, you can take anyone elses code, do whatever you want to it, make as much money off of it as you want by denying user freedoms, and never bat an eyelash at the source.

How funny, I can do exactly the same with GPL licensed code and bat an eyelash about it, as long as nobody reveals that I have used GPLed code. Pretty easy with NDAs and stuff.

MIT and BSD code is effectively slave labor. Hell, I'd say it is the epitome of everything wrong with free culture to let those who do not participate and try to abuse artificial government rights for profit to take your work and profit off it without any reciprocation from them back to you.

Because even when individual developers say "I really don't care if they simultaneously use my productive labor for profit, never mention my name or give anything back to the community, and deny the users of my labor their software freedoms, just as long as people are using the code I write" is writing off software engineers as a non-scarce resource. As if they aren't real people who have real commitments. It damages fundamentally the ability for free software to self sustain itself because it grants a cart blanche license for the non-free industry to exploit it.

The epitome of everything wrong with with the free culture is people who think that anyone should be forced to their specific definition of freedom, regardless if that is their own definition or not. Forced freedom is not freedom at all.

And it can be obvious if someone is using modified GPL code in some proprietary software through assembler analysis. If you compare similar binaries of both sources and see significant overlap that would be reasonable grounds to have the source of the project subpoenaed to see if it is really license violation.

And I guess you have numbers on how often that already happened. And maybe you even freely spend your time to find a patch of maybe 20 lines of GPL code in a 100,000 lines closed source project due to analysis of the binary.

[bridgman]

How funny, I can do exactly the same with GPL licensed code and bat an eyelash about it, as long as nobody reveals that I have used GPLed code. Pretty easy with NDAs and stuff.

Sure, but you can murder and rob people and not get caught, doesn't mean you're going to do it or even that it happens very often.

I don't know about other companies, but we work really hard to make sure that we do not violate GPL or other license terms.

[Luke]

More downsides to Apple

my 2c.

Apple hardware is preferable because of three simple reasons:

1. Excellent hardware and driver support, a.k.a., it just works.
2. Macs are a status symbol. They're shiny and sexy machines, and everybody wants one.
3. When you consider price/performance/quality the only real choice is Apple hardware. The other OEMs are seriously struggling to release hardware of equivalent quality.

So, if you buy a Mac you know that it'll work as prescribed. There is absolutely no need to worry about bugs, missing features, compatibility problems, or anything like that.

There are downsides to having Apple hardware as well. macports/homebrew/fink/appstore/etc. are second rate at best when compared to what we have in Linux. Homebrew is for children. Macports downloads the source files and proceeds with compilation, although, if it's your day you might find that the package has prebuilt binaries. fink is badly supported and misses a lot of software. Other times you need to download software by yourself from somewhere on the net and handle the updates yourself (Windows anyone?). Then it's the app store, where even the most stupid app can cost a fortune.

I would not own Apple hardware unless I found it in the dumpster. The main reason is Foxconn, whose moved their motherboard factory from Taiwan to mainland China for cheap labor. They are so abusive to their workers there that there have been persistant reports of worker suicides. Apple has traditionally used Foxconn motherboards. An iPhone factory in China reported similarily horrid conditions. Apple is now moving some production back to the US, but I suspect that will be assembly, not motherboard production.

Apple will probably be doing what many of us do when we "build" a computer: assembling parts built elsewhere. Making silicon dies and computer motherboards with hundreds of traces far exceeds my fab capabilities, I would not be surprised if this also is too much for Apple. Hell the original iPod was mostly three major off the shelf parts from what I hear.

I have actually built boards for analog hardware, prototype boards built entirely fron scratch and always optimized on the fly from a basic design. No two are ever alike. It can be delicate and demanding work, even at very large fab sizes they are vulnerable to solder bridges and other such defects. The fumes can be an issue, and until recently lead was the big issue in commercial work. Still is in prototyping, where non-lead solder can be much harder to work with in installing small discrete transistors that really don't like heat.

Now imagine mindlessly stuffing the same parts in the same holes 6 or 7 days a week for barely enough money to eat-and a huge pile of "debt" subtracted from your pay keeping you in bondage to your boss. That's the magic of Apple.