Powerbook Setup

[Dan MacMillan]

From: Paul Robinson
>
> ...
>
> You've just said it. Some people claim there is no brain drain, yet you
> yourself admit that there are people out there who USED to work on
> FreeBSD who no longer do so, because they're off playing with OS X. I
> don't have a real complaint with them, but shouldn't we be trying to
> stop this, or do we all just pack up now and just make 6.0 a link to
> Darwin and advise everybody to go out and but Apple gear instead?
> 
> Wouldn't it be nice if instead of accepting defeat we were able to find
> ways of funding those people who used to work on FreeBSD full time to
> come back? I'm not saying it can be done, I'm saying is that not better
> than just having a mass exodus to somebody else's OS?
> 
> ...
> 
> That's nice and everything, but what I meant was, is the biggest draw to
> Darwin over *BSD the MSDOSFS stuff? Is there anything else in there that
> is worth porting? I accept TrustedBSD, but I thought most of that was
> now done?

I doubt the differences between Darwin and FreeBSD are significant here.
If they were, you'd also be decrying OpenBSD, NetBSD, &c.  The thing that
really makes Mac OS X different from a machine running FreeBSD + X is the
proprietary Mac user interface.

You may not see it, but the Mac UI is compelling to a lot of people.  The
differences between the Mac UI and KDE are not superficial.  You can add a
theme (and a bunch of other stuff) to KDE that will make it look like the
Mac UI, but you can't add a theme that will make it =act= like the Mac UI.

Anyone could have written the Mac UI, including the open source community.
Apple are the people who =did= it.  Why didn't we write it?  Because we're
too busy adding things to KDE and Gnome.  And as has been stated thousands
of times in different fora, perfection is achieved not when there is
nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.  This
philosophical schism comprises the "different" in "Think Different".

We had the opportunity to create the Mac UI, but not the motive.  Why?
Because we're software developers and systems administrators, used to
several more layers of abstraction and indirection than your average
Joe.  Additionally, we have our own mythology based around the virtues
of complexity and difficulty.  "It ain't love if it don't hurt."  You
yourself are a case in point.  We take satisfaction from challenging
ourselves and solving difficult problems.  That means we spend all our
time on the edge cases.

Apple the corporation would be Microsoft if they could.  But you know
what?  Everyone would be Microsoft if they could, including us.  Apple,
unlike Microsoft, does make significant contributions to open source.
Apple, unlike Microsoft, is betting its business on open source.  So I
don't see how Apple is such a bad thing for open source.

-- 
Danny