[Gllug] Debian

[Nix]

On Mon, 20 Oct 2003, Mike Brodbelt mused:
> I'm for ever at a loss about why Apple gets so much credit. Their OS
> gets so past it that they're desperate for something new, so they nick
> BSD, get lots of GNU stuff running, then add a thin layer of
> proprietary, patent riddled technology to the mix, flog it, asking for
> more cash for every minor version upgrade, and proclaim to the world
> what wonderful Open Source contributors they are.

... because, in some areas at least, they are. There are some parts of
the free software world that Apple *really* cares about, because they
depend on those parts utterly (and their users complain if those parts
go wrong). The GNU toolchain, primarily GCC and binutils, are one such
part.

Numerous GCC maintainers work for Apple (Mike Stump, Stan Shebs, Dale
Johannsen, Matt Austern, many others), and numerous substantial
contributions have come from Apple and NeXT over the years, from
Objective C through precompiled header support. Currently a lot of the
speed-up-GCC effort is coming from there.

Sorry, you can't rubbish Apple on those grounds. The FSF's boycott of
Apple ended long ago; you're behind the times. :)

-- 
`If you want a vision of the future, it is a wireless broadband network
 feeding requests for foreign money-laundering assistance into a human
 temporal lobe, forever. With banner ads.' --- John M. Ford

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