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Apple Open Source: The NYT text.
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March 17, 1999
Apple Adopts 'Open Source' for Its Server Computers
By JOHN MARKOFF
UPERTINO, Calif -- The "open source" software
movement won a vote of
confidence Tuesday from yet another major
computer maker as Apple Computer
released an open source operating system for the
server computers that connect desktop
and laptop machines across a business or to the
Internet.
The company said its Mac OS X Server would position
Apple to compete in the hot
market for small servers priced below $5,000, a
market now dominated by Compaq
Computer, Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard, Sun
Microsystems and I.B.M.
But just as significant as the product itself is
Apple's adoption of the
open source strategy, which means that it is
releasing its source
code, the original instructions written by the
programmers who
created it. Apple has dubbed the software for this
Darwin.
With traditional software models, once the original
code has been
compiled into an executable program, it is difficult
and illegal to
reconstruct the lines of instructions written by the
programmers. In
most cases, companies that make operating systems
jealously
protect these instructions as trade secrets, giving
outside developers
only enough information to enable them to write
their own software.
The open source movement has been gathering momentum
in corporate markets for
several reasons. In addition to being easy to adapt
and modify, it has developed a
reputation for being more stable than traditional
software because a growing community
of programmers -- many of whom are developers -- are
continually fixing flaws they
find.
And paradoxically, open source has developed a
reputation for being more secure than
commercial software because it can be examined for
loopholes by independent
programmers.
The open source movement has been spurred by the
widespread and growing adoption of
Linux, an open source operating system developed
over the last decade in a collaboration
by a worldwide group of programmers. For the most
part, the open source movement has
concentrated on software that runs on server
computers, not on desktop computers, a
market dominated by Microsoft.
Like Linux, Darwin is one type of Unix, an operating
system invented at AT&T's Bell
Laboratories in the late 1960's. Other versions of
the Unix operating system include
Sun's Solaris and I.B.M.'s AIX.
Speaking to reporters, analysts and employees in a
small auditorium on the company's
corporate campus here, Apple's interim chief
executive, Steven P. Jobs, said that Apple
was stepping into the corporate server market
cautiously and with modest ambitions.
"We're going to start by walking, and then later
this year we'll be jogging, and by next
year we'll be running," Jobs said. Alluding to the
introduction last year of its most
popular computer of the decade, he added, "Our heads
are not so swollen by the success
of the iMac, that we don't realize that we have a
lot to learn."
The $499 Mac OS X Server software
-- which inclues the
components that make up Darwin,
as well as several other
elements -- will not run
Macintosh applications but will
serve as a platform for server
programs that coordinate the
sharing of centralized data in
work groups and distribute
World Wide Web pages. The company
also announced that
it was bundling the software with
its fastest Macintosh G3
desktop computer, and selling the
system for $4,999.
Jobs cited Internet performance
benchmarks suggesting
that the system was a more
powerful Web server than
similarly configured systems from
Dell and Sun.
The open source software package, or Darwin, will
include the operating system's most
fundamental code, or "kernel," known as Mach,
bundled with a set of services based on
the Berkeley Systems Design version of Unix, and a
version of one of the first and most
popular open source programs, the Apache Web server,
converted for the Mac.
The source code was placed on Apple's Web site today
for free downloading.
The shift in strategy for Apple, which has
traditionally protected its software under
proprietary licensing, was applauded by some of the
leading figures in the open source
movement, a number of whom sat in the front row
during the presentation by Jobs.
"The open source community is delighted about this
announcement," said Eric
Raymond, a programmer prominent in the development
of the movement, which sprang
from hacker culture.
The open source decision will also likely strengthen
Apple's hand in the educational
market in part because of pricing and because, in
the words of Gavin Eadie, the director
of the strategic technology group at the University
of Michigan, "With open source we
can get in there and make our changes."
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