[sqrt17]

> and they built it all on the back of open source.

That is exactly the point of permissive open source licenses. Freelancers and commercial companies can build stuff on top of it that makes them money and brings real benefits to paying users.

Windows, MacOS, and iOS/Android would all be stinking piles of hot garbage if it weren't for open source, but then again Linux or the *BSD operating systems wouldn't be where they are today without contributions from companies acting to make a profit.

[bb88]

> Windows, MacOS, and iOS/Android would all be stinking piles of hot garbage if it weren't for open source, but then again Linux or the *BSD operating systems wouldn't be where they are today without contributions from companies acting to make a profit.

The open source part doesn't change anything. Windows has so many hooks that 1984 (the book, not the year) is now a reality in 2020 with DLP software watching employees. Apple's walled garden is not there to encourage growth inside the walls but to extract profit from those that flourish inside of it. And linux is so fragmented because everyone has a great new idea which requires a new X where X is a UI, library, window manager, etc.

Interesting that back in 1980's the Apple II line was frankly pretty darn well open. Sure Apple had copyrights on the assembly, but if you looked at the magazines at the time there were lots of articles giving annotated disassembly of Apple's object code. And yet, Apple sold a bunch of computers anyway. Wow. Fucking genius.

Sure Apple is fighting the Good Fight with privacy (and I've yet to see that it's anything different than pure marketing). But I ask why should Apple need to market "privacy first" when they can just open up their software and show us directly? Let's start by open sourcing any telemetry they send back to the mothership. Is that reasonable perhaps?

[wizzwizz4]

Free software licenses permit this, too: you can build stuff on top of it that makes you money and brings real benefits to paying users. You just can't restrict their ability to do exactly what you did.

The Linux and *BSD communities wouldn't be where they are today without those contributions, no. But they would be somewhere else. Not as far down the road, but down a different road; who's to say that would've been worse?

[Guvante]

I don't know why you list the only major internally developed OS as if it is the same as the ones that were transformed from open source offerings.

Sure DOS was akin to open source and formed the basis of Windows way back when but the decades of development have left little left (except what exists to support backwards compatability)