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APFS filesystem format

blog.cugu.eu

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Re: APFS filesystem format

#51

Post by tyingq »

gumby wrote: post #44
tyingq wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open sourcing Swift, though, probably benefits Apple more than it does the community. Sans the Apple UI, it doesn't create some opportunity to lose a sale or have Apple like consumer facing apps show up on some other platform. Apple apps already mostly rely on non-apple backend servers. Opening up iMessage or FaceTime would have been more of a statement. Either would allow interoperability on platforms they don't con…

> Open sourcing Swift, though, probably benefits Apple more than it does the community. As opposed to whom? Choosing an open source approach is a strategic decision, presumably to the benefit of the chooser. This was even true of Cygnus, the original Open Source business.

The context bubbles up to the post that said "Apple has a history of false promises when it comes to opening and documenting their protocols & data formats". That comment was down voted, but had me curious.

I was asking for examples of something they open sourced that would have exposed something like that, something more risky to the walled garden concept. I perhaps could have worded it better, but HN does seem to react to any questioning of Apple with a defensive posture.

Re: APFS filesystem format

#52

Post by zie »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #49
scarface74 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They never promised to open up iMessage. The story behind FaceTime is a little bit more complicated. Steve Jobs said he would open it up without asking the engineers and lawyers who were just as surprised as anyone else about his announcement. As far as Apple not open sourcing anything. https://opensource.apple.com They also published the full git commit history of Swift from the initial commit.

Apple's relationship with open source is pretty average. In the end, they use open source strategically. If there's no benefit to open-sourcing something, they won't. Clang, WebKit and Swift are "proper" open source projects, done in the open. But there aren't many of those. They have no open source apps, and most frameworks such as Cocoa, AppKit etc. are completely proprietary. Some of their open source efforts have…

They do have at least one open source application: https://www.cups.org/ it's fully open-source, and wholly owned by Apple, however they bought it, they didn't invent it.

Re: APFS filesystem format

#54

Post by asveikau »

CameronBanga wrote: post #33
tyingq wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open sourcing Swift, though, probably benefits Apple more than it does the community. Sans the Apple UI, it doesn't create some opportunity to lose a sale or have Apple like consumer facing apps show up on some other platform. Apple apps already mostly rely on non-apple backend servers. Opening up iMessage or FaceTime would have been more of a statement. Either would allow interoperability on platforms they don't con…

WebKit? Darwin? ResearchKit? Apple gets this bad rap for OSS, because of Google's good PR a few years back on how "Android was open." But it's not like Google has a better track record of supporting OSS when it comes to products that influence their bottom line. Adwords, Google Search, AdSense, Analytics, etc are not open source, and no one ever complains about that.

The comment you're replying to, and all the parents up to the root, like most comments here made no mention of Google. It was a discussion of Apple on its merits.

Why do we seem to tie our personal identities to corporate affiliations, to the point of bringing up corporate rivalries out of context and taking sides in them?

Re: APFS filesystem format

#55

Post by wolfgang42 »

For those who, like me, don't follow developments in this area closely:

APFS is Apple's new filesystem, intended to be used across all of their devices (Macs, iOS, watchOS, etc). For Macs, it will be replacing HFS+, a direct descendant of the Hierarchical Filing System which has been used since 1985. (The original Macintosh Filing System, from 1984, was suitable only for floppy disks; among other things, it was a flat filing system and didn't really support folders.) The main improvements HFS+ made over HFS were support for larger files and Unicode; Apple has since added some more features but the core filesystem remains a 30-year-old format which was designed for early hard disks.

Re: APFS filesystem format

#56

Post by zeptomu »

zie wrote: post #52
lobster_johnson wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's relationship with open source is pretty average. In the end, they use open source strategically. If there's no benefit to open-sourcing something, they won't. Clang, WebKit and Swift are "proper" open source projects, done in the open. But there aren't many of those. They have no open source apps, and most frameworks such as Cocoa, AppKit etc. are completely proprietary. Some of their open source efforts have…

They do have at least one open source application: https://www.cups.org/ it's fully open-source, and wholly owned by Apple, however they bought it, they didn't invent it.

Interesting, I did not know that Apple is the maintainer of CUPS since 2007.

Re: APFS filesystem format

#57

Post by toyg »

comex wrote: post #42
avar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't open WebKit. It's a fork of the LGPL'd KHTML code base. Apple is legally obliged to keep it open, so whatever anyone thinks about Apple's open source record using WebKit as an example makes little sense.

Eh, not quite. Apple could satisfy its LGPL obligations by throwing source dumps of WebCore over the wall - without releasing the rest of WebKit, exposing SVN history, or having a public bug tracker. In fact, for the first two years of Safari's life, that's exactly what they did. Then in 2005 they opened it up properly, voluntarily: https://dot.kde.org/2005/06/07/apple-opens-webkit-cvs-and-bu...

"Voluntarily" after they were rapped over and over by KDE developers and community...

Re: APFS filesystem format

#58

Post by toyg »

CameronBanga wrote: post #33
tyingq wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open sourcing Swift, though, probably benefits Apple more than it does the community. Sans the Apple UI, it doesn't create some opportunity to lose a sale or have Apple like consumer facing apps show up on some other platform. Apple apps already mostly rely on non-apple backend servers. Opening up iMessage or FaceTime would have been more of a statement. Either would allow interoperability on platforms they don't con…

WebKit? Darwin? ResearchKit? Apple gets this bad rap for OSS, because of Google's good PR a few years back on how "Android was open." But it's not like Google has a better track record of supporting OSS when it comes to products that influence their bottom line. Adwords, Google Search, AdSense, Analytics, etc are not open source, and no one ever complains about that.

Google has nothing to do with this. Apple get their bad rep from their behavior on Darwin, webkit and the GNU bait-and-switch (first adopted with great fanfare, then left to rot and eventually purged mercilessly). The fact that they strenuously refused to let some of their desktop goodness leak back into the OSS world, from the very first day OSX was announced, is also an old pain point.

Re: APFS filesystem format

#59

Post by madeofpalk »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #49
scarface74 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They never promised to open up iMessage. The story behind FaceTime is a little bit more complicated. Steve Jobs said he would open it up without asking the engineers and lawyers who were just as surprised as anyone else about his announcement. As far as Apple not open sourcing anything. https://opensource.apple.com They also published the full git commit history of Swift from the initial commit.

Apple's relationship with open source is pretty average. In the end, they use open source strategically. If there's no benefit to open-sourcing something, they won't. Clang, WebKit and Swift are "proper" open source projects, done in the open. But there aren't many of those. They have no open source apps, and most frameworks such as Cocoa, AppKit etc. are completely proprietary. Some of their open source efforts have…

> In the end, they use open source strategically. If there's no benefit to open-sourcing something, they won't.

Wouldn't that apply for most companies? Let's not pretend that Facebook, Microsoft et al do open source as a charity

Re: APFS filesystem format

#60

Post by AlphaSite »

toyg wrote: post #57
comex wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, not quite. Apple could satisfy its LGPL obligations by throwing source dumps of WebCore over the wall - without releasing the rest of WebKit, exposing SVN history, or having a public bug tracker. In fact, for the first two years of Safari's life, that's exactly what they did. Then in 2005 they opened it up properly, voluntarily: https://dot.kde.org/2005/06/07/apple-opens-webkit-cvs-and-bu...

"Voluntarily" after they were rapped over and over by KDE developers and community...

Ah yes, the KDE community, holders of the ear of Steve Jobs.

Frankly, I'm not sure Apple ever cared for their thoughts on the matter.

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