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APFS filesystem format

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Re: APFS filesystem format

#71

Post by scarface74 »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #69
madeofpalk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

A lot of companies routinely open-source lots of little things that could easily have stayed internal, but are genuinely useful to everyone else. (Admittedly, I think about 30% of them are Go logging libraries, but the point still stands.) I.e., open source by default as opposed to being the exception. That, of course, can be a strategy. A company can look cooler and attract talent by developing everything in the ope…

It's called "commoditizing your complements"

Google open sourced Android to get advertising revenue.

IBM supports open source and made money from server sells and still makes money from services.

Apple open sourced WebKit (more than they had to) to gain industry support and later to kill off Flash.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

Re: APFS filesystem format

#72

Post by scarface74 »

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...

Yes because Apple in general and Steve Jobs in particular is a company that goes out of it way to be accommodating to the masses....

Re: APFS filesystem format

#73

Post by kalleboo »

xaduha wrote: post #16

Is there any reason to use APFS on desktop?

I believe one reason APFS is touted is because the HFS+ data structures have one big global lock, whereas APFS allows for multithreading which ought to improve performance on multi-core machines.

Re: APFS filesystem format

#74

Post by scarface74 »

tyingq wrote: post #34
CameronBanga wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those are good examples. It was an honest question though, not a proclamation that Apple hasn't open sourced anything. Edit: Maybe Google is getting more credit because of uptake? Chromium, golang, protobufs, material design, etc. So perhaps not how much was open source, but how much of it ended up in non Google projects?

Chromium was a fairly recent fork of WebKit. Webkit was already being adopted by every browser vendor except MS and Mozilla.

As far as Golang, I doubt that it has the uptake ofClang (even used by MS), CUPS, or Bonjour.

Yes I realized that CUPS was open source before being acquired by Apple but the copyright was owned by Sweets and they could have closed all future enhancement over the last decade.

Re: APFS filesystem format

#75

Post by Jerry2 »

avar wrote: post #22
xoa wrote: post #11

Very, very cool exercise. For anyone who hasn't been following APFS much though, worth knowing that Apple has stated in their AFPS FAQ [1] that they do intend to directly "document and publish the APFS volume format specification" themselves later this year. Presumably (as they do with other stuff they develop) they want to be able to more easily make breaking changes during the shakedown period of initial public dep…

They said the same about Facetime and iMessages but never opened or documented those, so let's see when and if it actually happens. Apple has a history of false promises when it comes to opening and documenting their protocols & data formats. Edit: I misrecalled that iMessage was announced as something they were opening.

I guess you missed the whole lawsuit thing [0] that forced them to make (initially P2P) Facetime completely centralized at which point it was pointless to open it up.

PS: If you're gonna hate on Apple, at least find some valid points about them to hate instead of just spreading bullshit.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/report-after-pat...

Re: APFS filesystem format

#76

Post by scarface74 »

tyingq wrote: post #51
gumby wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

What has any company open sourced that would cause them to loose their competitive advantage?

Re: APFS filesystem format

#77

Post by srssays »

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…

Perhaps the exception that proves the rule, but TextEdit is open source!

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/samplecode/TextE...

Re: APFS filesystem format

#78

Post by twoodfin »

erik wrote: post #24
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.

Specifically, there were major lawsuits over patent infringement immediately after Facetime launched.

And those lawsuits forced Apple to re-engineer how Facetime worked, from peer-to-peer direct connections to a more Apple-intermediated model[1]. At that point, creating an open standard is less interesting, since you can only communicate with folks using the same "relay server" network.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/report-after-pat...

Re: APFS filesystem format

#79

Post by savoytruffle »

scarface74 wrote: post #71
lobster_johnson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of companies routinely open-source lots of little things that could easily have stayed internal, but are genuinely useful to everyone else. (Admittedly, I think about 30% of them are Go logging libraries, but the point still stands.) I.e., open source by default as opposed to being the exception. That, of course, can be a strategy. A company can look cooler and attract talent by developing everything in the ope…

It's called "commoditizing your complements" Google open sourced Android to get advertising revenue. IBM supports open source and made money from server sells and still makes money from services. Apple open sourced WebKit (more than they had to) to gain industry support and later to kill off Flash. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

Webkit was open-source long before anticipating killing Flash. I think, like Darwin, it was originally open-source because it had to be, due to its origin in an existing open-source project that required derivatives also be open-source.

Re: APFS filesystem format

#80

Post by rsynnott »

duskwuff wrote: post #67
mrmondo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI - HFS is capability of case sensitivity and is an option during formatting. I believe it even used to be the default.

HFS and HFS+ were never case-sensitive by default on Mac OS. Case-sensitive HFS+ was made available as an option in Mac OS 10.0, but was always glitchy (especially for boot volumes), because many applications depended on case insensitivity.

I think possibly the point of confusion is that very early versions of MacOS X (the original MacOS X server, and some of the MacOS X DPs, anyway) used UFS by default, not HFS+. UFS is case sensitive.
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