1: Apple uses Free Software to design a better browser and improve their OS by using khtml and a BSD kernel.
True. What's wrong with this? They didn't exactly change BSD very muvh, but rather built a proprietary GUI layer on top of it.
2: Apple then tries to compete directly against Free Software, the majority of which is *NIX based as exemplified in the statement "sends other unix boxes to /dev/null" and others.
Oh, and RedHat dosn't compeat directly with the other linux distros? As a matter of fact I think I remember some andti BSD stuff on their page a while back.
There is nothing wrong with trying to build a better mouse trap. IBM makes UNIX boxes, they aren't necesserly being hurt bu the competition, are they?
There is nothing wrong with competition. That's why Apple is good, and M$ sux.
3: By doing 2 Apple has hurt the Operating Systems it was helped by.
On the contrary, it has popularized them and brought them to the forefront. Before OS X, Linux, and *NIX were a mystery to common users. Apple made it Chic. and most of all called it the "next step"
Dozens of Sourceforge projects sprung up makeing OpenSource software for OSX, on OSX. But with the goal of portability to other *NIX's. The *NIX community gained a whole bunch of chilldren from the Mac users.
4: Apple should be trying to attack Microsoft instead of casting aspersions on Free OS's
Keynotes, and Safari are both steps away from their M$ dependancy. And it's not like i have seen M$ do anything worthwhile on the Mac lately ('ccept the VPC fiasco).
And apple has not case any aspersions. They have praised openSopurce software for it's merits. As a matter of fact a large part of their OS is Free! And there is a whole comunity of people who develop and benifit from it!
Just go to the OpenDarwin websites... there are people who actually like it, and run the stuff exclusively.
5: Apple has fulfilled a bare minimum of their requirements under the Freedom license.
There is no such thing as "bare mininimum" when it comes to legality. They fullfiled the requirement.
If you feel this way, maybe you should take your complaint to the GPL people and demand that they redraft their licence.
6: In doing 5 Apple has "weasled out of" giving effective support in their alliance with Free Software - for example by not Freeing Safari itself and by just Freeing the HTML "rendering" component
This is silly. They work with the KHTML community to make safary. The head of the project, was the head of the Camino project over at Mozilla.org.
The KHTML get all of the stuff apple improves on. Apple gets to keep the NON-HTML stuff it makes.
Big deal, the licence says this, and all the people who adopted it have to live with the results. If you don't agree take it to court or revise it.
Which of the 6 is in the opinion of the Mac users incorrect?
None are incorect perse, but you take a negative stance on what could also be construed as a posative thing.
There is proprietary software for Linux, why can't apple make proprietary software for Darwin? I.e. the Aqua layer etc.
If Apple didn't keep trying to turn a proffit, there would be no great OS at all. And they would probably be struggling like Mandrake.
Also, apple contributed some 30years of R&D to the world, so you can hardly say they never gave anything back to OSS. They gave you the idea of a GUI! And don't bring up "X11 was started in 1983!" because X11 had no clue what it was up to rather than a novel way to display terminal shells untill Apple schooled the world as to hou a GUI should work.
It's only natural that they should do it bigger and better agian. And I honestly thing linux/*NIX users are a bit jeulous, and salivate over the Aqua source, because KDE/Gnome do not work nearly as well, and Mac users only need the terminal when they WANT to use it. Not when the HAVE to.
