Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon?

Re:Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon? by doctor_eval on Sunday November 29, 2020 @05:26PM (#25248664)

Yeah I think it’s more often that FOSS that doesn’t play well with Apple. It’s understandable - Apple keeps a lot of desirable software for itself - but perhaps unfortunate.

Federici has said in one of his interviews that Apple wants people to hack on the M1 machines so I’m hopeful that they will be more open than on IOS.

All of that said, I won’t hold my breath.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon? by toyg on Sunday November 29, 2020 @07:08PM (#25249372)

> Apple wants people to hack on the M1 machines

Of course they do. Like they wanted people to hack on OSX 20 years ago; and once they reached critical mass, they pulled up the drawbridges (dropping anything GNU, dropping Java, restricting access to the OS, pushing AppStore, etc etc).

Chances they're going to do exactly the same with M1 and its follow-ups are 99.99%... if anything because their management is largely drawn from the very same people who executed that strategy.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon? by spacedcowboy on Sunday November 29, 2020 @10:08PM (#25250381)

They dropped anything GNU because of the GPLv3, which was specifically designed to stop what the authors saw as exploitation of others' work.

I can see both sides here - the viral nature of GPLv3 is anathema to a company like Apple, so simply walking away was inevitable; and people were exploiting loopholes in the GPLv2 (I have no idea whether Apple was, but there are documented cases of others doing it).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon? by toyg on Sunday November 29, 2020 @10:42PM (#25250512)

It's just one datapoint - there are plenty more. Simply speaking, when they are the underdog and have to attract developers, they open up; and when they don't need it, they close doors. That's just what they do, it's a perfectly rational strategy (if cynical). They are hardly the only ones at this game, Microsoft does it too. I am just pointing out that promises of openness with Apple typically come with an expiry date.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon? by doctor_eval on Monday November 30, 2020 @01:50AM (#25251301)

Apple and Microsoft have never pretended to be “open” and their behaviour is quite predictable - Apple most of all. You might not like their behaviour but they haven’t tried to trick anyone.

Contrast with Google and the infamous tweet about Android:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Arubin/status/27808662429

[ Parent | on HN ]