Re: RE: taking cues
I assumed he was referring to internal parts rather than to the UI (and to the wider open source community than to the kernel, Linux). And misusing the verb 'stolen' unless he's alleging that Apple has used open source code without redistributing it?
Those details aside, I guess:
Apple adopted CUPS after its Linux-world debut, but eventually hired the developer and bought the code. Though it's still also open source.
WebKit is famously a fork of KHTML, but is also open source and has itself been forked onwards.
Apple used to maintain various GCC patches but upstreamed as much as it could; it hired the creator of LLVM and has been very active in advancing that, whilst also originating Clang and providing that as open source.
Then I guess there's everything in the terminal that Apple ships, from zsh to ls to python to everything else — though what proportion of that is from BSD rather than GNU I wouldn't like to hazard a guess.
So, yeah, Apple has benefitted hugely from engaging with the open source world. I don't agree with 'stolen' as no licenses have been broken and important things have been contributed even where licensing doesn't require it, e.g. Clang.
But you can't imagine macOS being anything like it actually is if it weren't for the large pieces of open source software it contains.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
