From: 	  das@DOIT.WISC.EDU
	Subject: 	Come on in, we're ____
	Date: 	February 17, 2006 12:40:18 AM CST
	To: 	  MACENTERPRISE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
	Reply-To: 	  MACENTERPRISE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU

...well, not any more.

Well, I waited for a while to see what I could find out, and it appears Darwin, as a standalone OS and as something that represented all of formerly open source components of Mac OS X, is dead.

Compare:

http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.4.4.ppc/
http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.4.4.x86/

and

http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.4.5.ppc/
http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.4.5.x86/

Pretty stark difference, huh? No APSL projects are released in the x86 tree, only GPL stuff that Richard Stallman raised a stink about and forced Apple to release a month late.

Also, today http://developer.apple.com/darwin/ redirects to http://developer.apple.com/opensource/ and Apple apparently disallowed any indexing or caching of former Darwin page by search engines or archive.org, so you can't see their glowing descriptions of Darwin and what it represented. Also, http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/darwin/, the Darwin OS project, also now redirects to http://developer.apple.com/opensource/. Also, corresponding Apple-specific open source projects for Mac OS X Server appear gone.

And since Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard) is expected to be unified, one wonders if all of the non-GPL open source pieces, will go away as well.

Stunningly, no one has really brought this up on any of the Darwin lists, and Apple must have figured out that since there's no pressure, or since no one has figured it out yet, it doesn't have to say anything.

Apple must just figure it can "disappear" major projects, fundamentally change strategy and course for its primary product (the operating system) and kill off a major basis and selling point of Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server, and something that has been an extremely useful set of tools for us for the last few years, without telling anyone.

Apple still hasn't figured out how to deal with enterprise customers; how to strike this balance between its need for secrecy and enterprise IT's need for roadmap information, consistency, and communication, and this is becoming more upsetting each day. The situation is getting worse, not better. This isn't about the source, per se: it's about an apparent major fundamental change in direction with no communication or consultation whatsoever.

Apple: when is this going to change? I would just give up if it weren't for the fact that Apple keeps insisting it wants to get better on dealing with enterprise customers; that it wants more channels for communication and support. That it wants to develop strategies and programs to support enterprise customers. But as the years go by, I see little to no evidence of this.

There have been occasional steps forward...but more steps backward. If this trend continues - especially as IBM, Sun, Red Hat, and Microsoft fall all over themselves to assist us (no, they're not perfect, but they're a LOT better) - I'm not sure what will happen...

Regards,

Dave Schroeder           |    University of Wisconsin - Madison
Senior Systems Engineer  |   Division of Information Technology
Email: das@doit.wisc.edu |                  Systems Engineering
Web:   das.doit.wisc.edu | B263 Computer Science and Statistics
Cell:  +1 608 444-5672   |              1210 West Dayton Street
Phone: +1 608 265-4737   |        Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1685

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