[plug] vmware and such

[Peter Wright]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 01:23:52PM +0800, craig at postnewspapers.com.au wrote:
> > yeah, i knew you could get darwin, but I have linux and I dunno if there 
> > would be any advantage of using darwin for x86. do you think if we asked 
> > apple very nicely they would make Aqua available under the GPL?
> *choke*
> Not going to happen. Apple is _insanely_ protective of its GUI, and even
[ ... ]

Yeah, they are a tad. I believe they initially tried to legally threaten a
number of people who had created Aqua-like "themes" for various UN*X/X
window managers, though I guess that must have stopped now (not really sure
though, I did a quick search and couldn't find anything on the web about
it).

You might want to have a look for "window manager aqua theme" on Google or
other search engine of your choice, though. Quite a few out there.

Have a look here, for example:

http://slashdot.org/bsd/01/10/19/057251.shtml

> Apple is very unlikely to ever release MacOS X for Intel either. 
> 	1) MS would kill them (withdraw office, etc etc) if they
> 	competed directly
> 	2) Apple makes its money on its painfully overpriced hardware
> 	sales, using the OS to drive the sales of that hardware. MacOS X
> 	for x86 would undermine their business.

If anyone on the plug-list has not read this yet, you should read it:

http://www.spack.org/words/commandline.html

"In The Beginning Was The Command Line", by Neal Stephenson.

Very worth reading, for all sorts of reasons. He discusses the Apple
hardware/software tar-pit in some detail and likens it to the (potential or
actual?) Microsoft OS/application tar-pit.

The closing line is an absolute classic[0]. Of course, there are a number
of other elements in the essay that are brilliant too. I especially liked
the car sales metaphor.

> Craig Ringer                                       IT Manager, POST Newspapers

Pete.

[0] Now don't be a wuss and skip to the end just to read that line. If you
do, it won't be anywhere near as effective, because you simply won't
understand if you don't read the whole thing. Seriously, go read the whole
thing. It's not all that long. Even if you're a _really_ slow reader, it
shouldn't take more than an hour. And it's really good, did I mention that? :)
-- 
http://akira.apana.org.au/~pete/
If at first you don't succeed, you must be a programmer.