Re: OT--Win7 and disk partitions

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Russell Urquhart
 on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:07:57 -0500


> i think that OS X is the first where someone could work
> extensively in the GUI and never know that they are running a
> Unix OS

That's arguably true. I just don't believe that you run a
Unix-class OS for its GUI. I never have, anyway -- and seldom
install the GUI. The whole point of Unix is its amazing
granular control over every process. What GUI offers that?

> i think you should also at least recognize Apple's licensing
> agreements which don't support the running of the OS on
> non-Apple hardware

Well, I bought a license (from Apple) for OS X, if that's what
you're driving at. $110, IIRC. Whether they can compel me to
use their hardware is another matter. They won the first legal
judgment that I know of (in late 2009) against a commercial
developer who employed OSX on non-Apple hardware; but the OSx86
community argues that their different (bootloader etc.) methods
circumvent Apple's EULA restrictions. As far as I know, Apple
has never confronted the OSx86 community, which is large and
noisy. Anyway, if I had to give up my Hackintosh boxes, I
wouldn't miss them.

> why don't you thumb your nose and direct some rage at the owner
> of the source code to Xywrite? Why don't you

Me??

> let that source be
> distributed, and let that get into the open source community,
> and see what some dedicated programmers can do to bring it to
> Linux/Unix

Basically, NotaBene owns it now (although even they aren't
entirely sure where the core rights rest today -- believe me,
I've asked. Dave Erickson told me that he didn't know). But
the underlying futility of it is that almost nobody has the
competence to deal with assembler code nowadays -- nobody I know
anyway... Unless you wrote it yourself, it would take forever
to untangle it. The complexity of a word processor is
phenomenal.

My real point was about give and take. Sure, Apple gave back
Bonjour, CUPS, GCD, Darwin, maybe a few other things. But
pretty paltry, I think, for something with an underpinning of
*Free*BSD.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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