Hey Apple, Please Be Nice and Share MacRuby

http://merbist.com/2011/03/07/hey-apple-please-be-nice-and-share/

by petercooper • 15 years ago

209 59 15 years ago

These things typically start out as a private framework for an iteration of the OS. My guess is that MacRuby will need to hit a nice and stable 1.0 before Apple commits to maintaining it as a built-in public OS X framework. I think it'll happen eventually, though.

mattetti4• 15 years ago

But at the same time they use it in their new OS, isn't that a double standard?

tptacek3• 15 years ago

Yes. If it's their code, they're not obligated to be equitable.

protomyth• 15 years ago

There is a little difference between using it privately with testing for functions used and releasing to developers in public as a stable, fully tested framework. Apple making it private is pretty much the same as a developer bundling it in an app.

thought_alarm2• 15 years ago

> isn't that a double standard?

Not at all.

There's a big difference between saying "this version of MacRuby is good enough for this particular application", vs. "this version of MacRuby is good enough for all applications".

Once it's added as a public framework to the OS then Apple is committed to maintaining the framework's security, stability, and backward compatibility in perpetuity, or at least for a very long time. OS and platform vendors never make those decisions lightly.

It is an encouraging sign that MacRuby is at a point where Apple is comfortable using it their some of their code.

caiusdurling• 15 years ago

Seems a pity to make developers bloat their app size by including the macruby framework over and over in each one. Users suffer in the end—takes up more disk space.

stevejohnson• 15 years ago

I always package the full Python interpreter when I release applications because I am guaranteed a specific version and set of libraries. The tradeoff of a few megabytes for stability is a good one regardless of the availability of the framework.

mattetti4• 15 years ago

Steve, that's a fair argument but maybe we should let developers decide. If you want to write a simple task bar app, you might not want to embed 30MB worth of extra stuff when your app could just be a few KBs.

tptacek3• 15 years ago

That sounds like it could end up costing literally hundreds of pennies.

kevingadd2• 15 years ago

You're forgetting about the significant overhead imposed by every process having its own copy of the necessary libraries loaded into memory, and having to load those libraries from disk every time an app using those libraries is started. If those apps were all using a version included with the OS, all those pages could be shared between processes and only loaded once.

But maybe people don't care about apps starting fast on their macs anymore, since a lot of them come with SSDs :)

scrod2• 15 years ago

In the absence of Apple's cooperation, a standard build of the MacRuby framework could be distributed independently, à la Growl (http://growl.info/). In this way developers could not only drastically reduce the size of their downloads, but also stay as up-to-date as possible. It would certainly seem that the license would permit it: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/

Yes, the App Store rules would prohibit apps with external dependencies such as that one, and at least for self-contained apps distributed through the app store, Apple themselves would be paying for the bandwidth resulting from their own poor decision, so an argument could be made for both ways.

Zev• 15 years ago

You mean like the builds on http://www.macruby.org/, that are hosted by Apple?

spullara• 15 years ago

They would be better off shipping MacRuby with their application which is probably why Apple made it private. Now that disk space and bandwidth at this scale is essentially free you are better off testing with the exact bits that will be present at runtime.

twiedenbein• 15 years ago

What is with people and continually violating the NDA? Especially when they aren't anonymous?

I've seen so many messages from people on Twitter that I follow about what Lion contains, and what it does not. There is a pretty strict NDA in place covering the prerelease software, and there's exactly one forum (well, two, if you count Radar) where you can voice your concerns.

It's a sad state of affairs when people do not care about the contracts that they sign. It'll lead to further secrecy in the future, and it's just disgusting how lax some people are being re: the new OS.

Argorak2• 15 years ago

I don't see where Matt Aimonetti is breaking the NDA. He just refers to information someone else posted in public. Considering that someone else had to give him (a core developer of MacRuby) a tip that MacRuby is included in Lion, I would expect that he didn't sign an NDA.

mattetti4• 15 years ago

That's correct, I explained my view point about the NDA in this comment: http://merbist.com/2011/03/07/hey-apple-please-be-nice-and-s...

chc• 15 years ago

People's laxity towards Apple's NDAs more or less reflects Apple's laxity in deciding whether to declare a piece of software is under NDA. I mean, the iPhone SDK was under one for months after it was released to the public. As one developer put it, "I'm sitting in a public conference session hearing about the iPhone SDK that anyone can view on Apple's website, but I can't talk about what I'm hearing to the guy next to me."

Apple isn't remotely selective in applying NDAs. When anyone can get at the information, there's nothing actually private about it. If there were any kind of secrecy to begin with, people would be more concerned about preserving it.

It's like when folks post to mailing lists with signatures reading "THIS MESSAGE IS CONFIDENTIAL AND ONLY MEANT FOR THE NAMED RECIPIENT." People start to take it less seriously.

reemrevnivek• 15 years ago

> It's like when folks post to mailing lists with signatures reading "THIS MESSAGE IS CONFIDENTIAL AND ONLY MEANT FOR THE NAMED RECIPIENT." People start to take it less seriously.

A perfect analog to the grandparent's point.

What is it with people being lax towards confidentiality notices, especially when they aren't anonymous?

I've seen so many messages from people on mailing lists reading and replying to mail with confidentiality notices. There is pretty strict language covering these confidentiality notices; they often consist of five or more lines of ALL CAPS text that's hard to miss!

It's a sad state of affairs when people do not care about the contracts that they read. It'll lead to further secrecy in the future, and it's just disgusting how lax some people are being re: confidentiality signatures.

grav1tas• 15 years ago

Apple is pretty secretive already. Would it really matter if they got even more secretive? I find myself on the opposite end of the spectrum as you with respect to NDAs. I think it's a sad state of affairs that so many companies today use them to stifle discussion about their up and coming products...or use other legislation or agreements to prevent power users from realizing the full potential of the products they already own (EULAs + DMCA). Are there cases where NDAs make sense? Of course! Is an NDA really an appropriate reason to stifle conversation about an up and coming OS? I personally don't think so. Plus, it's just exciting to talk about new things and leak info and it really doesn't hurt anybody in this case anyway. If anything, it just builds up the fanboy marketing fervor that Apple works off of so well. To say that they are unaware of this effect's existence would be rather strange to me.

As far as being lax about caring for contractual obligations, I think it's a side-effect of living in an overly litigious society where you have to agree to umpteen EULAs a day to get anything done on a computer (and many electronic devices).

rbanffy7• 15 years ago

The NDA may not cover all of Lion.

For instance, when Apple gives you a copy of Lion it is obligated to give you access to the source of every GPL'ed part of it and you must be free to redistribute it or modified versions. If their NDA prohibits this, they have no right to distribute any GPL'ed code in the first place because they are in violation of the terms of the GPL.

pyre2• 15 years ago

I'm not sure how the GPL covers a particular packaging configuration of a build of something which has GPL'd source. Sure the source can be redistributed, but the binary possibly not. In practice, this is not much of a distinction because you can build the package from the source, but in this case the source probably doesn't have anything in it saying "Apple has built this source code into OSX." What Apple has done is essentially building a binary of MacRuby and installing in a location on the filesystem of a MacOSX Lion install. None of which you could claim that the GPL allows you to by-pass an NDA over.

jallmann• 15 years ago

What advantages does MacRuby offer over MRI/YARV or Rubinius?

patrickaljord• 15 years ago

ObjC binding I think and things like that HotCocoa

http://www.macruby.org/trac/wiki/HotCocoa

http://www.slideshare.net/reborg/writing-apps-with-hotcocoa-...

mattetti4• 15 years ago

MacRuby allows you to write native Cocoa apps and call C/Objective-C directly without a bridge. Basically, it's an Objective-C replacement using the same runtime but a different language.

Argorak2• 15 years ago

Basically, MacRuby is an MRI fork with the object system replaced by the one present in Objective-C (which is pretty similar). Integration is its main strength.

tedunangst• 15 years ago

It's fast. Slightly faster than rubinius to run and lots faster to start.

chadcf• 15 years ago

I haven't found much other than cocoa support. Which I can't get too excited about, a simple macruby app that does nothing but open up one window takes nearly 30 seconds to launch on my Core i5 macbook pro...

cubicle67• 15 years ago

I'm using a 5 year old iMac here (running 10.6) and it's close to instant. no discernible delay over opening any other app.

Legion• 15 years ago

Sounds like a problem with your machine. That is obviously not typical.

xpaulbettsx2• 15 years ago

MacRuby being private doesn't matter if the code is still open-source - just build your own version and ship it. You don't need to use Apple's builtin version.

riffraff2• 15 years ago

i guess it matters if you are publishing an app of 100k but you have to include 40MB of additional libraries that are _already_ in the os

rbanffy7• 15 years ago

... and that won't be updated when Apple issues their updates

Basically, you'll be maintaining and distributing your very own fork of MacRuby.

hopeless• 15 years ago

"Hey Apple, please by nice..." is a sure path to disappointment

marshray• 15 years ago

Since the release of the Mac, Apple has had its share of subservient fans. But it really is sad how Apple has them begging and pleading at this point.

As other commenters have pointed out, somebody somewhere may been under an NDA for this feature of Lion.

So Apple's response could very well be a DMCA takedown of this poor guy's site. Or they may just send the police to his house and seize all his computers like they did the guy from Gizmodo.

rbanffy7• 15 years ago

IIRC, Apple was never particularly friendly towards free software. They abide by their obligations under the licenses they have to comply with, but not much more.

The only reason they rely and build upon free software is because it saves them some work.

GHFigs• 15 years ago

MacRuby is a free software project by Apple Inc. Many folks inside and outside of Apple contribute to this great project... -- http://www.macruby.org/contact-us.html

paxswill• 15 years ago

Apple does contribute beyond what is required. They are not required to post their updates to LLVM+clang, but they do. launchd was considered for Ubuntu before they licensed it under Apache (it was under APSL at the time). They didn't have to hire the CUPS dev to work on it. If you go through Apple's OSS listing [1], if it has the APSL license, that's something they released themselves.

[1] http://opensource.apple.com/

rbanffy7• 15 years ago

> They are not required to post their updates to LLVM+clang, but they do

You open-source the projects you don't consider strategic assets and/or projects that would cost too much or take too long to develop internally. Open-sourcing is a tool - a development model. That's also why NeXT based its OS on Mach and BSD (and licensed Display PostScipt) - because that shortened their time to market and allowed them to build a computer will a full operating system with enough competitive differentiation to survive for some time (and be resurrected later in the form of OSX)

NeXT was very reluctant in sharing their GCC front-end but was eventually forced to comply with the GPL. Apple has no such obligations with LLVM-clang.

tewks• 15 years ago

webkit2 is also a private framework in Lion, a la iOS...

Hey Apple, Please Be Nice and Share MacRuby

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