The Fink, Gentoo, and DarwinPorts projects are pleased to announce the formation of a cooperative development alliance, MetaPKG, forged to facilitate delivery of freely available software to Mac OS X. While each project will continue to deliver software in their own way, the coordination between projects will: accelerate the development efforts of all projects, avoid unwanted duplication of effort,
improve the consistency, quality, and responsiveness of ports.
Packaging Groups Coordinate Efforts to Deliver Free Software for OSX
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
With the upcoming WWDC announcements, it must feel great being an OSX user right now 🙂
laterz
As the days go by, I wish more and more that I was running OS X. I wish I was rich so I could buy one…
I just bought an iBook 800 MHz and adding 512 MB of RAM the total came to be about $1300. It runs OSX 10.2 swiftly believe it or not. Worst comes to worst you can run Linux on it which is even better! Point is, you don’t have to be rich to own a Mac, just have to lower your expectations a bit and know how to buy.
“This effort is officially backed by Apple.”
Gotta wonder what part Apple played in making this possible?
> wish I was running OS X
I ended up buying a G4 Cube. Loaded it with memory and put in a very quite 7200 RPM drive. Then bought 17″ LCD Studio Display. And dropped kicked the useless Apple mouse. Nice, very nice… Goes well with my SGI O2 and 1600SW.
In spite of the statement in the article, this effort is NOT officially backed by Apple.
— Dave Morrison, Core Team Member, MetaPkg Alliance
is officially dead with such an announcement.
—
http://www.bebox.nu
this is neat.. it feels like somethign that especially possible given the smaller and more cohent Mac user base. :::: and BinkyBoink — I bought a Cube on eBay a while back and love it. Everything else seems huge and loud to me now…
>In spite of the statement in the article, this effort is NOT officially backed by Apple.
This is what I was told. Anyways, I will take that out then.
I wonder what ever happened to this project…
http://darwinx.homestead.com/darwin.html
Kind of confused. They all appear to use different package mangers for one (apt, ports, emerge), so I don’t really understand how they are going to remove duplication. If two different networks package 2 different programs, that both have the same dependancy, which network is it pulled from? Is that going to be automatic?
Also, shouldn’t the code generated as a result of the port be contributed back to the project? How can two ports happen at once? Surely the maintainer should know about it in advance?
It looks to me that this effort is more of a development cooperation. If the Gentoo guys are working on a port to the Mac they can share that information with Darwinports and fink. The delivery systems are still separate.
As an end user, I would like to find something that let me install the software easy and iniate it (maybe with a wizard). Of course, it could be binary distribution with source code, but I want not to deal with compililation (at least as an option).
By example, to install MySQL “and” change password and everything else.
In other words, to have an installer or program that let me feel “in the Mac” while installing unix ports. I do not try it, but it appears to be the promise of “Open OS X” (www dor openosx dot com).
I think it goes a little further than “packaging” but –well- it is what I would like to see.
>but it appears to be the promise of “Open OS X” (www dor openosx dot com).
Also check out:
http://www.osxgnu.org/
HTH,
Max
Although they don’t have big number of ports. Those that they have are well maintained and they are all available as packages and can be directly downloaded installed from Desktop (Webdav server).
GO and check http://www.opendarwin.org
With or w/o freesoft apple wins anyway, cause if you wanna use something like Linux on a mac, you still have to buy the hardware that apple sales.
That’s the difference, Windows doesnt sale the hardware just the software, that way apple can make money anyway, but MS can’t.
Wow, you amaze me…
With or w/o freesoft apple wins anyway, cause if you wanna use something like Linux on a mac, you still have to buy the hardware that apple sales.
That’s the difference, Windows doesnt sale the hardware just the software, that way apple can make money anyway, but MS can’t.
Translate? and what does it have to do with the article?
>Translate? and what does it have to do with the article?
I did the translation (using Babelfish English -> Chinese and back from Chinese -> English). Here’s the result:
”
With or does not have the freesoft apple victory in any event, the cause if you want to use some Linux in the raincoat, you had still to buy the hardware that apple sale. That is this difference, window doesnt sale hardware software, the way apple possibly does the money in any event, but woman cannot.
”
Do you understand it, now? 😉
Max,
Your translation was perfect.
I completely understand it now. So Apple will win regardless of if I use linux in my “raincoat” or not. Further more, since windows doesn’t sell “hardware”, Apple gets my money in any event, and random women won’t.
Is it me or does that have a lot sexual inuendo potential?