Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3394 mails)

[jmgrant@xxxxxxxxxxxx (John Grant)]

Of course.  I'm not saying MacOS X -is- (will be?) Linux.. at the very
least any GUI stuff will be different, and Mach split from BSD quite a
long time ago (many ages in computer-years) so there are a number of
evolutionary changes to the API there as well wrt "modern" unix kernels.
In addition, Linux has a few differences of it's own beyond that.

All that said however, I maintain that it will be a LOT easier to port
to/from MacOS X and Linux, and with Linux users (read, paying customers)
growing in number all the time, I don't see any rational reason why
companies like Intuit -wouldn't- make a Linux version of their software
as well, assuming they make the leap to MacOS X in the first place.
With Jobs' help there, I don't see anything else that will get in the
way.

Hiding beind Carbon won't help much either.  Eventuallly the colored
boxes will be depreciated and they'll have to write native code.
"Eventually" could take a while, of course.

Michael Bartosh said:
> 
> Except that writing to MacOS X does not necessarily mean writing to a *BSD
> API. Mainstream Apps will most likely be written in Carbon- which is
> basically the tired old Mac ToolBox stripped of some legacy crap that is
> keeping it from memory protection / preemptive multitasking / symmetric
> multiprocessing. A smaller number of Apps will be written to Cocoa-
> formerly known as YellowBox, aka OpenStep- a fairly rad OO API that
> GNUStep is trying to implament in an Open environment. Very few mainstream
> Apps will probably be written to the *BSD API. The primary roadblock to
> having Linux benefit from MacOS X's push of un* into the main stream is
> that Linux tends to rely on (barf) X- MacOS X imaging revolves around a
> seperate model. Although J. Carmack recently ported X to MacOS X/ MOSXS /
> Darwin it's unlikely Apple will utilize it. On the other hand it does mean
> that quite a few X apps will make it to MacOS X in one from or another.
> 
> -mab
> 
> On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, John Grant wrote:
> 
> > Paul W. Abrahams said:
> >  [snip]
> > > One kind of program that isn't available for Linux as far as I know is the
> > > equivalent of TurboTax.   The trouble with income-tax programs is that they
> > > have to be updated every year, and no author of free software is going to
> > > make the effort to do that year after year.  On top of that the details you
> > > have to deal with are details of IRS forms, not of programming.
> > 
> > I'm not worried; if Apple really is moving to a NeXT-derived OS (aka
> > Mach, aka BSD) then before long even M$ will be basically writing _some_
> > of their apps for an *ix-like platform.  From there it's just a
> > relatively small step to Linux. 
> > 
> > > Personally, I'd love to see Intuit dragged into the Microsoft case somehow or
> > > other.  They are aiding and abetting the Microsoft monopoly by refusing to
> > > port their software to Linux even though it would probably be profitable for
> > > them to do so.
> > 
> > Unless they drop Mac support as well, they -will- come around.  Say what
> > you like about Jobs, at least he knows that apps are important, so I
> > don't think he'll let companies like Intuit get away.  (In fact, now
> > that I think about it, didn't he haul them back once already?)  IMHO,
> > the only question is when, not if, we'll see a linux version of their
> > software.
> > 
> > 
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> > 
> 


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