SuitWatchFriday, January 11, 2002
A Linux angle on OS X
Yesterday, in a nice suite on the umpty-fifth floor of the W hotel (yes, just W -- no relation to George), I was briefed by a large team of gentlemen from Filemaker [1] on (among other things) where Linux fits [2] in their business. And where they fit in Linux.
Their Filemaker Server [3] database product runs on Linux. It's made specifically for Red Hat, but it runs on other distros. Their server products support many clients. Web browsers. Various Windows flavors. MacOS Classic and OS X. PalmOS. Conspicuously absent -- to me, at least -- was Linux desktops. No KDE, no GNOME (although they were watching with interest what Ximian [4] was up to).
The way they see it, there are countless Linux servers in the world, but not enough Linux clients to make the platform count as a desktop -- at least not to commercial software companies like this one. And commercial developers see another UNIX client out there that is sure to grow in absolute numbers: Apple's OS X. [5]
This assessment, they said, has nothing to do with the fact that Filemaker is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple Computer Corp. After all, Filemaker supports OS/hardware combinations that compete with Apple's. It's just numbers. They don't see many Linux desktops out there. Nor do they anticipate many. And they're not alone. As one guy recently told me, "It's great that Linux has a desktop in the same way it's great that an eighteen-wheeler has a passenger seat and air conditioning. But those things don't make an eighteen wheeler into a family sedan. And KDE doesn't make Linux into a desktop PC." And this was a guy who said he uses KDE all the time.
This kind of talk raises a bunch of questions, but the big one for me is: Does it really matter?
Context: I'm sitting in the Media Room at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, where I've been asking that question for the last three days. And I find myself heading toward an answer that's somewhere in the vicinity of No.
I say this because I don't get any sense at all around here that Linux is perceived as an enemy, or even as a rival. If it's placed anywhere along various technical, political or emotional scales, it's as an ally of some kind.
That's the impression I'm getting from UNIX weenies here, who come with Sun, HP, SGI and other backgrounds (and t-shirts). UNIX is a family of similar operating systems, they say. Linux is the family member with the most success in the server space, and in the embedded space too. Now it looks like the leading UNIX in the desktop space will be OS X. This is not a problem, unless you're a free software absolutist (in which case this is one more on a long list).
Steve Jobs tried and failed with NeXT and NeXTstep. Now he's succeeding with OS X. The result will be millions of high-art desktop and laptop PCs with a command line interface and full-time Net connections. You can open a shell and hack away.
At the base level of OS X is Darwin [5], an open source derivative of BSD with a Mach Kernel. Apple depends heavily on outside open source develpers for the continued evolution of the OS. And outsiders are leveraging the OS to non-Apple purposes. Apple's open source license fully supports that. As a result of all this, FreeBSD founder Jordan Hubbard hounded [6] Apple to hire him. Wisely, they did.
And now Jordan tells me he thinks there are endless synergies between Linux and OS X.
One more angle on the matter comes from a geek I met on the floor of the show. You can spot them by the teminal windows they open on machines scattered around the booths there. He said he could thinki of nothing more subversive than a desktop PC with a UNIX command line. "Think of how powerful that is," he said. "Then consider this exponential multiplier: Microsoft will never do anything like it."
[1] <http://www.filemaker.com/>
[2] <http://www.filemaker.com/it/technologies.html>
[3] <http://www.filemaker.com/products/fms_home.html>
[4] <http://www.ximian.com/>
[5] <http://www.opensource.apple.com/>
[6] <http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/globe_tech/upgrade/2001/1213.html>