Sun's use of GPL and/or debian source

[Alan DuBoff]

Deirdre Saoirse Moen wrote:

> If you have specific questions, I can likely answer them as that's my
> main OS (which I'm writing this email on).

The piece I was curious about, that I can't remember exactly is how the GUI is
isolated from the GPL and/or APSL code? According to the GPL it must be
seperated, and I'm sure that Apple has done that, just as Sun seperated the
GPL tools from Solaris.

In Apple's case that would mean that they have to seperate the GUI (which
includes Quartz and Aqua since both are proprietary) from the base OS (Darwin)
and/or GPL tools (gcc, emacs, make, etc...).

> Apple's MacOS X has a mix of some GPL, a lot of BSD and is, in
> general, similar to FreeBSD in many respects. It has a proprietary
> GUI layer however. The default compiler is GCC and the toolchain is
> free software with proprietary GUI apps on top (for generating GUI
> elements, etc.).

It's a great system, and the GUI is very nice. I only wish that Apple would
have been so generous as to have made the GUI GPL so everyone could enjoy the
use of it, not only Mac OSX users. In Apple's case I 'spose it doesn't really
matter since Darwin is kinda GPL (APSL), so the GUI must be completely
seperated from Darwin and/or GPL tools.

-- 

Alan DuBoff
Software Orchestration, Inc.