Correct me if I'm wrong; the reason they pulled zfs was due to patent/
licensing issues that they were not able to resolve. I'll find links
later if others do not beat me to it.
Sent remotely
On Jan 6, 2010, at 7:54 AM, Fabrizio Giudici <[email protected]
> wrote:
Spencer Uresk wrote:
Is there some value in keeping stuff like this secret that I'm
missing, or is this simply a case of a culture of secrecy that has
maybe gone a little too far?
Given that Apple globally hits my nerves, I think that we have to
distinguish between two cases:
1. When we're talking about a new product, as the rumored iTablet-or-
what-else, I find that the secrecy is legitimate. They're probably
introducing new ideas and technologies and are just protecting their
work from being copied by competitors; additionally, marketing
strategies are carefully picked, they are expensive, and can be
jeopardized by a leak (*). I'd sum up that when they're going to
release a new product, secrecy is legitimate.
2. Things are completely different when we're talking about
supporting others' technologies, such as Java 6. There are no news
here, as everybody knows that would be inside the product, and
there's just very scarce innovation in Apple's Java editions (I
mean, for instance there's no specific integration with new
technologies such as Grand Central, and even the look and feel
integration is superior in third parties' products, such as Quaqua).
For a while I tried to find a bit of logic reasoning behind this,
and I thought that it was bound to the idea of keeping their hands
free; in other words, they could be working in this moment to Java
7, but if they later decide that they don't want to support it they
don't have to give to people any explanation. I had to change my
mind after the drop of ZFS from Snow Leopard: they introduced a read
only version of ZFS in Leopard and even put a full open source
customized version on their forge; while it lacks many integrations
with Mac OS X (e.g. the Finder, trashes etc...) at a certain point a
release started to work pretty well. So it was clear that they were
working on it - contrast this with the complete secrecy of their
Java 6 support. Still, when Snow Leopard came out, ZFS was dropped
and the project on the forge removed all of a sudden. Of course, no
public communication about the rationale. This means that they think
they can change their mind at any time even when facts seemed to
confirm their commitment. So I'd only say that their attitude is
plain arrogance. They can afford it since most of the business comes
from fashion industry (iPhone) where sells are guaranteed by masses
of fanboys. Every corporate get arrogant if it can afford to be.
(*) I suspect that some leaks are driven by Apple itself as they
have a great teasing effect on fanboys.
--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager
Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere."
weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici - www.tidalwave.it/people
[email protected]
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