Unix Pioneer Ken Thompson Announces He's Switching From Mac To Linux

cracauer@ said:
My friend and I tried: you can indeed not copy a M1 C executable from one M1 mac to another without getting hung up in security preferences, although the same still works on Intel Macs with the same macOS versions.

Dislike.
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But can the receiving user override the security warnings and run it?
 
cracauer@ said:
without getting hung up in security preferences, although the same still works on Intel Macs with the same macOS versions.

Dislike.
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Oof! That is pretty grim (but not as bad as I did assume luckily).

So for now there is a way to force it with the security preferences (or that popup). That is something at least. Slightly tacky for Apple to strong-arm the developer into signing up with Apple's developer DRM or their app will look untrustworthy to less-technical IT beginners.

I am still hoping it is possible for individual macs to "resign" binaries. Perhaps this can be automated in an installer, etc.

Thanks for confirming. This is very useful to know.
 
cracauer@ said:
So how then does brew work? Like pkg it downloads binaries, and it runs fine.
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I bet the account (Apple ID user) who performs the brew builds has a full developer program ID. I looked at the terms of the developer program last night: Any user who logs in with their Apple ID can build applications, and use them on their own machine, but they can not distribute those. Once you get authenticated and get the full developer program (which either costs $99 per year, or can be free through a variety of programs), you can distribute apps either through Apple's App Store, or outside of it. I bet that brew counts as "outside of the app store".

kpedersen said:
Slightly tacky for Apple to strong-arm the developer into signing up with Apple's developer DRM or their app will look untrustworthy to less-technical IT beginners.
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I don't think the word "DRM" makes sense here. Membership in the Apple developer program does not imply that anyone has rights to the source code or compiled application. I see it more as a way to authenticate and identify developers, and preventing unauthenticated developers from distributing software. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is in the eye of the beholder, and depends heavily on the use case.
 
ralphbsz said:
I bet the account (Apple ID user) who performs the brew builds has a full developer program ID. I looked at the terms of the developer program last night: Any user who logs in with their Apple ID can build applications, and use them on their own machine, but they can not distribute those. Once you get authenticated and get the full developer program (which either costs $99 per year, or can be free through a variety of programs), you can distribute apps either through Apple's App Store, or outside of it. I bet that brew counts as "outside of the app store".


I don't think the word "DRM" makes sense here. Membership in the Apple developer program does not imply that anyone has rights to the source code or compiled application. I see it more as a way to authenticate and identify developers, and preventing unauthenticated developers from distributing software. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is in the eye of the beholder, and depends heavily on the use case.
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FreeBSD is good, but the code family tree seems to include a troublesome gangster... I normally don't get political, but this is too much.
 
Personally I feel Bill contributed more to what we use than Ken.
After the ATT lawsuit he really helped our license independence from Unix.
Much underrated as is Rodney who was our first release manager.

Is there a cult of Ken fans? It looks like it from here. I was being satirical because it seemed so dumb.
 
If he said he was switching to Devuan to help kill systemd I would be amused.

OK that's it. My last snark. Back to FreeBSD technical analysis. Less fluff.
 
ralphbsz said:
I don't think the word "DRM" makes sense here. Membership in the Apple developer program does not imply that anyone has rights to the source code or compiled application.
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I meant it more that the Apple Developer membership is DRM in itself. For example, whilst you pay, you have a (digital) right to sign your applications via their approved key. Once your payment subsides (or they close down the service), this right disappears and you are unable to access the workflow.

Indeed, preventing your ability to distribute your own compiled application to *your* users is more similar to blackmail rather than DRM.
 
I don't think he's talking about an Apple specific problem. He admits he's always used Apple out of tradition and that's it. Windows and Android are infected with much the same problems. You could say it's just a typical consumer OS thing, in that that they're "engineered" to suit the lowest common denominator and getting more and more restrictive and with more and more surveillance tech and telemetry built in and configured opt out (or not configurable at all). Business is business and Apple and the rest sell devices to suite the faecebook and twitter multitudes, not people like Ken. Sign of the times.
Phishfry said:
OK that's it. My last snark. Back to FreeBSD technical analysis. Less fluff.
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Reminds me of when ESR considered switching to Devuan. Took him less than a day and 6 forum posts to make a decision on that one...
 
I was not very accurate there. Bill gets great kudos but had moved on by the ATT lawsuit.
He was the first release manager for BSD.

Bill Jolitz released the first free BSD by replacing those 6 offending files.
www.oreilly.com

Open Sources

Chapter 3. Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix: From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable Marshall Kirk McKusick Early History Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie presented the first Unix paper at the Symposium … - Selection from Open Sources [Book]
www.oreilly.com www.oreilly.com

So really UCBerkeley Admin were the mothers of invention by allowing the releases.
 
ralphbsz said:
Once you get authenticated and get the full developer program (which either costs $99 per year, or can be free through a variety of programs), you can distribute apps either through Apple's App Store, or outside of it. I bet that brew counts as "outside of the app store".
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You can distribute unsigned binaries outside of the App Store and just one-time right-click run them and bypass gatekeeper.
 
Phishfry said:
Bill Jolliff released the first free BSD by replacing those 6 offending files. ...
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His last name was Jolitz. He created the first version of *BSD on an x86 that could be distributed without an AT&T license, which in turn enabled BSDi and the three FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD projects. He lived really close to us, with his wife Lynne and their kids. He sadly died recently (a few months ago?) of cancer, relatively young (in his 60s).
 
bsduck said:
I'm curious about this BRIEFS, sounds like an interesting filesystem. BSD Resilient Interoperable Extended File System?
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At one uni I worked at in the north of england, there was a PDP8 custom o/s and compiler that someone wrote called BEDSOCS. It was used for simulation work...
 
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