what part of leopard is apple selling for $129

[clevin]

Well I don't know if this question is really serious, what are you trying to get at anyway? You originally postulated:
To which danamania answered your question with solid quantifiable, verifiable facts. However you instantly contradict them with the argument that it's not qualitative enough (i.e how one defines 'importance'). So in reality you want to structure the argument so that the outcome is subjective as the individuals thoughts and preferences. That's why it's a pointless question. Instead of us trying to appease your idiosyncratic curiosities why don't you tell us what you think and let us shoot holes in it.

well, if any above listed "data" can convince a reasonable ppl, I am happy with it, unfortunately, its a $$$ issue, if I know significant amount of this OSX is supposed to be free, I sure would like apple to lower the price a bit

and please, stop making political arguments, just ask yourself if my doubt is reasonable? there are numerous apps out there that are big in size, while absolutely cheap.

if mail.app has same amount of codes as CUPS, is there anybody in the world would say CUPS worth just as much as mail.app?

and be realistic, if I can only accept whatever data thrown at me, and not allowed to point out the discrepancy between the data observation and hypothesis derived from the data, then there is no need for any scientific discussion. and thats not how any problem gets solved.

Do I know exactly how much of OSX should be free? no

however, I would love it if somebody here who has knowledge and capability to offer some opinions, like ChrisA did, or dig some data out.

If you think all open source software is free then you're wrong..

well, if you can make a more convincing argument, such as ... list some examples?

 

[yellow]

well, if any above listed "data" can convince a reasonable ppl, I am happy with it, unfortunately, its a $$$ issue, if I know significant amount of this OSX is supposed to be free, I sure would like apple to lower the price a bit

You know what?

I can define it.

Darwin is (or was) free from Apple.

What's missing? Aqua, and all the integrated apps. That's what you're paying for.

 

[clevin]

You know what?

I can define it.

Darwin is (or was) free from Apple.

What's missing? Aqua, and all the integrated apps. That's what you're paying for.

HUH, now thats a good suggestion.

now, when you buy standalone leopard (not with new mac), what are the major apps come with it? (which I really don't know)

I know safari is derived from KHTML, and I would say it primarily should be free.

 

[sunfast]

Reading this thread has made my brain hurt, but the way I see it is this...

Leopard, whatever its constituent parts, is in the shops for £85. You can either go and buy it or not.

I was happy to pay the money - be it for the packaging, the fact it was in a shop round the corner, the fact my mac is nicer for putting it on, whatever.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

HUH, now thats a good suggestion.

now, when you buy standalone leopard (not with new mac), what are the major apps come with it? (which I really don't know)

I know safari is derived from KHTML, and I would say it primarily should be free.

It's free: http://www.apple.com/safari/

 

[topgunn]

I know safari is derived from KHTML, and I would say it primarily should be free.

How can something be free primarily? Is it not quite free? Isn't that the same as not free at all?

Whatever percentage of Apple's products is based on open source projects is irrelevant. They have invested some amount of their own time and resources to make the product in question whether it be Mac OS, Safari, Mail, etc. And how much should they charge for the work that they have done? As much as they can to provide the greatest RoI to their shareholders to whom they have a fiduciary responsibility.

It all comes down to how much the particular product is worth to you. If you do not think that Mac OS is worth the $129 that Apple charges for their modifications to otherwise free open source projects, then your alternative is to use the unaltered version of said project.

 

[huck500]

HUH, now thats a good suggestion.

now, when you buy standalone leopard (not with new mac), what are the major apps come with it? (which I really don't know)

I know safari is derived from KHTML, and I would say it primarily should be free.

Safari IS free...

What would be a fair price for Apple to charge, assuming (for the moment) that the majority of their code is BSD? $109 (Amazon's price) seems pretty reasonable to me.

 

[DeaconGraves]

HUH, now thats a good suggestion.

now, when you buy standalone leopard (not with new mac), what are the major apps come with it? (which I really don't know)

I know safari is derived from KHTML, and I would say it primarily should be free.

Mail, iChat, Quick Look, iCal, Finder to name a few. (Probably the easier question to answer would be what doesn't come with stand alone leopard, which is the iLife suite and whatever software goodies (like omni outliner) Apple gives you with your particular Mac model.)

Your argument makes sense if we lived in a word where only material goods had value.

However, there is a little thing called "services rendered". Not having that much technical expertise I can't say what exactly is done, but I'm pretty sure lots of developers hired by Apple worked on tweaking are refining the code into what is now Leopard. I am guessing Apple had to pay them, and therefore needs to offset the cost.

I'm fairly sure that the majority of people here have jobs in which they are not directly involved in the sale of a product. They might market it, research it, file documents regarding the sale of it, or protect the property rights of those who created it. They all have to get paid some how.

Granted its more complicated than this as I'm sure a developer's salary comes partially from hardware sales as well, but my point is that there's more to the price of anything than what simply the consumer gets his hands on. If you really want to got out and get the free code and build something yourself, be my guest.

 

[iW00t]

The license.

The license, which is Free.

Hard BSD come with a GPL license instead of the stupid BSD license I could very well have sold my own copies of Leopard Lite of what-have-you.

 

[mpw]

The license, which is Free.

Hard BSD come with a GPL license instead of the stupid BSD license I could very well have sold my own copies of Leopard Lite of what-have-you.

That doesn't make any sense to me

 

[jeremy.king]

I just decompiled Leopard and compared it to Darwin, and turns out Apple didn't write a single line of code, therefore it must be FREE! or at least cheaper, because Open Source means FREE, right?

You see the diagrams above, but here's a small list of technologies Apple wrote or customized for Leopard.

Cocao, Carbon, Java SDK, Quartz, OpenGL, System Services including notifications, configd, power management, directory services, open directory, bonjour, DNS, VPN, safe disconnect, Launchd, QTKit, X11, Drivers for Hardware I/O, Power Management, IOVideo, USB, Firewire, Ethernet, Wireless, Bluetooth, Fibre Channel, GPRS, IPv6, CUPS, Network File Systems, etc..., etc..., etc... , etc....(read the linked document for much more)

Here's some of the new features/apps.


You are right, now that I think about it, Apple hasn't written much of Leopard at all. I can't believe they are charging me for it.

 

[dpaanlka]

This thread is making me dizzy.

This reminds me of plenty of past nonsense threads by the same poster, with similar characteristics. Nonsense posted. Nonsense rebuked. Further nonsense posted.

I think what this comes down to is, nobody is forcing you to buy a newer copy of Leopard. If all of the logic and reason in the world can't convince you, then don't buy it.

I think most people agree $129 is a deal for a major OS as robust as Leopard.

 

[Blubbert]

The license, which is Free.

Hard BSD come with a GPL license instead of the stupid BSD license I could very well have sold my own copies of Leopard Lite of what-have-you.

Man this post was hard to read. Almost all BSD distibutions are licenced with a BSD licence, its kinda their thing. OSX which is based on BSD is not licenced with a BSD licence, it is proprietary, and there in lies the beauty of the BSD licence. There is no forcing of making anything open source if you dont want. Its all free for you to do with as you please.

Also, the licence is not the only thing you pay for. You're also paying for the development and work on several proprietary applications and parts of OSX. The OS is more than just the kernel, and some of the pieces of OSX were made in house by Apple, which means that there had to of been programmers working on doing just that. If Leopard was free, where would the money for the programmers come? OSX is not Linux, and is not developed and maintained for free.