Quoting: manus76I can't recall seeing anyone putting a gun to people's heads, forcing them to buy an Apple product (or Microsoft's for that matter).

This doesn't reduce the damage lock-in proponents are causing to Linux.

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Quoting: etonbearsGood question! That's why I say it is unclear.

See update above. Looks like X.org foundation is working as a representative for Mesa in Khronos, so that should probably cover it.

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Quoting: etonbearsNo. Khronos operate an IP framework, the essence of which is that Khronos members agree not to assert any patents they hold against other members implementing a Khronos specification.

So, Mesa project is not protected by that agreement? or X.org/Mesa are now an "adopter" member and that would suffice?

See https://www.x.org/wiki/BoardOfDirectors/MeetingSummaries/2016/11-10/ [External Link]

UPDATE: Looks like it can help: https://www.khronos.org/files/adopters_agreement.pdf [External Link]

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Quoting: KimyrielleI'd argue Apple is easily the most evil technology company on Earth.

I share the sentiment :) Though Apple are just more visible than some. There are many crooks around, which just don't get into public eye. Qualcomm for instance?

Quoting: KimyrielleBack on topic, I actually think the numbers aren't THAT bad - we seem to outdo our actual market share in the desktop OS market, even (which most think is a bit less than 2%).

The numbers actually match well what's reported by Net Market Share [External Link].

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Quoting: JanI don't get the hate for the "crooked policies" of commercial entities.

You don't get why lock-in is bad? History can teach some lessons. Remember all kind of attempts to balkanize the Web? ActiveX, Flash, Silverlight and etc. It took a huge amount of effort to carve out a common standard and make sure that lock-in stuff started dying out. Lock-in is always a tax. It increases costs of development, because of needless work duplication. It is crooked, especially when entities like Apple and MS use it with intention to deter developers (discouraging them from releasing cross platform). That's the whole point of lock-in, it's an anti-competitive (i.e. monopolistic like) practice.

In the context of Linux, take a look at this: http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/halloween1.html [External Link]

That's how lock-in jerks express their intentions in their own words:

OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market.

You can replace "simple protocols" there with open standards and "server applications market" with any market. Same idea.

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Quoting: JanWhy should Nividia or AMD develop an API for Apple? They don't develop APIs for Microsoft or any other company either.

Not sure what you mean. On Windows, all major vendors (Intel, AMD and Nvidia) develop and support open APIs like OpenGL and Vulkan. They don't develop it "for MS". They do it for users and developers who rely on these APIs. So again, what stops them from doing it for MacOS? Only Apple's crooked political insistence on lock-in.

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Quoting: JanIf that is true, allow me to ask you a question: Who is developing the official NVidia Web Driver for macOS to support their latest GPUs like the GTX 1080 if Apple prevents them to do so?

Apple surely let them to do something, but not enough to address lacking APIs. That's why I have quite a strong disrespect towards Apple. They are one of the worst lock-in jerks in existence.

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Quoting: JanYou do realise Apple has their own graphics API called Metal?

Which is a jerk lock-in reaction, to open competition (Vulkan), which Apple politically decided not to support. That disgusts me in Apple pretty a lot.

Quoting: JanThey have officially dropped OpenGL support and encourage all developers to switch to Metal

Forcing developers to adopt lock-in, by using bit rot is another stinky political move. Basically, Apple wants to tax cross platform developers. In this sense, they are worse than MS these days.

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Quoting: JanOh, boy. Are you kidding? macOS -- unlike iOS -- is an open platform just like Linux.

In many ways it's not. Why don't Nvidia and AMD release proper graphics drivers for MacOS? They could address the problem of lacking Vulkan and stalled OpenGL there easily. Apple doesn't let them. So it's far from open (I'm not even talking about FOSS, I'm talking about some flexibility). In the graphics sense, Windows is actually way more open than MacOS.

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Quoting: JanApple is not abandoning the Mac at all.

They have just announced the iMac Pro with Xeon CPUs, external GPU support, Metal 2 and a new high-end Mac Pro coming in 2018/2019 along with new Cinema 5K Displays.

After stalling for how long? Dropping in some update after years of doing nothing is not called "not abandoning". Also, they clearly don't care about their own users and developers, otherwise they would have updated their OpenGL to latest versions. I.e. good luck trying to run something like The Witcher 3 in Wine on MacOS - it won't work, because OpenGL is stuck there at around 4.1. For all intents and purposes, Linux is much better for gaming.

Quoting: LeopardMacOS sales are staying high because most of the people are thinking having an Apple branded system is a privelege. So suddenly MacOS being a status sign for them and that is keeping them on the ecosystem : Ego.

Yes, that makes more sense. Technically, MacOS is becoming trash, and Apple simply decided to address complaints of abandonment, rather than pushing it forward. But people use it out of inertia.

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