All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Learn more.
In an attempt to persuade programmers worldwide to help update and improve its software, Apple Tuesday launched Mac OS X Server and threw part of the system into the open-source pool.
The initiative will let programmers take the source code for Mac OS X Server, Apple's new server operating system, and change it, fix it, and feed improvements back into the community.
Apple is the first major operating system vendor to embrace the open-source model, which has proven wildly successful for Linux.
The open-source portion, called Darwin, features key components of the operating system, including some previously proprietary Apple technologies, but excludes things like the graphical user interface.
"It's about evolution," said Apple's interim CEO, Steve Jobs, at an unveiling at Apple's campus in Cupertino, California. "We believe that putting it out there ... will help us make it the best technology -- collectively -- we know how to make."
During the question and answer session at the launch, it was pointed out that all of the parts of the OS being released were based on software that was already publicly available.
However, Jobs pointed out that Apple engineers have been steadily improving these portions of the code, and these improvements were being made available to the programming community for the first time.
Jobs was joined by members of the open-source community, including Eric Raymond, president of the Open Source Initiative, and Brian Behlendorf, a lead developer of the open-source Apache Web Server, which ships with the Mac OS X Server.
The code will be available in coming weeks. Apple has established a Web site for updates and to act as a forum.
The software will be released under Apple's Public Source License, which Eric Raymond said was fully compatible with his organization's open-source guidelines and doesn't include any restrictive back-out clauses.
"We can say that Apple gets it," Raymond said. "The license is compatible and we hope it will develop into a model for other operating system vendors."
Apple also lowered the price from US$999 to $499, which includes unlimited client licenses. Apple will offer the operating system preconfigured on the Macintosh Server G3 for $4,999.
Jobs, dressed conspicuously casual in ripped jeans and worn sneakers, said Apple's hardware-software combo outperforms other server systems in its class, including Linux and NT-based systems.
