Openness as a Value (written for MAC Alliances)
by George Woolley

Openness is a value widely held in the MAC community in a number of different respects.

Most notable is the valuing of the easy accessability, through the MAC graphical user interface (GUI). of the capabilities of MAC OS and applications running on it. Many more sophisticated MAC users also value the ability to easily automate the use of OS and application capabilities through AppleScript.

Many MAC Web authors value the ease of developing web pages using the text editor BBedit and a web browser. See the brief article "The Openness of HTML" for more about this sense of openness.

With the introduction of MAC OS X, which is based on UNIX, new avenues of openness are introduced to the MAC world. Most obvious is that the UNIX on which the systems is based is itself an Open System, i.e., it is freely available and its source code is available to any who wants it. Moreover, a wide variety of open system applications currently available on various UNIX platforms will likely be easily available shortly on MAC OS X. This type of openness is related to the kinds already valued by the MAC community and will likely be similarly embraced.

Copyright 2001 George Woolley

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